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Not Working: Where Have All the Good Jobs Gone?
A candid assessment of why the job market is not as healthy as we think
Don't trust low unemployment numbers as proof that the labor market is doing fine—it isn't. Not Working is about those who can’t find full-time work at a decent wage—the underemployed—and how their plight is contributing to widespread despair, a worsening drug epidemic, and the unchecked rise of right-wing populism.
In this revelatory and outspoken book, David Blanchflower draws on his acclaimed work in the economics of labor and well-being to explain why today's postrecession economy is vastly different from what came before. He calls out our leaders and policymakers for failing to see the Great Recession coming, and for their continued failure to address one of the most unacknowledged social catastrophes of our time. Blanchflower shows how many workers are underemployed or have simply given up trying to find a well-paying job, how wage growth has not returned to prerecession levels despite rosy employment indicators, and how general prosperity has not returned since the crash of 2008.
Standard economic measures are often blind to these forgotten workers, which is why Blanchflower practices the "economics of walking about"—seeing for himself how ordinary people are faring under the recovery, and taking seriously what they say and do. Not Working is his candid report on how the young and the less skilled are among the worst casualties of underemployment, how immigrants are taking the blame, and how the epidemic of unhappiness and self-destruction will continue to spread unless we deal with it.
Don't trust low unemployment numbers as proof that the labor market is doing fine—it isn't. Not Working is about those who can’t find full-time work at a decent wage—the underemployed—and how their plight is contributing to widespread despair, a worsening drug epidemic, and the unchecked rise of right-wing populism.
In this revelatory and outspoken book, David Blanchflower draws on his acclaimed work in the economics of labor and well-being to explain why today's postrecession economy is vastly different from what came before. He calls out our leaders and policymakers for failing to see the Great Recession coming, and for their continued failure to address one of the most unacknowledged social catastrophes of our time. Blanchflower shows how many workers are underemployed or have simply given up trying to find a well-paying job, how wage growth has not returned to prerecession levels despite rosy employment indicators, and how general prosperity has not returned since the crash of 2008.
Standard economic measures are often blind to these forgotten workers, which is why Blanchflower practices the "economics of walking about"—seeing for himself how ordinary people are faring under the recovery, and taking seriously what they say and do. Not Working is his candid report on how the young and the less skilled are among the worst casualties of underemployment, how immigrants are taking the blame, and how the epidemic of unhappiness and self-destruction will continue to spread unless we deal with it.
456 pages, Hardcover
Published June 18, 2019
36 people are currently reading
463 people want to read
About the author
David G. Blanchflower
6 books4 followersDavid G. Blanchflower is the Bruce V. Rauner Professor of Economics at Dartmouth College, professor of economics at the University of Stirling, and a research associate at the National Bureau of Economic Research. He is the coauthor of The Wage Curve. He lives in Canaan, New Hampshire.
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Displaying 1 - 14 of 14 reviews
October 13, 2019
This is a seriously interesting book. The central claim is that most economists are proposing economic solutions that are based on how the world behaved well prior to 2008 – but that the GFC brought about a major change in the way the world works. In the main, policy prescriptions have been based on the belief that we are at (or perhaps even above) full employment – that is, that there are more employed than is ‘natural’ in a properly functioning economy . This is generally taken to be an unemployment rate of something of the order of 3-5%. But we have been below this in many countries for a very long time. When the economy is at full employment then bad things are likely to happen. This is based on the laws of supply and demand. That is, since there are more jobs than there are people, that ought to mean that wages will start going up. The author makes it clear that most economic forecasters have been predicting a wages blowout for most of the time since the GFC – and the fact it has never occurred has done nothing to adjust their predictions.
A recent cover of the Economist spoke of the jobs boom that the rich world is experiencing and used this as proof of the wonders of capitalism: https://www.economist.com/leaders/201... - this book provides a much more sober and sobering vision of this ‘jobs boom’.
The first thing to notice about this never occurring wages blow-out is that it implies that something must be holding down wages, something that isn’t unemployment. The author says that Marx liked to talk of the ‘reserve army’ of the unemployed – this army was used to frighten the employed into not asking for pay increases since they would then be replaced by members of this reserve army on less pay. The author makes it clear that the reserve army we have today is very much a conscript army, and certainly not volunteers. The working class is also less likely to be represented by strong unions – union membership has plummeted across the developed world. The other issue facing workers is that globalisation has accelerated to such an extent that you are no longer competing with a reserve of workers in your own country – but with workers half-a-world away who are willing and able to work for significantly less than you could even dream of doing.
