The alignment of earnings in occupations and at U.S. workplaces increasingly exacerbates earnings inequality

https://equitablegrowth.org/the-alignment-of-earnings-in-occupations-and-at-u-s-workplaces-increasingly-exacerbates-earnings-inequality/

The alignment of earnings in occupations and at U.S. workplaces increasingly exacerbates earnings inequality

Equitable Growthby Nathan Wilmers, Clem Aeppli / 5h

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A few common explanations dominate the discussion of rising earnings inequality in the United States. Automation and computerization, for example, have augmented many nonroutine white-collar jobs—meaning those jobs can pay more—while replacing more routine jobs. Tech pays off differently depending on your occupation. Another set of explanations of earnings inequality has to do with the types of employers, workplaces, or firms that make up the U.S. economy. Low-paying service-sector employers have multiplied, and manufacturers have deunionized, outsourced, or offshored, while a select few firms in finance, consulting, and tech pay disproportionately high wages. This last set of firms is made up of so-called superstar firms.

In short, where you work matters for earnings inequality, too—it's not just what you do at work.

In a new paper, we argue that these two types of explanations miss something crucial. From 1999 to 2017, increasing earnings inequality occurred not mainly because of changing pay-offs to where you work or what you do at work. Instead, inequality is increasing through the increased alignment between occupations and workplaces. High-paying occupations are increasingly clustered at high-paying workplaces, and low-paying occupations are increasingly located at low-paying workplaces.

This alignment between earnings at workplaces and occupations exacerbates overall earnings inequality. But this has largely escaped public attention because we typically study either occupations or workplaces in isolation.

For our analysis, we used restricted-use Occupational Employment Statistics, or OES, survey data collected by the U.S. Department of Labor's Bureau of Labor Statistics. Twice a year, the BLS surveys about one-sixth of establishments in the United States, asking them to list the occupations they employ, the number of workers in each occupation, and the wage distribution of each occupation. So, the OES data let us examine the role of both workplace and occupation in earnings inequality—something that other sources of U.S. data cannot do.

Using this survey's data, we modeled workers' earnings as the sum of both occupational premiums and workplace premiums. An occupation premium is what a certain occupation pays beyond the average, once you take into account the workplaces where it is employed. A workplace premium is what a workplace pays beyond average, once you take into account the occupations it employs.

Here's an example. A software engineer working at the online vacation rental company Airbnb Inc. earns a lot, since software engineers in general are well-compensated and since Airbnb pays its employees above the rate they might earn elsewhere. A software engineer working at a nonprofit might earn less—even though that worker could still earn more than other employees at the nonprofit due to their occupation, the nonprofit as a whole pays less. So, software engineering has a high occupational premium, Airbnb has a high workplace premium, and the nonprofit has a lower workplace premium.

Using what's called a two-way fixed-effects regression, we calculate these two sets of premiums for every occupation and for every workplace in the OES survey. This approach lets us separate inequality between occupation premiums (due to skill-biased technological change, for example) from inequality between workplace premiums (due to superstar firms, for example).

Surprisingly, we find that both between-workplace inequality and between-occupation inequality have stayed roughly level over the past 20 years, each explaining around the same amount of earnings variation. The big change has been in the covariance between occupation and workplace premiums, which has doubled in the past 20 years and which accounts for two-thirds of the total increase in wage inequality. (See Figure 1.)

Figure 1

Figure 1 shows that pay premiums are increasingly aligned such that highly paid occupations are more likely to be located at high-paying establishments, and similarly for poorly paid occupations and low-paying establishments. Workers with the high-premium occupations at high-premium establishments enjoy very high wages, while those with low-premium occupations at low-premium establishments receive very low wages. We call this the consolidation of workplace and occupation inequalities.

But why does consolidation matter?

