Inequality and the Labor Market

Inequality and the Labor Market PDF Author: Sharon Block
Publisher: Brookings Institution Press
ISBN: 0815738811
Category : Law
Languages : en
Pages : 263

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Book Description
Exploring a new agenda to improve outcomes for American workers As the United States continues to struggle with the impact of the devastating COVID-19 recession, policymakers have an opportunity to redress the competition problems in our labor markets. Making the right policy choices, however, requires a deep understanding of long-term, multidimensional problems. That will be solved only by looking to the failures and unrealized opportunities in anti-trust and labor law. For decades, competition in the U.S. labor market has declined, with the result that American workers have experienced slow wage growth and diminishing job quality. While sluggish productivity growth, rising globalization, and declining union representation are traditionally cited as factors for this historic imbalance in economic power, weak competition in the labor market is increasingly being recognized as a factor as well. This book by noted experts frames the legal and economic consequences of this imbalance and presents a series of urgently needed reforms of both labor and anti-trust laws to improve outcomes for American workers. These include higher wages, safer workplaces, increased ability to report labor violations, greater mobility, more opportunities for workers to build power, and overall better labor protections. Inequality in the Labor Market will interest anyone who cares about building a progressive economic agenda or who has a marked interest in labor policy. It also will appeal to anyone hoping to influence or anticipate the much-needed progressive agenda for the United States. The book's unusual scope provides prescriptions that, as Nobel Laureate Joseph Stiglitz notes in the introduction, map a path for rebalancing power, not just in our economy but in our democracy.

Inequality and the Labor Market

Inequality and the Labor Market PDF Author: Sharon Block
Publisher: Brookings Institution Press
ISBN: 0815738811
Category : Law
Languages : en
Pages : 263

Get Book Here

Book Description
Exploring a new agenda to improve outcomes for American workers As the United States continues to struggle with the impact of the devastating COVID-19 recession, policymakers have an opportunity to redress the competition problems in our labor markets. Making the right policy choices, however, requires a deep understanding of long-term, multidimensional problems. That will be solved only by looking to the failures and unrealized opportunities in anti-trust and labor law. For decades, competition in the U.S. labor market has declined, with the result that American workers have experienced slow wage growth and diminishing job quality. While sluggish productivity growth, rising globalization, and declining union representation are traditionally cited as factors for this historic imbalance in economic power, weak competition in the labor market is increasingly being recognized as a factor as well. This book by noted experts frames the legal and economic consequences of this imbalance and presents a series of urgently needed reforms of both labor and anti-trust laws to improve outcomes for American workers. These include higher wages, safer workplaces, increased ability to report labor violations, greater mobility, more opportunities for workers to build power, and overall better labor protections. Inequality in the Labor Market will interest anyone who cares about building a progressive economic agenda or who has a marked interest in labor policy. It also will appeal to anyone hoping to influence or anticipate the much-needed progressive agenda for the United States. The book's unusual scope provides prescriptions that, as Nobel Laureate Joseph Stiglitz notes in the introduction, map a path for rebalancing power, not just in our economy but in our democracy.

The Race between Education and Technology

The Race between Education and Technology PDF Author: Claudia Goldin
Publisher: Harvard University Press
ISBN: 0674037731
Category : Business & Economics
Languages : en
Pages : 497

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Book Description
This book provides a careful historical analysis of the co-evolution of educational attainment and the wage structure in the United States through the twentieth century. The authors propose that the twentieth century was not only the American Century but also the Human Capital Century. That is, the American educational system is what made America the richest nation in the world. Its educational system had always been less elite than that of most European nations. By 1900 the U.S. had begun to educate its masses at the secondary level, not just in the primary schools that had remarkable success in the nineteenth century. The book argues that technological change, education, and inequality have been involved in a kind of race. During the first eight decades of the twentieth century, the increase of educated workers was higher than the demand for them. This had the effect of boosting income for most people and lowering inequality. However, the reverse has been true since about 1980. This educational slowdown was accompanied by rising inequality. The authors discuss the complex reasons for this, and what might be done to ameliorate it.

Implications of Skill-biased Technological Change

Implications of Skill-biased Technological Change PDF Author: Eli Berman
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category : Cambio tecnologico
Languages : en
Pages : 52

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Book Description
Demand for less skilled workers decreased dramatically in the US and in other developed countries over the past two decades. We argue that pervasive skill-biased technological change rather than increased trade with the developing world is the principal culprit. The pervasiveness of this technological change is important for two reasons. First, it is an immediate and testable implication of technological change. Second, under standard assumptions, the more pervasive the skill-biased technological change the greater the increase in the embodied supply of less skilled workers and the greater the depressing effect on their relative wages through world goods prices. In contrast, in the Heckscher-Ohlin model with small open economies, the skill-bias of local technological changes does not affect wages. Thus, pervasiveness deals with a major criticism of skill-biased technological change as a cause. Testing the implications of pervasive, skill-biased technological change we find strong supporting evidence. First, across the OECD, most industries have increased the proportion of skilled workers employed despite rising or stable relative wages. Second, increases in demand for skills were concentrated in the same manufacturing industries in different developed countries.

Handbook of Labor Economics

Handbook of Labor Economics PDF Author: Orley Ashenfelter
Publisher: Elsevier
ISBN: 9780444501899
Category : Business & Economics
Languages : en
Pages : 800

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Book Description
A guide to the continually evolving field of labour economics.