At the same time the economists are snared in economic models that have proven anything but up to the task of modelling the economy. There is a lovely line in this that macroeconomics views the real world as a rather uninteresting special case of their much more beautiful theories. In these theories, not only are wages about to boom, but this is also going to bring about a surge in inflation – and inflation is the terror of the world and so must be kept within the target range at all costs. This has involved the Fed, for instance, raising interest rates last year – although that proved short lived. However, because economists don’t, as this author says, walk around in the real world, but rather spend most of their time in the purity of their mathematical models, the fact their predictions never seem to come to pass rarely seems to involve them in the embarrassment of having to scratch their head and wonder why. When you live in a reinforced dogma, facts are of peripheral interest at best. The author repeatedly says that economics needs to become empirical in the sense that it needs to test the predictions its models make against what happens in the real world – and to also talk to real world people about the impacts of the policies their models recommend. Too often ‘the experts’ have been seen as wearing no clothes.
This is one of the main problems that this book is seeking to address, in fact. A couple of books I’ve read lately have made much the same point. It isn’t just Trump who says crazy shit and calls everybody else a liar. Our ‘experts’ are also much to blame for the lack of trust society has in them. The author quotes the Queen, of all people, asking economists how it was possible for them to have missed predicting the GFC. Not an unreasonable question. Their answer was basically that they were looking the other way at the time. Not the most reassuring of answers for a branch of social science that sees itself as particularly ‘science-y’.
So, the problem the world faces is that our current economic models are based on how the world worked in the 1970s, when the world was a significantly different place – and that is a problem because the world hasn’t really been working like that for a while. In that world, when you had less than 5% unemployment, you had ‘full employment’. When that was the case you were about to witness a wages blowout that would create excessive inflation and that would then wreck the economy.
But none of that is currently happening, even though ‘unemployment’ is much less than 5%. So why? The author says that it is because there is much more spare capacity in the economy now than the unemployment rate indicates. That is, under-employment is high and so workers are looking to take on more hours and this has been depressing wages. There are also many more workers on ‘zero hour contracts’ and other forms of precarious employment. Basically, workers have seen their level of job security plummet and they have virtually no power to ask for wage increases. He compares what is happening in the US at the moment with what has happened in Japan for decades – not only no wage increases, but actual real wage decreases.
One of the other issues pushing up unemployment and stagnating wages is a lack of mobility within the labour market. This is something I’d never quite thought about before, it is something I’m going to have to think about a whole lot more, though. Societies with higher levels of home ownership also have higher levels of unemployment, and potentially more under-employment too. This becomes particularly acute when bad things happen to the housing market – you know, like a GFC. When something like that happens, it means that house prices fall off a cliff, and people end up with a mortgage that is larger than they can sell their property for. Which isn’t a problem, unless you sell. If you were to sell you might end up with a mortgage but no house and then no hope of every getting another house, and so you are trapped – you can’t move, even if a better job is in the very next state. And this is also made worse by other forms of indebtedness in society – like student loans that are impossible to pay off and that never quite lead to the well-paying jobs they promised. The crushing weight of decades of stagnant wages, increasing indebtedness and declining social safety nets have been taking their toll.
And what a toll that has been. People are literally being made sick by the dog-eat-dog capitalism we have moved into. Mentally sick, physically sick and feeling so isolated that they are socially sick as well, since ‘community’ is an essential precondition for truly human existence. The author says that if you want to half your risk of dying in the next twelve months you should join a community organisation – that’s how important it is for us to be ‘social animals’. He links the US opioid epidemic with the crashing force on people that has occurred due to the changes in employment in the US. Other books I’ve read recently make much the same point. We have created a society that is designed to make the majority of people anxious and worse – if it was happening due to anything else in society (a new beer, party drug, or computer game) there would be a war declared – but since it is work that is making us sick, we all look the other way.
We need to remember that the society we have created is the result of choices we as a society have made, and that those choices are not the only ones available.