Consolidation exacerbates overall earnings inequality, with those in high-occupation-premium, high-establishment-premium jobs earning extra and those in low-occupation-premium, low-establishment-premium jobs earning even less. The result is worse earnings inequality than either between-occupation or between-workplace variation would create by themselves. And, though we cannot test it with our data, consolidation could affect other aspects of work, too. While a janitor hired by Eastman Kodak Co. some 40 years ago could work her way into other jobs at the firm, a janitor at Apple Inc. today is actually employed by a custodial services contractor and has little chance for promotion.

The consolidation we observe means that many conventional explanations for rising earnings inequality do not capture the full story. Explanations emphasizing divergence between occupations or educational levels or explanations focusing on the importance of where you work ignore the fact that the two are increasingly tied together.

This earnings-inequality dynamic also means that policymakers need to look at more than one dimension of earnings inequality—occupation or workplace—at a time. Policies such as the minimum wage cut across both workplace and occupation at once: It doesn't matter whether it's the occupation premium or the workplace premium that's low. So, a higher minimum wage keeps low workplace premiums and low occupation premiums from compounding. Of course, the minimum wage alone isn't enough—most of the rise in inequality over the past 20 years is due to a growing gap between median-earning and high-earning workers.

So, policymakers should also consider interventions in the sectors where the consolidation of earnings inequality is most rampant. First is the service sector, which is increasingly dominated by low-paying workplaces employing primarily poorly paid occupations on the one hand (think fast-food restaurants), and very high-paying workplaces employing mainly well-compensated occupations (think consulting firms). Together, this shift in industrial composition accounts for more than 20 percent of the total increase in consolidation.

Second is the bifurcation of social services. Some hospitals, nursing homes, and the like have cut costs in recent years by shifting to a workforce of primarily poorly compensated occupations. An underresourced community health center, for example, may reduce the number of physicians on staff, relying instead on a workforce of nurses and other employees with less-prestigious credentials. Perhaps constrained by budget cuts, the health center also may pay its employees less across the board than they might earn elsewhere.

Meanwhile, other establishments in social services have shifted up, employing more professional elites and paying them well, too. Think of a small psychiatric practice with a primarily wealthy clientele. These patterns of down-shifting and up-shifting account for about 12 percent and 11 percent, respectively, of the total increase in consolidation, according to our working paper.

While most dramatic in these two sectors, earnings consolidation has occurred throughout the U.S. economy. Regardless of industry, the alignment of workplace and occupation now exacerbates overall earnings inequality. It forms a new source of earnings inequality, one which defies conventional explanations and which requires attention from researchers and from policymakers alike.

Some State Policymakers Pushing Tax Cuts Amid Widespread Hardship [feedly]

Some State Policymakers Pushing Tax Cuts Amid Widespread Hardship
https://www.cbpp.org/blog/some-state-policymakers-pushing-tax-cuts-amid-widespread-hardship

Even as some states take steps to help people who are struggling the most due to the pandemic and recession, policymakers in some other states are doing exactly the opposite of what this crisis calls for: proposing extreme tax cuts that would primarily benefit the well-off, weaken the state's ability to help those facing hard times, and worsen racial and economic inequities. Because of the pandemic, millions of people are going without enough food, facing eviction, and struggling to pay their utility bills and other household expenses. Millions of children have effectively lost a year of......

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UMWA president talks about Biden's energy plans

• By Jackie Whetzel for The Register-Herald
 
• Mar 6, 2021
 

https://www.register-herald.com/news/state_region/umwa-president-talks-about-bidens-energy-plans/article_91496246-6b77-5eb5-b2ec-7bf22050e2c9.html

United Mine Workers of America (UMWA) President Cecil Roberts says he has no doubt America can learn to burn coal in a clean manner, and he's hopeful President Joe Biden will come up with a rapid plan to replace all of the coal-related jobs that will be eliminated under his clean energy plans.

Biden has been vocal about his desire to transition America to 100 percent renewable energy for electricity generation by 2035 and net-zero emissions by 2050.

To do so, fossil fuels will have to be retired.

Biden wants the U.S. to lead when it comes to addressing the world's climate emergency.

