This post is the third in a short series that assesses the role of technological change and job polarization in wage inequality trends.

The discussion of job polarization—the expansion of high and low-wage occupations while middle-wage occupations decline—and its role in driving wage inequality would benefit from a longer examination of occupational change and technology’s impact.

“Occupational upgrading” has been going on for 60 years or more. By occupational upgrading, we mean the erosion of employment in blue-collar and, more recently, pink-collar (administrative/clerical) occupations and the corresponding employment expansion of high wage, professional and managerial white-collar occupations. The share of employment in low-wage, service occupations (food preparation, janitorial/cleaning services, personal care and services) has actually been relatively stable for many decades and remained a small—roughly 15 percent—share of total employment.

The bottom line for the discussion of the role that technologically-driven occupation trends have played in generating wage inequality is that occupational upgrading has been occurring for decades, through periods of both rising and falling wage inequality and through both rising and falling median real wage growth. In our view, this makes occupational employment shifts a poor candidate for explaining the rise in wage inequality since 1979. Read more

Corrections were made to this post on Jan. 30. For explanations of the corrections, see the full report summarized in this posting.

In a new EPI report, What do international tests really show about U.S. student performance?, we disaggregate international student test scores by social class and show that the commonplace condemnation of U.S. student performance on such tests is misleading, exaggerated, and in many cases, based on misinterpretation of the facts. Ours is the first study of which we are aware to compare the performance of socioeconomically similar students across nations.

Some critics, disturbed by the unsophisticated way in which policymakers and pundits use international tests to condemn American student performance, have commented that American students in relatively affluent states, like Massachusetts or Minnesota, or students in schools where few students are from low-income families, perform as well or better than average students in the highest scoring countries. But while such comparisons are well-intended, they can’t tell us much because a proper comparison would be between affluent states in the U.S., and affluent provinces or prefectures in other countries, or between schools with little poverty in the U.S. and schools with little poverty in other countries. Critics have not previously had data by which such comparisons can properly be made.

MORE: Authors’ response to OECD/PISA reaction to their report (PDF)
AUDIO: Authors speak with the press about their report (MP3)

Yet both of the major international tests—the Trends in International Mathematics and Science Study (TIMSS) and the Program on International Student Assessment (PISA)—eventually publish not only average national scores but a rich database from which analysts can disaggregate scores by students’ socioeconomic characteristics, school composition, and other informative criteria. Examining these can lead to more nuanced conclusions than those suggested from average national scores alone. Read more

Here’s some interesting content that EPI’s research team recommends today:

• “Our Economic Pickle” (New York Times)
• “This Week in Poverty: Smiley Calls for White House Conference on US Poverty” (The Nation)
• “The Low Politics of Low Growth” (New York Times)
• “Much Ado about Nothing on Obama’s White Guy Appointees” (New America Media)
• “Misguided Social Security ‘Reform‘” (New York Times)

Two articles in the Sunday New York Times, appearing side-by-side, together told the fundamental truth that our current discussion of economic policy ignores:  Generating greater economic growth and ensuring that middle-class wages grow with productivity are essential for restoring shared prosperity and achieving our budget goals.

Steven Greenhouse’s piece, “Our Economic Pickle,” states:

“Federal income tax rates will rise for the wealthiest Americans, and certain tax loopholes might get closed this year. But these developments, and whatever else happens in Washington in the coming debt-ceiling debate, are unlikely to do much to alter one major factor contributing to income inequality: stagnant wages.”

The article notes, “Wages have fallen to a record low as a share of America’s gross domestic product” and quotes Harvard’s Larry Katz appropriately summarizing the situation: “What we’re seeing now is very disquieting.”

This is not totally new, as shown by the data from The State of Working America that Greenhouse cites: “From 1973 to 2011Read more

This post is the second in a short series that assesses the role of technological change and job polarization in wage inequality trends.

The recently posted introduction of Assessing the job polarization explanation of growing wage inequality, a paper I wrote with Heidi Shierholz and John Schmitt, has started to raise some interest in the topic so it’s worth surfacing some of the issues and evidence it contains. John has already written a blog post on the fact that job polarization (the expansion of low and high-wage occupations and the shrinkage of middle-wage occupations) did not occur in the 2000s and that recent occupational employment shifts are clearly not driving recent wage trends. Our paper raises two sets of empirical issues. First, we point out that the evidence that job polarization caused wage polarization (growing inequality in the top half of the wage distribution but stable or shrinking inequality in the bottom half) in the 1990s is entirely circumstantial, relying on the two trends (employment and wage polarization) occurring at the same time without demonstration of any linkage. Second, the paper challenges whether occupational employment trends drive key wage patterns.

This post explores the point that one piece of missing evidence from the “job polarization is causing wage inequality” story is around the timing of employment and wage changes. That is, all of the evidence presented so far on job polarization relates to wage and employment trends over big chunks of time (1979–89 and 1989–99 or even 1974–88 and 1988–2008) and there has not been an examination of year-by-year trends. This is important because Read more

This post was originally published in the Center for Economic and Policy Research’s blog. It will be the first in a short series that assesses the role of technological change and job polarization in wage inequality trends.