Economics impacts politics and politically things could hardly have gotten worse. The election of Trump and the victory of Brexit show that people are hurting and that they basically want to kick ‘experts’ in the bum. There are people on the left who are called ‘accelerationists’ and they believe that we should make capitalism even worse than it already is, since this is the best way to make people realise how terrible their life is, which will mean they will finally overthrow capitalism paving the way for a more just society. I don’t agree with these people. When people are hurting they don’t become nice – in fact, generally they become selfish and nasty. They vote for arses like Trump, or Johnson, they end up voting for Le Pen and worse. They vote those who tell them how great they are and how the miseries in their lives are all the fault of the Mexicans or blacks or women or migrants or Jews. More pain equals more reactionary views. That is not the clearest path to a more socially just future.
Read this book. It is clearly argued, you certainly do not need a degree in economics to follow his arguments and it presents ways forward that, if we decided to follow them, would make life better for very large numbers of people.
A recent cover of the Economist spoke of the jobs boom that the rich world is experiencing and used this as proof of the wonders of capitalism: https://www.economist.com/leaders/201... - this book provides a much more sober and sobering vision of this ‘jobs boom’.
The first thing to notice about this never occurring wages blow-out is that it implies that something must be holding down wages, something that isn’t unemployment. The author says that Marx liked to talk of the ‘reserve army’ of the unemployed – this army was used to frighten the employed into not asking for pay increases since they would then be replaced by members of this reserve army on less pay. The author makes it clear that the reserve army we have today is very much a conscript army, and certainly not volunteers. The working class is also less likely to be represented by strong unions – union membership has plummeted across the developed world. The other issue facing workers is that globalisation has accelerated to such an extent that you are no longer competing with a reserve of workers in your own country – but with workers half-a-world away who are willing and able to work for significantly less than you could even dream of doing.
At the same time the economists are snared in economic models that have proven anything but up to the task of modelling the economy. There is a lovely line in this that macroeconomics views the real world as a rather uninteresting special case of their much more beautiful theories. In these theories, not only are wages about to boom, but this is also going to bring about a surge in inflation – and inflation is the terror of the world and so must be kept within the target range at all costs. This has involved the Fed, for instance, raising interest rates last year – although that proved short lived. However, because economists don’t, as this author says, walk around in the real world, but rather spend most of their time in the purity of their mathematical models, the fact their predictions never seem to come to pass rarely seems to involve them in the embarrassment of having to scratch their head and wonder why. When you live in a reinforced dogma, facts are of peripheral interest at best. The author repeatedly says that economics needs to become empirical in the sense that it needs to test the predictions its models make against what happens in the real world – and to also talk to real world people about the impacts of the policies their models recommend. Too often ‘the experts’ have been seen as wearing no clothes.
This is one of the main problems that this book is seeking to address, in fact. A couple of books I’ve read lately have made much the same point. It isn’t just Trump who says crazy shit and calls everybody else a liar. Our ‘experts’ are also much to blame for the lack of trust society has in them. The author quotes the Queen, of all people, asking economists how it was possible for them to have missed predicting the GFC. Not an unreasonable question. Their answer was basically that they were looking the other way at the time. Not the most reassuring of answers for a branch of social science that sees itself as particularly ‘science-y’.
So, the problem the world faces is that our current economic models are based on how the world worked in the 1970s, when the world was a significantly different place – and that is a problem because the world hasn’t really been working like that for a while. In that world, when you had less than 5% unemployment, you had ‘full employment’. When that was the case you were about to witness a wages blowout that would create excessive inflation and that would then wreck the economy.
But none of that is currently happening, even though ‘unemployment’ is much less than 5%. So why? The author says that it is because there is much more spare capacity in the economy now than the unemployment rate indicates. That is, under-employment is high and so workers are looking to take on more hours and this has been depressing wages. There are also many more workers on ‘zero hour contracts’ and other forms of precarious employment. Basically, workers have seen their level of job security plummet and they have virtually no power to ask for wage increases. He compares what is happening in the US at the moment with what has happened in Japan for decades – not only no wage increases, but actual real wage decreases.