While Biden's plans would likely have a positive impact on the environment, they could also be devastating to coal communities in West Virginia and throughout Appalachia – despite the president's talk of wanting to assimilate coal workers into new industries when mining jobs go away.

In a one-on-one phone interview, Roberts told The Register-Herald that Biden's energy plans "concern us greatly."

"We knew based on his campaign what his plans would be with respect to energy," said Roberts. "I know President Biden wants to do the right thing. I don't doubt that at all – that's not the issue."

Roberts said the problem is thousands of workers will be unemployed under net-zero emissions – and there is no concrete strategy to replace the multitude of coal industry jobs that will be lost.

"You see a state like West Virginia and areas like Kentucky, Indiana and Alabama – they're all heavily dependent on coal," Roberts said. "We're talking about doing this in 14 years. Think about that. We're going to change the entire method of producing electricity by eliminating all these jobs. What do we do with the workers?"

It has been said that the Biden administration plans to create millions of jobs in renewable energy fields, but Roberts says he has to see evidence that those jobs are being created before thousands of workers are left unemployed.

"Just think about this for a moment," Roberts said. "The 2035 net zero emissions would eliminate not only coal, but it would also eliminate natural gas.

"The idea that we would be using, as a country, renewable and renewables only – A, I don't think that's possible. B, I don't think that's pragmatic. And C, It would be devastating to the economy in Appalachia where you and I come from," Roberts said, specifically referencing West Virginia.

Many of the union workers Roberts represents have shared their concerns about how they will provide for their families if the coal industry is eliminated.

"We've (already) lost thousands and thousands of jobs across Appalachia, and there hasn't been a plan for helping find jobs that were equivalent to these (coal) jobs. So the question is: What's the plan here? Or is there a plan?" he said.

In a December 2019 Newsweek article, Biden was quoted on the campaign trail saying, "Anyone who can go down 300 to 3,000 feet in a mine can sure as hell learn to program as well," referring to computer-related jobs.

Some Americans dubbed these comments "tone deaf" and "unhelpful."

At the time, American Coal Council CEO Betsy Monseau said it was a "lack of appreciation" for what miners actually do.

When asked about Biden's comments, Roberts said, "I think coal miners can do anything."

However, we're still not talking about union jobs that offer an equivalent wage and benefits, he said.

Former presidential candidate John Kerry has been quoted saying coal miners can be put to work installing solar panels.

"That's fine," Roberts said, "except those aren't union jobs and don't pay much."

Aside from massive job losses, Roberts says transitioning to clean energy is also a hard pill to swallow because it will make America more reliant on China.

"What we're talking about doing here is helping China out economically," Roberts said. "Two-thirds of all solar panels in the world are made in China. Two-thirds of all wind turbines are made in China. If we're going to do this, let's do it in Appalachia and put thousands of people to work and make them union jobs represented by the UMWA."

Also bringing the demise of the steel industry into the conversation, Roberts said, "We don't produce steel in this country and we've just stopped talking about it. Why can't we have a steel industry again in America?"

Roberts was once a miner himself and hails from a family deeply rooted in the mining industry. His father was also a steel employee.

He says he understands the job and has dedicated his life to fighting for the rights of union coal workers.

He plans to continue what he considers an uphill battle.

"We will defend these jobs because we know how hard it is to replace them," he said. "The administration should be working hard to create these high-paying jobs before eliminating them. That doesn't work well in my mind – and I don't think it works well for the people of Appalachia, either."

Roberts recalled the time when coal jobs were abundant across Appalachia.

Those days are long gone – and few industries have moved in to replace many of these old coal communities.

Roberts can recall standing 20 feet away from former president Barack Obama once when he was running for president in 2008.

"He said, 'If we can find a way to put a man on the moon, we can burn clean coal,'" said Roberts. "The only thing we've failed to do here is put the money and resources into this.

"I have no doubt that we can burn coal cleanly. We have people who say to us, 'You don't believe in science and technology.' I believe in both of them," he said. "The question is: Do they believe we can use technology to utilize coal cleanly in a coal-fired power plant?"

