Category: Labor Economics

Finding Workers Is Top Restaurant Challenge

(p. D1) WASHINGTON — The owner of Taco Bamba Taqueria peered out from the kitchen at the line of customers snaking around the corner at his latest spot in a suburban Virginia strip mall, and felt terror. Who was going to cook, serve and clean up for all these people?
“The cooks had left,” overwhelmed by the crowds, said Victor Albisu, who owns four Taco Bambas in the region, with a new upscale Mexican place on the horizon. “The wait staff had left. The chef and sous-chef had walked out because of the amount of business. It doesn’t stop.”
A tight labor market and an explosion of new restaurants have made finding and keeping help ever more difficult across the country.
(p. D5) In 2017, the National Restaurant Association reports, 37 percent of its members said labor recruitment was their top challenge, up from 15 percent two years ago. With low profit margins leaving little room to do what most businesses do in tight labor markets — increase wages — restaurant owners are having to find other ways to attract and hold onto workers.

For the full story, see:
JENNIFER STEINHAUER. “Tight Labor Market Squeezes Restaurants.” The New York Times (Wednesday, April 11, 2018): D1 & D5.
(Note: the online version of the story has the date APRIL 5 [sic], 2018, and has the title “A Worker Shortage Is Forcing Restaurants to Get Creative.”)

Amazon Hires Thousands of Low-Tech Workers

(p. B1) TROMEOVILLE, Ill. — Brandon Williams arrived at an Amazon fulfillment center here, about an hour outside of Chicago, around 7:30 a.m. on Wednesday [August 2, 2017], one of thousands across the country who turned up for the company’s first Jobs Day. While he appeared to wilt slightly during the five hours he waited before an M.C. summoned him for a tour, his enthusiasm did not wane.
“What’s not great about a company that keeps building?” he said, seated in a huge tent the company erected in the parking lot as a kind of makeshift waiting room.
The event was a vivid illustration of the ascendance of Amazon, the online retail company that, to a far greater extent than others in the tech industry, has a seemingly insatiable need for human labor to fuel its explosive growth.
Like other tech giants, Amazon is recruiting thousands of people with engineering and business degrees for high-paying jobs. But the vast majority of Amazon’s hiring is for what the company calls its “fulfillment network” — the armies of people who pick and pack orders in warehouses and unload and drive delivery trucks, and who take home considerably smaller incomes.
The event on Wednesday, held at a dozen locations including Romeoville, Ill., was intended to help fill 50,000 of those lower-paying positions, 40,000 of them full-time jobs.
Those high-low distinctions did not seem to bother the attendees of the jobs fair, many of them united in the conviction that Amazon represented untapped opportunity — that a foot in the door could lead to a career of better-compensated, more satisfying work, whether in fulfillment, I.T., marketing or even fashion.
Mr. Williams, a military veteran studying computer network security at a nearby community college, said he hoped to eventually work his way up to an I.T. job with Amazon. But even those whose ambitions were more in line (p. B7) with the vast majority of available jobs could not hide their excitement.
. . .
Arun Sundararajan, a professor of information, operations and management sciences at New York University’s Stern School of Business, said Amazon’s employment needs are unique among tech companies.
. . .
“While the digital disruption is destroying the traditional retail business model,” Dr. Sundararajan said, “the Amazon model that replaces it will continue to live in the physical world and require human labor for the foreseeable future.”

For the full story, see:
NOAM SCHEIBER and NICK WINGFIELD. “Amazon’s Clear Message: Hiring.” The New York Times (Thursday, August 3, 2017): B1 & B7.
(Note: ellipses, and bracketed date, added.)
(Note: the online version of the story has the date AUG. 2, 2017, and has the title “Amazon’s Jobs Fair Sends Clear Message: Now Hiring Thousands.”)