One of the other issues pushing up unemployment and stagnating wages is a lack of mobility within the labour market. This is something I’d never quite thought about before, it is something I’m going to have to think about a whole lot more, though. Societies with higher levels of home ownership also have higher levels of unemployment, and potentially more under-employment too. This becomes particularly acute when bad things happen to the housing market – you know, like a GFC. When something like that happens, it means that house prices fall off a cliff, and people end up with a mortgage that is larger than they can sell their property for. Which isn’t a problem, unless you sell. If you were to sell you might end up with a mortgage but no house and then no hope of every getting another house, and so you are trapped – you can’t move, even if a better job is in the very next state. And this is also made worse by other forms of indebtedness in society – like student loans that are impossible to pay off and that never quite lead to the well-paying jobs they promised. The crushing weight of decades of stagnant wages, increasing indebtedness and declining social safety nets have been taking their toll.
And what a toll that has been. People are literally being made sick by the dog-eat-dog capitalism we have moved into. Mentally sick, physically sick and feeling so isolated that they are socially sick as well, since ‘community’ is an essential precondition for truly human existence. The author says that if you want to half your risk of dying in the next twelve months you should join a community organisation – that’s how important it is for us to be ‘social animals’. He links the US opioid epidemic with the crashing force on people that has occurred due to the changes in employment in the US. Other books I’ve read recently make much the same point. We have created a society that is designed to make the majority of people anxious and worse – if it was happening due to anything else in society (a new beer, party drug, or computer game) there would be a war declared – but since it is work that is making us sick, we all look the other way.
We need to remember that the society we have created is the result of choices we as a society have made, and that those choices are not the only ones available.
Economics impacts politics and politically things could hardly have gotten worse. The election of Trump and the victory of Brexit show that people are hurting and that they basically want to kick ‘experts’ in the bum. There are people on the left who are called ‘accelerationists’ and they believe that we should make capitalism even worse than it already is, since this is the best way to make people realise how terrible their life is, which will mean they will finally overthrow capitalism paving the way for a more just society. I don’t agree with these people. When people are hurting they don’t become nice – in fact, generally they become selfish and nasty. They vote for arses like Trump, or Johnson, they end up voting for Le Pen and worse. They vote those who tell them how great they are and how the miseries in their lives are all the fault of the Mexicans or blacks or women or migrants or Jews. More pain equals more reactionary views. That is not the clearest path to a more socially just future.
Read this book. It is clearly argued, you certainly do not need a degree in economics to follow his arguments and it presents ways forward that, if we decided to follow them, would make life better for very large numbers of people.
February 15, 2020
I bought this (full price hard back) on a recommendation from The Financial Times. I really should have known better. It was deeply disappointing despite there being merit in Blanchflower's arguments in those areas he knows something about. The problems are with both style and content.
Blanchflower is undoubtedly a very good labour economist but he does not write particularly well and he could have done with a tougher editor. The book swings from cogent argument to reams of poorly contextualised statistics and thence to 'opinion' in areas in which he is not expert.
The core arguments from knowledge and experience are interesting and seem to stand up to scrutiny but they make up surprisingly little of the total text and, sometimes, to derive as much from emotion (anger at the stress of standing against the norm in 2008) as reason.
There is the odd effect of him justifiably tearing apart the consensus in his own profession (economics), based on theoretical models rather than testing models against real world experience, and his easy acceptance of an increasingly unsound liberal consensus in other cognate fields.
As a result, the book reads as both a critique of the neo-liberal consensus surrounding the mess of 2008 and the subsequent strategy of austerity and as a rather uninspiring and cliched acceptance of that same liberal consensus in the face of the alleged malignity of populism, Brexit and Trump.
Indeed, the closing chapter (which I have to admit I merely skim read out of bored frustration) struck me as little more than an adapted version of a policy paper that might have been delivered to John McDonnell when he briefly advised him in 2016.
Blanchflower honestly seems out of his depth when he moves from his core skill area of labour economics and into the world of politics and general policy advice. He comes across as a frustrated 'standard issue' liberal progressive with no real understanding of the complexity of populism.
This may be why the Financial Times likes him so much. He provides an after-the-event neo-Keynesian critique of a failure of capitalism based on his undoubted and courageous personal integrity . He is neo-liberalism's left-wing - a safe pair of hands in critiquing austerity.