A recent CNBC article cited a Bureau of Labor report stating that there were less than 50,000 coal jobs at the end of 2020.

"2020 was the worst year for coal mining," Roberts said. "50,000 is about right, yes. It might even be lower than that. It will be higher at the end of 2021, but the jobs in the coal mining industry will be at risk."

When asked if miners should be concerned for the future of their careers, he said, "Yes."

"For 10 years, I've told myself it's like the fight that never ends," said Roberts, referencing his fight to keep miners' pensions and health care.

Roberts is currently the longest serving president of the UMWA. He could have retired years ago but has elected to continue working.

"I'm not planning on leaving in the middle of this fight. I've met a lot of wonderful people along the way. I've been blessed."

--

John Case
Harpers Ferry, WV

Enlighten Radio

Socialist Economics

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Strengthening workers’ right to organize is 50 years overdue [feedly]

Strengthening workers' right to organize is 50 years overdue
https://www.epi.org/blog/strengthening-workers-right-to-organize-is-50-years-overdue/

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Luxemburg 150 [feedly]

Luxemburg 150

Mike Roberts memorializes Rosa Luxemburg.

I think, in hindsight, they all got parts of Imperialism right, but strayed unnecessarily from Marx's original thesis that capitalism would overtake ALL previous ancestral systems in time throughout the world. That is still happening. "Imperialism -- stronger nations drawing weaker ones into their markets, but not without overrunning institutions and stimulating economic and political instability. The dominance in an economy of primarily inputs or primarily outputs, depending on uneven levels of development, steadily emerges into new states of globalization shaped by global geopolitical struggles.
https://thenextrecession.wordpress.com/2021/03/06/luxemburg-150/

Yesterday, 5 March 2021, was the 150^th anniversary of the birth of Rosa Luxemburg, the great revolutionary socialist of the Polish-German labour movement.  Luxemburg's contribution to socialist ideas and to the struggle to replace capitalism is too manifold for a short blog post to do her justice.  So I won't attempt to do a proper job here.  Instead, I shall offer a few comments on her contribution to Marxist political economy along with some suggestions for some very useful critiques of her work.

Since the 1970s there has been a Collected Works in German. But more recently, there is a new Complete Works in English, edited by Peter Hudis, in fourteen volumes.  As Hudis explained in an article in Solidarity 356 (11/3/15: bit.ly/hudis-rl), "given the amount of time, care, and attention that she gave to developing her major economic works, it makes sense to begin the Complete Works with her contributions to the field of Marxian economics and those fill the 1200 or so pages of the first two volumes."

Luxemburg's four actual books (three published, and a larger one never completed) were all about economic theory: The Industrial Development of Poland, The Accumulation of Capital, the Anti-Critique, and the Introduction to Political Economy.  She was a formidable economist by all standards, and one who reckoned that economics was "her field". Her most famous work was The Accumulation of Capital in which she set out to refute the reformist views of Bernstein and Kautsky, the German Social Democrat leaders, that capitalism would not 'collapse'; and the theory of Rudolf Hilferding, the Austrian Marxist that monopoly and finance capitalism would provide a degree of stability for capitalist accumulation.

As is well known among Marxist circles, Luxemburg attempted to refute these views in her book by arguing that there was an inherent tendency for capitalist accumulation to overreach the market for buying the goods and services being produced.  In her view, that showed that capitalism could and would get into crises; and moreover, it also explained imperialist expansion.  To avoid  crises of overproduction at home, capitalism was forced to search for new markets overseas and find buyers for its goods in the non-capitalist sectors of the world.

She argued that Marx's analysis of crises fell short here.  Marx had failed to see in his reproduction schemas in Volume Two of Capital that this was the ultimate cause of crises: namely the overproduction of capital goods relative to demand (both from capitalists and workers in the imperialist countries), forcing capitalism to find that demand from the colonial non-capitalist peasants.