Blockchain Could Give People “Ownership of Their Own Data”

(p. B1) The first blockchain was created in 2009 as a new kind of database for the virtual currency Bitcoin, where all transactions could be stored without any banks or governments involved.
Now, countless entrepreneurs, companies and governments are looking to use similar databases — often independent of Bitcoin — to solve some of the most intractable issues facing society.
“People feel the need to move away from something like Facebook and toward something that allows them to have ownership of their own data,” said Ryan Shea, a co-founder of Blockstack, a New York company working with blockchain technology.
The creator of the World Wide Web, Tim Berners-Lee, has said the blockchain could help reduce the big internet companies’ influence and return the web to his original vision.
. . .
(p. B4) Blockstack has built a way to record the basic details about your identity on a blockchain database and then use that identity to set up accounts with other online projects that are built on top of it.
The animating force behind the project is that users — rather than Blockstack or any other company — would end up in control of all the data they generate with any online service.
Blockstack is one of several blockchain-based projects hoping to create a new generation of online services that don’t rely on having unfettered access to our personal information.
The idea has gained enough steam that in the days after news of Facebook’s relationship with Cambridge Analytica broke, Twitter was filled with people calling for blockchain-based alternatives.

For the full story, see:

NATHANIEL POPPER. “Tech’s Answer For Security: Blockchain.” The New York Times (Monday, April 2, 2018): B1 & B4.
(Note: ellipses added.)
(Note: the online version of the story has the date APRIL 1, 2018, and has the title “Tech Thinks It Has a Fix for the Problems It Created: Blockchain.”)

The Role of Progressives in the Forced Sterilization of Thousands

(p. 22) Progressivism was always more than a single cause, however. Attracting reformers of all stripes, it aimed to fix the ills of society through increased government action — the “administrative state.” Progressives pushed measures ranging from immigration restriction to eugenics in a grotesque attempt to protect the nation’s gene pool by keeping the “lesser classes” from reproducing. If one part of progressivism emphasized fairness and compassion, the other reeked of bigotry and coercion.
“Imbeciles,” by Adam Cohen, the author of “Nothing to Fear: FDR’s Inner Circle and the Hundred Days That Created Modern America,” examines one of the darkest chapters of progressive reform: the case of Buck v. Bell. It’s the story of an assault upon thousands of defenseless people seen through the lens of a young woman, Carrie Buck, locked away in a Virginia state asylum. In meticulously tracing her ordeal, Cohen provides a superb history of eugenics in America, from its beginnings as an offshoot of social Darwinism — ­human survival of the fittest — to its rise as a popular movement, advocating the state-sponsored sterilization of “feeble­minded, insane, epileptic, inebriate, criminalistic and other degenerate persons.”

For the full review, see:
DAVID OSHINSKY. “No Justice for the Weak.” The New York Times Book Review (Sunday, March 20, 2018): 1 & 22-23.
(Note: the online version of the review has the date March 14, 2018, and has the title “‘Imbeciles’ and ‘Illiberal Reformers’.”)

The book under review, is:
Cohen, Adam. Imbeciles: The Supreme Court, American Eugenics, and the Sterilization of Carrie Buck. New York: Penguin Press, 2016.

Workers Rejecting Big-Rig Trucking Jobs

(p. B1) Trucking companies eager to hire more drivers but facing a slim pipeline of new recruits aren’t finding much to encourage them at the James Rumsey Technical Institute in Martinsburg, W.Va.
Enrollment in commercial-driving courses at the school dropped to its lowest point in about 15 years this winter, a signal that the industry’s efforts to sell workers on truck driving haven’t gained much traction. “Recruiters said all the schools were down this winter,” said instructor Michael Timmer, although he added that more students are trickling in as the weather warms.
Freight volumes in the U.S. are surging on the back of strong economic growth, as retailers and manufacturers hire more trucks to haul imports from seaports to distribution centers and raw materials to factories. But the flow of new truck drivers is lagging far behind the roaring freight market.
With unemployment at a nearly two-decade low, the downsides of life behind the wheel are making recruitment tough. Many workers are opting for construction or energy jobs that offer more time at home or better pay.

For the full story, see:
Jennifer Smith. “Trucking’s Big-Rig Life Stays a Tough Sell.” The Wall Street Journal (Wednesday, April 4, 2018): B1-B2.
(Note: the online version of the story has the date April 3, 2018, and has the title “Trucking Companies Are Struggling to Attract Drivers to the Big-Rig Life.”)