Just as he gives us some useful armament against the rule of 'experts' in his own field (economics) so he ruefully admits that Trump sometimes gets its right while his negative view of Brexit now seems to be counteracted somewhat by Johnson's own weak brand of anti-austerity.
The book also jumps from US and UK data and political conditions in a way that implies that the two capitalist economies are much the same. They are not. Apart from being confusing, this tells us that Blanchflower is a Brit who is now esconced in American conditions.
I trust him on labour market theory (when he is being clear about what he thinks) and on his critiques of 2008 and austerity but not only do I think his politics are merely like those of NYT opinion writers (notoriously wrong on Brexit) but he has long since lost touch with British reality.
This is all very sad because what he has to say about what really matters - the huge slack in the labour market created by underemployment under conditions of globalisation - is vitally important and deserved a shorter, more focused, popular book shorn of its many accretions.
A good editor or colleague might also have stripped the book of some of its contradictions when Blanchflower moved out of his natural territory. For example, he recognises the effect on workers of migration yet has the standard liberal position on migration as an economic 'good'.
A very good editor would have removed all the NYT/FT posturing on the alleged disasters that are Trump, Brexit and populism (booooooring and very predictable!) and allowed the reader to draw their own conclusions from the facts and analysis of a highly capable labour economist.
In the end, the book is yet another addition to the literature of liberal elite resentment and despair at the way the world is going. It already looks dated in the first quarter of 2020. Those who are in despair will love its validation of their pessimism and the rest of us will remain disappointed.
This is a shame because Johnson and Trump may or may not develop a cogent adaptation of capitalism that shunts aside the austerity consensus of the liberal centre and deals decisively with the underemployment problem but certainly the Opposition to them both should be doing so.
I would not be surprised to find out that it is Johnson's advisory team who are marking the substance of this book while an increasingly futile Labour Party behaves like a political oozalum bird. Perhaps there is more opportunity with the US Democrats.
Johnson has dictated terms to the UK Treasury only this week. Chancellor Javid has resigned only a few days after Johnson announced very high infrastructural spending commitments and sensible migration controls that offer some hope of changing the conditions for indigenous workers.
It is the Labour Opposition (in the UK) which should have been first to consider the situation of the 'left behinds' and had the courage to ensure that it was both electable and committed to real full employment and productivity growth. It chose asinine cultural politics instead!
As to the US where (at the time of writing) the US Democrat Party is in thorough disarray precisely because asinine cultural politics predominate over the development of an economic policy that is more than Obama's 'steady as she does' or 'enrichissez-vous' for its wing of coastal capitalism.
What Blanchflower and others despise as populism looks set to have triggered a filling of the gap left by an inept Left as the Centre-Right becomes the agent for a rediscovery of a moderated low key form of social democracy in response to its challenge and to concerns about social cohesion.
So, all in all, a book that should have been timely but is not. It needed better political antennae on the part of the author and perhaps a more focused concentration on American (rather than British) conditions in 2020 and on the skill base of labour economics - as well as tougher editing.
August 27, 2019
This is a book by a distinguished British-American labor economist from Dartmouth. The book provides an update on the state of national economies in the G7 nations since the onset of the Great Recession in 2007-2008. The book’s principal arguments concern why employment levels have not generally returned to pre-crisis levels, especially in terms of the prevailing wage levels. The recovery from the Great Recession has been limited relative to prior recessions, even while employment levels suggest a nominal recovery. Even though nominally full employment levels have been reached, many in the workforce complain about prolonged low wages and claim that they are underemployed. Underemployment, stagnant wages, and limited recovery also come with significant health and welfare consequences that have not characterized prior recoveries. Inflation is nowhere to be seen, even though fear of inflation is a major constraint on the efforts of government to ameliorate the consequences of recession. What is going on?
If you read much labor economics, then you know that on a good day, it can be a little bit boring, with lots of jargon, numbers, and equations. Blanchflower’s book is different. He know how to write and, more importantly, he knows how to explain. This book is exceptional at explaining complex relationships effectively. Examples of this included sections on the link between home ownership and unemployment and on how to tell whether employers were facing a labor shortage as opposed to just not paying their workers enough. I know, this still sounds a bit dry, but it is anything but that, although there are still a lot of numbers.