She was not afraid to take on Marx as well as other leading theorists.  As she concluded in her Anti-Critique: "Marxism does not consist of a dozen persons who have granted each other the right to be the 'experts', before whom the masses are supposed to prostrate themselves in blind obedience, like loyal followers of the true faith of Islam. Marxism is a revolutionary outlook on the world that must always strive toward new knowledge and new discoveries… Its living force is best preserved in the intellectual clash of self-criticism and in the midst of history's thunder and lightning".

There are many effective critiques of Luxemburg's thesis.  I can list a few papers here that go into those critiques in much more detail than this short post.

https://imhojournal.org/articles/henryk-grossmann-vs-rosa-luxemburg-causes-meaning-economic-crises-not-just-history-karel-ludenhoff/

https://thenextrecession.files.wordpress.com/2017/07/henryk_grossman_on_imperialism.pdf

https://www.workersliberty.org/story/2019-01-16/luxemburg-economics-crises-and-national-question

https://thenextrecession.wordpress.com/2016/06/29/modern-imperialism-and-the-working-class/

I think the most effective critique of Luxemburg's crisis theory came from Henryk Grossman.  Grossman acknowledged Luxemburg's work.  He agreed with her that the expansion of imperialism was due to the capitalist system's proneness to economic crises. But he differed from Luxemburg in regarding imperialism as a factor which offset the tendency for the rate of profit to fall, not as the need for capitalism to find markets for over-production. Imperialism was a counteracting factor to the key underlying cause of crises and 'breakdown' in capitalist production, namely the tendency for the rate of profit on capital to fall over time.

Lenin was also critical of Luxemburg's explanation of imperialism.  In his famous book on Imperialism, he argues that imperialism is the result of capitalism's need to export capital which arises "from the fact that in a few countries capitalism has become 'overripe' and (owing to the backward state of agriculture and the poverty of the masses)" and "capital cannot find a field for 'profitable' investment."  Grossman went further than Lenin: "[W]hy," then, "are profitable investments not to be found at home?…..The fact of capital export is as old as modern capitalism itself. The scientific task consists in explaining this fact, hence in demonstrating the role it plays in the mechanism of capitalist production."

Luxemburg knew from reading Marx's Capital about the law of profitability, although Marx's notes on Capital, Grundrisse, were not available to her. But she dismissed the law as irrelevant to capitalist crises.  For her, the law was a long-term thing. Indeed, it was so long-term, as she famously put in Anti-Critique, when answering criticisms of her Accumulation book, that "There is still some time to pass before capitalism collapses because of the falling rate of profit, roughly until the sun burns out".

But Marx did not see the law of profitability as something in geological time but very relevant to human time.  "When Adam Smith explains the fall in the rate of profit from an over-abundance of capital, an accumulation of capital, he is speaking of a permanent effect and this is wrong.  As against this, the transitory over-abundance of capital, over-production and crises are something different.  Permanent crises do not exist." (Theories of Surplus Value).

Peter Hudis has added an interesting anecdote to Luxemburg's rejection of Marx's 'most important law in political economy'. He wrote to me in an email:  "what is less well known, is the person she is responding to" in dismissing the relevance of the law of profitability in crises. "He was an anonymous reviewer of 'The Accumulation of Capital' in 'Dresdener Volkszeitung' of January 1913.  Several years ago, when I was editing 'The Letters of Rosa Luxemburg', I managed to track down that the author was Miran Isaakovich Nakhimson. Born in 1880, he joined the Bundists in 1898 and became known as one of its most prominent political economists. Although virtually forgotten today, he was a considerable presence at the time."

Hudis goes on: "It's fairly clear from Luxemburg's correspondence that she was particularly irritated by Nakhimson's critique–which is interesting, since he was virtually alone among her critics in going after her for neglecting Marx's law of the rate of profit. In a letter to Franz Mehring in February, 1913, she writes, "Too bad that Nackhimson has a slap in the face coming to him, but perhaps in the end this would be too great an honor to give this scoundrel and expert at confusion."  A little harsh, it seems, on the Bundist economist.

