How will we deal with current and future productivity gains and the distribution of those gains? Will they go to improve the median standard of living or will they benefit the investor class as under George Bush? What happens to workers when you don't need workers or as many workers anymore? What happens to such a society?
The number of people out of the labor force — meaning that they were neither working nor looking for work and that the government did not consider them unemployed — jumped by 637,000 last month, the Labor Department said. The number of part-time workers who said they wanted full-time work — all counted as fully employed — rose by an additional 621,000.
Take these people into account, and the job market may be in its worst condition since the early 1980s. It is still deteriorating rapidly, too.
http://www.nytimes.com/...
I am not an expert on this subject but I am concerned about the lack of attention and awareness of this important issue. In this diary I present some background on labor productivity, structural unemployment and the uncounted.
Structural unemployment
Structural unemployment is caused by a mismatch between jobs offered by employers and potential workers. This may pertain to geographical location, skills, and many other factors.
http://en.wikipedia.org/...
Persons Not in the Labor Force (Household Survey Data)
About 1.9 million persons (not seasonally adjusted) were marginally attached to the labor force in November, 584,000 more than 12 months earlier. These individuals wanted and were available for work and had looked for a job sometime in the prior 12 months. They were not counted as unemployed because they had not searched for work in the 4 weeks preceding the survey. Among the marginally attached, there were 608,000 discouraged workers in November, up by 259,000 from a year earlier. Discouraged workers are persons not currently looking for work specifically because they believe no jobs are available for them.
http://www.bls.gov/...
Weekly Hours (Establishment Survey Data)
In November, the average workweek for production and nonsupervisory workers on private nonfarm payrolls fell by 0.1 hour to 33.5 hours, seasonally adjusted--the lowest in the history of the series, which began in 1964. Both the manufacturing workweek and factory overtime fell by 0.2 hour over the month, to 40.3 and 3.3 hours, respectively.
http://www.bls.gov/...
Unemployment (Household Survey Data)
Both the number of unemployed persons (10.3 million) and the unemploy-
ment rate (6.7 percent) continued to increase in November. Since the start of the recession in December 2007, as recently announced by the National Bureau of Economic Research, the number of unemployed persons increased by 2.7 million, and the unemployment rate rose by 1.7 percentage points.
...
Among the unemployed, the number of persons who lost their job and did not expect to be recalled to work increased by 298,000 to 4.7 million in November. Over the past 12 months, the size of this group has increased by 2.0 million.
The number of long-term unemployed (those jobless for 27 weeks or more) was little changed at 2.2 million in November, but was up by 822,000 over the past 12 months.
One of the explanations behind Structural unemployment came from Economist and Philosopher André Gorz he argues that it could be permanent in modern society. ...
"Neither is it true any longer that the more each individual works, the better off everyone will be. The present crisis has stimulated technological change of an unprecedented scale and speed: `the micro chip revolution'. The object and indeed the effect of this revolution has been to make rapidly increasing savings in labour, in the industrial, administrative and service sectors. Increasing production is secured in these sectors by decreasing amounts of labour. As a result, the social process of production no longer needs everyone to work in it on a full-time basis. The work ethic ceases to be viable in such a situation and workbased society is thrown into crisis"
http://en.wikipedia.org/...
PRODUCTIVITY AND COSTS
Third Quarter 2008, revised
The Bureau of Labor Statistics of the U.S. Department of Labor today
reported revised productivity data--as measured by output per hour of all persons--for the third quarter of 2008. The seasonally adjusted annual rates of productivity growth in the third quarter were:
1.5 percent in the business sector and
1.3 percent in the nonfarm business sector.
http://www.bls.gov/...
According to a study by Wolfgang Lecher, of the WSI (the Institute of Economic and Social Research of the DGB), the continuation of the present trend would lead, within the next ten years or so, to the following segmentation of the active population:
- 25 per cent will be skilled workers with permanent jobs in large firms protected by collective wage agreements;
- 25 per cent will be peripheral workers with insecure, unskilled and badly-paid jobs, whose work schedules vary according to the wishes of their employers and the fluctuations in the market;
- 50 per cent will be semi-unemployed, unemployed, marginalized workers, doing occasional or seasonal work and `odd jobs'.
...
I have attempted to identify the meaning history could have, and to show what humanity and the trade-union movement could derive from the technological revolution we are witnessing at present. I have tried to indicate the direction in which we should advance, the policies we should follow if we are to bring this about. Events could nevertheless take a course which would miss the possible meaning of the current technological revolution. If this happens, I can see no other meaning in that revolution: our societies will continue to disintegrate, to become segmented, to sink into violence, injustice and fear.
http://www.antenna.nl/...