In a recent post at Wonkblog, Dylan Matthews takes a fairly dim view of a new paper that Larry Mishel, Heidi Shierholz, and I have written on the role of technology in wage inequality. Matthews raises several issues, but I want to focus right now on a key point that he missed: proponents of the “job polarization” view of technological change provide no evidence that the framework actually works in the 2000s. Larry, Heidi, and I will cover other issues in additional blog posts.

In his piece, Matthews focused on our criticisms of the ability of the job polarization approach to explain wage developments in the 1990s. I’ll leave the discussion of the 1990s for another day, but the more important issue for contemporary policy discussions is whether the framework is helpful at all for the last decade.

Since the occupation-based “tasks framework” that lies behind the academic research on job polarization is widely considered in the economics profession to be the best available technology-based explanation for wage inequality, Larry, Heidi, and I take the lack of evidence for this framework in the 2000s as support for our view that other policy-related factors are what is really driving inequality. We also think that if this purportedly unified framework doesn’t work well for the 2000s, that it is likely not helpful for earlier periods either.

But, even if you still think technology is the main or even an important culprit, we would argue that you need a new theory of technology that actually fits the facts of the 2000s.

This is a fairly long post and starts with some necessary background—necessary because there is a sizable gap between the way economists talk formally about “job polarization” and the way most of the public talks about the same issue. Read more

Students and Scholars Against Corporate Misbehaviour (SACOM) reports that on Jan. 10, workers at one of Foxconn’s China plants (in Fengcheng, Jiangxi Province) went on strike. The factory produces Apple’s iPhone connector and products for other companies. SACOM suggests the strike resulted from the sweatshop working conditions at the plant, poor pay, lack of union representation, health and safety violations, and general lack of respect for the workers. The resulting protest by more than 1,000 workers was met with a harsh crackdown, with water cannons and physical violence apparently used against the strikers. SACOM notes the contrast between the ongoing harsh conditions reported by workers and the often-rosy public relations campaign by Foxconn and Apple.

This report deserves careful attention. SACOM is a Hong Kong-based NGO that has enlisted workers in Apple’s Foxconn factories to report on life and work inside the giant complexes. It is the most credible source of information about conditions in Apple’s manufacturing plants in China. SACOM was the organization that first revealed the wave of suicides at Foxconn, the construction of suicide nets, Apple’s use of underage students on its production lines, the continuing use of students compelled to work at Foxconn under threat of being kicked out of school, grossly excessive overtime, and many other abuses.

The most recent issue of the Bureau of Labor Statistics’ Monthly Labor Review provides a wealth of interesting—and depressing—statistics about pension coverage in the United States. The BLS’ “visual essay” documents the decline in defined benefit pensions, which now cover 18 percent of private-sector workers, down from 35 percent in the early 1990s.

Household coverage is higher, as many married couples have at least one spouse covered under a plan. Thus, a separate household survey conducted by the Federal Reserve found that 31 percent of households were covered by a defined benefit pension in 2010, though this includes households with workers employed in the public sector as well as retirees and workers covered under plans from previous jobs who are no longer accruing benefits.1

Though many workers are now enrolled in 401(k) plans, these have proven to be a poor substitute, as the typical household approaching retirement has less than two years’ worth of income saved in these accounts. The Fed survey found that the median households aged 55–64 had an income of $55,000 and just $100,000 saved in a retirement account, if they had a retirement account at all. Read more

Here’s some reading material for you from items EPI’s research team skimmed through today:

• “For Americans Under 50, Stark Findings on Health” (New York Times)
• “Public Goals, Private Interests in Debt Campaign” (New York Times)
• “The Debt Ceiling’s Escape Hatch” (New York Times)
• “Superfluous grades; StudentsFirst ranking considers performance last” (Center for Public Education)

Laura Rowley has an excellent response to the silly op-ed by Steve Cohen published in Tuesday’s Wall Street Journal. Cohen wrote that paying interns to deliver clothing for photo shoots, run copy machines, or clean the green room at a TV studio is dumb. The young people doing those jobs are not employees, according to Cohen; they’re simply auditioning.

Cohen admits that the grunt work he and his son did in separate internships at a law firm and a magazine was “boring, mindless, repetitious” and yet, “essential to the workings of our offices.” Nevertheless, Cohen says the chance to prove himself a good employee was so valuable to him, as was the exposure to a law office’s operations, that his employer shouldn’t have had to pay him even minimum wage.

Rowley accepts Cohen’s conclusion that his internship was valuable but says the experience shouldn’t be limited to people like Cohen (a former media executive) and his son, who can afford to work for free. What about the kids graduating from college with $50,000 of debt, or the children of factory workers or waitresses who can’t support their grown children in New York City? Should they be denied the audition, the exposure to interesting work environments, the chance to prove themselves? Read more