Rosa Luxemburg was murdered by the Freikorp troops under the control of the Social Democratic government during the 1919 uprising.  Nakhimson was murdered by Stalin's NKVD in 1938.  Both economists were revolutionary fighters for socialism and suffered a similar fate, if by different hands.

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The ‘$15 minimum wage is too expensive for Peoria’ argument doesn’t hold water: Five reasons why [feedly]

The '$15 minimum wage is too expensive for Peoria' argument doesn't hold water: Five reasons why
https://www.epi.org/blog/the-15-minimum-wage-is-too-expensive-for-peoria-argument-doesnt-hold-water-five-reasons-why/

The one argument made often in the debate over raising the minimum wage to $15 an hour nationwide by 2024, is that you can't expect to pay the same wages in Chicago as you do in Peoria.

Such an increase, critics contend, will bankrupt small businesses, will impact payroll decisions for corporations with operations nationally, will raise wages beyond what folks outside of big cities need to make ends meet—and will ultimately hurt local economies.

Turns out, these arguments are bogus.

Here are five reasons why:

1. $15 anywhere in this country makes cost-of-living sense.

Today, in all areas across the United States, a single adult without children needs at least $31,200—what a full-time worker making $15 an hour earns annually—to achieve a modest but adequate standard of living. By 2025, workers in these areas and those with children will need even more, according to projections based on the Economic Policy Institute's Family Budget Calculator.

For example, in rural Missouri, a single adult without children will need $39,800 (more than $19 per hour for a full-time worker) by 2025 to cover typical rent, food, transportation, and other basic living costs.

In larger metro areas of the South and Southwest—where the majority of the Southern population live—a single adult without children will also need more than $15 an hour by 2025 to get by: $20.03 in Fort Worth, $21.12 in Phoenix, and $20.95 in Miami.

In more expensive regions of the country, a single adult without children will need far more than $15 an hour by 2025 to cover the basics: $28.70 in New York City, $24.06 in Los Angeles, and $23.94 in Washington, D.C.

2. Expensive cities are already at $15 an hour or higher.

Since the Fight for $15 was launched by striking fast-food workers in 2012, nine states (California, Connecticut, Florida, Illinois, Maryland, Massachusetts, New Jersey, New York, Virginia) and the District of Columbia—together representing approximately 40% of the U.S. workforce—have approved raising their minimum wages to $15 an hour.

Additional states—including Washington, Oregon, Colorado, Arizona, New Mexico, Vermont, Missouri, Michigan, and Maine—have approved minimum wages ranging from $12 to $14.75 an hour.

3. Many business owners and corporate executives are realizing the value of a $15 minimum wage.

In states that have already approved $15 minimum wages, business organizations representing thousands of small businesses have endorsed a $15 minimum wage.

Business groups that have endorsed a $15 minimum wage include Business for a Fair Minimum Wage, the American Sustainable Business Council, the Patriotic Millionaires, the Greater New York Chamber of Commerce, the Long Island African American Chamber of Commerce, and others.

Growing numbers of employers have responded to pressure from workers and raised their starting pay scales to $15 or higher. These include retail giants Amazon, Whole Foods (owned by Amazon), Target, Walmart, Wayfair, Costco, Hobby Lobby, and Best Buy; employers in the food service and producing industries, such as Chobani, Starbucks, Sanderson Farms (Mississippi), and the Atlanta-area locations of Lidl grocery stores; health care employers, including Michigan's Henry Ford Health System and Trinity Health System, Ohio's Akron Children's Hospital and Cincinnati Children's Hospital Medical Center, Iowa's Mercy Medical Center and MercyCare Community Physicians, Missouri's North Kansas City Hospital and Meritas Health, and Maryland's LifeBridge Health; insurers and banks such as Amalgamated Bank, Allstate, Wells Fargo, and Franklin Savings Bank in New Hampshire; and tech and communications leaders such as Facebook and Charter Communications.