“Searing Portrait” of Uber Entrepreneur Travis Kalanick

(p. B3) Mr. Lashinsky’s book gives readers an inside view of the ride-hailing giant’s creation and what created the broken corporate culture that yielded so many negative news stories this year.
“Wild Ride” offers a searing portrait of Uber’s former chief executive, Travis Kalanick, whom Mr. Lashinsky shows to be both a genius and wildly headstrong (and not in a good way). Because of when it was published, the book does not include many of the episodes that consumed Uber in 2017, including Susan Fowler’s viral blog post about the company’s misogynistic culture and the ouster of Mr. Kalanick. But until that book is written — and it surely will be — “Wild Ride” is a good primer.

For the full commentary, see:
Sorkin, Andrew Ross. “DEALBOOK For a Year Filled With News, A List of Books Worth a Look.” The New York Times (Tuesday, DEC. 26, 2017): B1 & B3.
(Note: the online version of the commentary has the date DEC. 25, 2017, and has the title “DEALBOOK; In a Year of Nonstop News, a Batch of Business Books Worth Reading.”)

The Lashinsky book mentioned above, is:
Lashinsky, Adam. Wild Ride: Inside Uber’s Quest for World Domination. New York: Portfolio, 2017.

Debt-Free, Focused Year of Tech Ed Yields Good Jobs for High School Grads

(p. A3) As a high-school senior in Hampton, Va., Aidan Cary applied last year to prestigious universities like Dartmouth, Vanderbilt and the University of Virginia.
Then he clicked on the website for a one-year-old school called MissionU and quickly decided that’s where he wanted to go.
Mr. Cary, 19 years old, is enrolled in a one-year, data-science program. He studies between 40 and 50 hours a week, visits high-tech, Bay Area companies as part of his education, and will pay the San Francisco-based school a percentage of his income for three years after he graduates.
This new type of postsecondary education is proving a hit: The school says it has received more than 10,000 applications for 50 spots.
“I think people feel backed into a corner by the cost of college,” Mr. Cary said. “They’ve been waiting for something like this so when it finally came around they could instantly see the value proposition.”
MissionU, which enrolled its first class in September [2017], is part of new breed of institutions that bill themselves as college alternatives for the digital age. The schools–whose admission rates hover in the single digits–comparable to the Ivy League, according to the schools–offer a debt-free way to attain skills in hot areas and guaranteed apprenticeships with high-tech companies. Together those create a pipeline to well-paying high-tech jobs.

For the full story, see:
Douglas Belkin. “One-Year Alternatives to College Pop Up.” The Wall Street Journal (Tuesday, April 10, 2018): A3.
(Note: bracketed year added.)
(Note: the online version of the story has the date April 9, 2018, and has the title “One Year of ‘College’ With No Degree, But No Debt And a Job at the End.” In the penultimate paragraph quoted above, the print version has “value” where the online version has “value proposition.” I use the online version.)

Macron Gives France Hope That “Tomorrow Can Be Better Than Today”

(p. A27) PARIS — When people used to ask me what I missed about America, I would say, “The optimism.” I grew up in the land of hope, then moved to one whose catchphrases are “It’s not possible” and “Hell is other people.” I walked around Paris feeling conspicuously chipper.
But lately I’ve had a kind of emotional whiplash. France is starting to seem like an upbeat, can-do country, while Americans are less sure that everything will be O.K.
. . .
The French haven’t become magically cheerful, but there’s a creeping sense that hope isn’t idiotic, and life can actually improve. As is common with a new president, there was a jump in optimism after Emmanuel Macron was elected last year. But this time, optimism has remained strong, and in January it hit an eight-year high.
It helps that France’s economy is finally growing more and that Mr. Macron has made good on promises ranging from overhauling the labor laws to shrinking class sizes at kindergartens in disadvantaged areas.
. . .
“The France of the optimists has won, and is dragging the other part of France toward its own side,” said Claudia Senik, an economist who heads the Well-Being Observatory, an academic think tank here.
The French are even taking an intellectual interest in this alien idea. There are optimism clubs, conferences and school programs, scholars of positivity and books like “50+1 Good Reasons to Choose Optimism.” In September Mr. Macron was a patron of the Global Positive Forum, a study group of “positive initiatives” in business and government. (“Tomorrow can be better than today,” the forum’s website insists.)