Technology and Employment

Technology and Employment PDF Author: Richard Michael Cyert
Publisher: Washington, D.C. (2101 Constitution Ave., NW, Washington 20418) : National Academy Press
ISBN: 9780309037822
Category : Business & Economics
Languages : en
Pages : 248

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Book Description
This report addresses a number of issues that have surfaced in the debates over the impact of technological change on employment. These issues include the effects of technological change on levels of employment and unemployment within the economy; on the displacement of workers in specific industries or sectors of the economy; on skill requirements; on the welfare of women, minorities, and labor force entrants in a technologically transformed economy; and on the organization of the firm and the workplace. It concludes that technological change will contribute significantly to growth in employment opportunities and wages, although workers in specific occupations and industries may have to move among jobs and careers. Recommends initiatives and options to assist workers in making such transitions. ISBN 0-309-03744-1 (pbk.).

The Impact of International Trade on Wages

The Impact of International Trade on Wages PDF Author: Robert C. Feenstra
Publisher: University of Chicago Press
ISBN: 0226239640
Category : Political Science
Languages : en
Pages : 420

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Book Description
Since the early 1980s, the U.S. economy has experienced a growing wage differential: high-skilled workers have claimed an increasing share of available income, while low-skilled workers have seen an absolute decline in real wages. How and why this disparity has arisen is a matter of ongoing debate among policymakers and economists. Two competing theories have emerged to explain this phenomenon, one focusing on international trade and labor market globalization as the driving force behind the devaluation of low-skill jobs, and the other focusing on the role of technological change as a catalyst for the escalation of high-skill wages. This collection brings together innovative new ideas and data sources in order to provide more satisfying alternatives to the trade versus technology debate and to assess directly the specific impact of international trade on U.S. wages. This timely volume offers a thorough appraisal of the wage distribution predicament, examining the continued effects of technology and globalization on the labor market.

Differences and Changes in Wage Structures

Differences and Changes in Wage Structures PDF Author: Richard B. Freeman
Publisher: University of Chicago Press
ISBN: 0226261840
Category : Political Science
Languages : en
Pages : 474

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Book Description
During the past two decades, wages of skilled workers in the United States rose while those of unskilled workers fell; less-educated young men in particular have suffered unprecedented losses in real earnings. These twelve original essays explore whether this trend is unique to the United States or is part of a general growth in inequality in advanced countries. Focusing on labor market institutions and the supply and demand forces that affect wages, the papers compare patterns of earnings inequality and pay differentials in the United States, Australia, Korea, Japan, Western Europe, and the changing economies of Eastern Europe. Cross-country studies examine issues such as managerial compensation, gender differences in earnings, and the relationship of pay to regional unemployment. From this rich store of data, the contributors attribute changes in relative wages and unemployment among countries both to differences in labor market institutions and training and education systems, and to long-term shifts in supply and demand for skilled workers. These shifts are driven in part by skill-biased technological change and the growing internationalization of advanced industrial economies.

The Work of the Future

The Work of the Future PDF Author: David H. Autor
Publisher: MIT Press
ISBN: 0262367742
Category : Business & Economics
Languages : en
Pages : 189

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Book Description
Why the United States lags behind other industrialized countries in sharing the benefits of innovation with workers and how we can remedy the problem. The United States has too many low-quality, low-wage jobs. Every country has its share, but those in the United States are especially poorly paid and often without benefits. Meanwhile, overall productivity increases steadily and new technology has transformed large parts of the economy, enhancing the skills and paychecks of higher paid knowledge workers. What’s wrong with this picture? Why have so many workers benefited so little from decades of growth? The Work of the Future shows that technology is neither the problem nor the solution. We can build better jobs if we create institutions that leverage technological innovation and also support workers though long cycles of technological transformation. Building on findings from the multiyear MIT Task Force on the Work of the Future, the book argues that we must foster institutional innovations that complement technological change. Skills programs that emphasize work-based and hybrid learning (in person and online), for example, empower workers to become and remain productive in a continuously evolving workplace. Industries fueled by new technology that augments workers can supply good jobs, and federal investment in R&D can help make these industries worker-friendly. We must act to ensure that the labor market of the future offers benefits, opportunity, and a measure of economic security to all.

Learning by Doing

Learning by Doing PDF Author: James Bessen
Publisher: Yale University Press
ISBN: 0300195664
Category : Business & Economics
Languages : en
Pages : 310

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Book Description
Technology is constantly changing our world, leading to more efficient production. In the past, technological advancements dramatically increased wages, but during the last three decades, the median wage has remained stagnant. Many of today's machines have taken over the work of humans, destroying old jobs while increasing profits for business owners and raising the possibility of ever-widening economic inequality. Author James Bessen argues that avoiding this fate will require unique policies to develop the knowledge and skills necessary to implement the rapidly evolving technologies. At present this technical knowledge is mostly unstandardized and difficult to acquire, learned through job experience rather than in classrooms. Nor do current labor markets generally provide strong incentives for learning on the job. Basing his analysis on intensive research into economic history as well as today's labor markets, the author explores why the benefits of technology take years, sometimes decades, to emerge. Although the right policies can hasten this process, policy has moved in the wrong direction in recent decades, protecting politically influential interests to the detriment of emerging technologies and broadly shared prosperity.

Skill-biased Technological Change

Skill-biased Technological Change PDF Author: Donald S. Siegel
Publisher: W. E. Upjohn Institute
ISBN:
Category : Business & Economics
Languages : en
Pages : 168

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Book Description
Based on a survey of 79 manufacturing firms in the Long Island area, discusses the labour market effects of implementing new manufacturing technologies and changes in human resources management.