4. Workers making a higher minimum wage are less likely to be dependent on public assistance, reducing the burden on cash-strapped state and local governments.

In states without laws to raise the minimum wage to $15, nearly half (47%, or 10.5 million) of families of workers who would benefit from the Act rely on public supports programs in part because they do not earn enough at work.

These workers and their families account for nearly one-third of total enrollment in one or more public supports programs.

In states without a $15 minimum wage law, public supports programs for underpaid workers and their families make up 42% of total spending on Medicaid and CHIP (the Children's Health Insurance Program), cash assistance (Temporary Assistance for Needy Families, or TANF), food stamps (Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program, or SNAP), and the earned income tax credit (EITC), and cost federal and state taxpayers more than $107 billion a year.

5. When low-wage workers get a raise, they're more likely than higher-wage workers to spend every extra dollar they earn on basic necessities—putting that money right back into the economy.

From a general macroeconomic perspective, raising the minimum wage in a period of depressed consumer demand is smart policy (though it is worth keeping in mind that the minimum wage wouldn't go to $15 immediately under the Raise the Wage Act, it would be phase in in five gradual steps, reaching $15 in 2025).

Minimum wage hikes put extra dollars in the pockets of people who are highly likely to spend every additional cent they receive, often just to make ends meet. Workers who benefit from an increased minimum wage disproportionately come from low-income households that spend a larger share of their income than business owners, corporate shareholders, and higher-income households, who are likely to save at least some portion of the dollars that finance a minimum wage hike. As a result, raising the minimum wage boosts overall consumer demand, with research showing that past raises have spurred greater household buying, notably on dining out and automobiles.

(Related post: Why the U.S. needs a $15 minimum wage: How the Raise the Wage Act would benefit U.S. workers and their families.)

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Dean Baker: Environment Versus How Many Jobs? [feedly]

Much as I love Dean, saying energy -- or for that matter, industrial -- workers are a more negligible component of the workforce than in earlier decades wrongly understates their power in the real economy, and in the labor movement. When you imply you can leave energy, manufacturing, construction workers "behind" -- and that iS the implication -- is like inviting the labor movement to a race with one of its legs gone. If labor is not capable of becoming fully engaged, I predict not much progress will be made against reaction. Leaving out -- or leaving in second place --  compensation and transition to these workers in Green New Deal programs is an invitation to defeat.

Environment Versus How Many Jobs?

Dean Baker
http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/beat_the_press/~3/h-8RcGE1bXU/

The Washington Post had an article on concerns among unions about job loss due to various measures from the Biden administration to promote clean energy. The article noted concerns that Biden's agenda may lead to the loss of good-paying jobs in the fossil fuel sector.

It would have been helpful to point out how many jobs are potentially at stake. According to the Bureau of Labor Statistics, fossil fuel powered electric plants and the pipeline industry, the two sectors discussed in the piece employ 78,700 and 48,200 workers, respectively.

The workers employed in fossil fuel power generation are a bit more than 0.05 percent of total employment, while employment in the pipeline industry is just over 0.03 percent. Employment in fossil fuel power generation was already falling rapidly under the Trump administration, declining by 16,800, or 18.0 percent, over the last four years.

It is also worth noting that in a typical (pre—pandemic) month, roughly 1.8 million workers lose their jobs. Over the course of a year, this would come to 27 million. (Some workers lose a job more than once in a year, so this does not mean 27 million workers lose their job.) The job loss in these industries due to the promotion of clean energy would presumably take place over many years, not all at once.

The fact that other workers frequently lose their jobs does not reduce the hardship for workers losing relatively good paying jobs in the fossil fuel industry. But it is important to place the potential size of the job loss in some context. And, in the case of the fossil fuel power generation sector, it is important to note that there was already substantial job loss under Trump, so job loss is not a new problem that will be created by Biden's policies, even if it may be accelerated.

The post Environment Versus How Many Jobs? appeared first on Center for Economic and Policy Research.

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