For the full commentary, see:
Druckerman, Pamela. “The New French Optimism.” The New York Times (Friday, March 23, 2018): A27.
(Note: ellipses added.)
(Note: the online version of the commentary has the date March 22, 2018, and has the title “Are the French the New Optimists?”)

Case Study of Effects of Closing a Factory

(p. B1) Perhaps the most illuminating business book of the year, for me, is Amy Goldstein’s “Janesville: An American Story.” If you really want to understand what’s going on in today’s real economy — beyond the headlines about new stock-market highs, tax policy or the latest list of billionaires — spend some time with this true tale of what happened in the middle-class town of Janesville, Wis., after General Motors closed a factory there.
Ms. Goldstein admirably shows all sides of this story, capturing in microcosm all of the issues that so many communities across the United States are facing. You will probably be left doing some hard thinking about what is driving the politics of the moment, although Ms. Goldstein brilliantly, and respectfully, paints the book’s characters with such nuance that readers from across the ideological spectrum are likely to arrive at different conclusions about heroes and villains.
In crafting this deeply reported and riveting read, Ms. Goldstein spent considerable time in Janesville. As a result, you get a palpable sense of what life is like there; of the financial and psychological impact that a major plant closing has; and of the knock-on effects such an event has on other businesses and institutions. She paints vivid portraits of characters who include laid-off workers seeking retraining, union officials and local politicians, Speaker Paul D. Ryan among them. If you liked “Hillbilly Elegy: A Memoir of a Family and Culture in Crisis,” J. D. Vance’s best-seller about growing up in Ohio and the decline of the industrial Midwest, I think you’ll find that “Janesville” makes these issues real in a new and compelling way.

For the full commentary, see:
Sorkin, Andrew Ross. “DEALBOOK For a Year Filled With News, A List of Books Worth a Look.” The New York Times (Tuesday, DEC. 26, 2017): B1 & B3.
(Note: the online version of the commentary has the date DEC. 25, 2017, and has the title “DEALBOOK; In a Year of Nonstop News, a Batch of Business Books Worth Reading.”)

The Goldstein book mentioned above, is:
Goldstein, Amy. Janesville: An American Story. New York: Simon & Schuster, 2017.

Blacks Hurt by Increase in Irrelevant Degree Requirements for Jobs

(p. A15) Some 61% of employers have rejected applicants with the requisite skills and experience simply because they didn’t have a college degree, according to a 2017 Harvard Business School study. If current trends continue, the authors found, “as many as 6.2 million workers could be affected by degree inflation–meaning their lack of a bachelor’s degree could preclude them from qualifying for the same job with another employer.”
The pernicious effects of degree inflation are obvious, as tuition and student debt rise and qualified workers arbitrarily lose employment opportunities. But the practice also flouts federal law.
Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 prohibits employers from discriminating on the basis of race, color, religion, sex or national origin. In Griggs v. Duke Power (1971) the Supreme Court unanimously interpreted this to mean that when minority groups are disproportionately affected–or suffer a “disparate impact”–from the selection process, employers must show that any requirements are directly job-related and an accurate predictor of job performance.
. . .
. . . degree inflation has obvious disparate-impact implications. The Harvard report found that groups with college graduation rates below the national average are disproportionately harmed by the practice.
. . .
Employers also fail the Griggs test by demanding college degrees without evidence they are necessary for the job. In a 2014 survey, Burning Glass Technologies found that employers are increasingly requiring bachelor’s degrees for positions whose current workers do not have one. For example, 65% of job postings for executive assistant and secretary positions call for a degree even though only 19% of people currently employed in such roles hold a degree.

For the full commentary, see:
Frederick M. Hess and Grant Addison. “Degree Inflation and Discrimination; Could civil-rights laws and ‘disparate impact’ protect job applicants who haven’t finished college?” The Wall Street Journal (Tuesday, April 3, 2018): A15.
(Note: ellipses added.)
(Note: the online version of the commentary has the date April 2, 2018.)

The Harvard Business School study mentioned above, is:
Fuller, Joseph B., and Manjari Raman. “Dismissed by Degrees: How Degree Inflation Is Undermining U.S. Competitiveness and Hurting America’s Middle Class.” Accenture, Grads of Life, and Harvard Business School, Oct. 2017.