The major value of the book for me was the fleshing out of the idea of “under-employment” along with the data and analysis necessary to provide evidence for under-employment. The Great Recession was sufficiently traumatic for employers that it accelerated trends towards segmenting firms’ workforces so promote the greater use for part-time, temporary, and contract labor. Once such a bifurcated workforce develops it will provide internal competition among workers that acts to hold down wage increases. Workers, on the other hand, have been so shaken by the recession, that they continue to work for lower wages and do not display the mobility needed if the labor market is going to function efficiently as full employment looms. “Full employment” presumes sufficient labor mobility that workers can and will move to get better jobs. When workers are immobile, traditional levels of full employment still maintain sufficient slack in the workforce to keep wages down. This is why inflation has been limited. It is also why there are fewer “good jobs”, by which Blanchflower means high paying jobs. The punchline is that “full employment” means full employment and that the NAIRU full employment rate is likely much closer to zero than thought by prior economists. This story helps explain the long recovery period after the Great Recession.
What do I like about the book?
The story on under-employment is well told and makes sense. The argument is a good one to work through and has lots of really interesting sides to it. It seems to fit the experiences of people who were affected by the Great Recession and helps explain what happened.
Blanchflower also provides details on the political responses to the impair labor market and the rise of right wing populist movements, not just in the US and UK with Trump and Brexit, but also in France, Italy, Germany, and elsewhere.
Professor Blanchflower throughout the book is an excellent writer and while many of the topics have also been covered elsewhere, there is always room for a sophisticated, logical, and clear set of explanations about economics in general and about this particular wreck as well. Economic writing is typically turgid but this is much easier to read and in places even entertaining.
What did I not like about the book?
First, there is only so far that one can go in making labor economics interesting and readable - but that is not the author’s fault.
Second, the book would have been more effective if it had focused more on the labor market mobility and wage issues. The later chapters of the book, while interesting, were additional and compounding reasons for the continuation of sluggish recoveries. For example, the recourse of several governments to austerity measures too soon after the recession contributed to the extended misery of European workers, but this is a separate problem from the underemployment story. Towards the end of the book, it seemed like there were too many balls in the air.
Overall, it was a worthwhile book to work through.
If you read much labor economics, then you know that on a good day, it can be a little bit boring, with lots of jargon, numbers, and equations. Blanchflower’s book is different. He know how to write and, more importantly, he knows how to explain. This book is exceptional at explaining complex relationships effectively. Examples of this included sections on the link between home ownership and unemployment and on how to tell whether employers were facing a labor shortage as opposed to just not paying their workers enough. I know, this still sounds a bit dry, but it is anything but that, although there are still a lot of numbers.
The major value of the book for me was the fleshing out of the idea of “under-employment” along with the data and analysis necessary to provide evidence for under-employment. The Great Recession was sufficiently traumatic for employers that it accelerated trends towards segmenting firms’ workforces so promote the greater use for part-time, temporary, and contract labor. Once such a bifurcated workforce develops it will provide internal competition among workers that acts to hold down wage increases. Workers, on the other hand, have been so shaken by the recession, that they continue to work for lower wages and do not display the mobility needed if the labor market is going to function efficiently as full employment looms. “Full employment” presumes sufficient labor mobility that workers can and will move to get better jobs. When workers are immobile, traditional levels of full employment still maintain sufficient slack in the workforce to keep wages down. This is why inflation has been limited. It is also why there are fewer “good jobs”, by which Blanchflower means high paying jobs. The punchline is that “full employment” means full employment and that the NAIRU full employment rate is likely much closer to zero than thought by prior economists. This story helps explain the long recovery period after the Great Recession.
What do I like about the book?
The story on under-employment is well told and makes sense. The argument is a good one to work through and has lots of really interesting sides to it. It seems to fit the experiences of people who were affected by the Great Recession and helps explain what happened.
Blanchflower also provides details on the political responses to the impair labor market and the rise of right wing populist movements, not just in the US and UK with Trump and Brexit, but also in France, Italy, Germany, and elsewhere.
Professor Blanchflower throughout the book is an excellent writer and while many of the topics have also been covered elsewhere, there is always room for a sophisticated, logical, and clear set of explanations about economics in general and about this particular wreck as well. Economic writing is typically turgid but this is much easier to read and in places even entertaining.
What did I not like about the book?
First, there is only so far that one can go in making labor economics interesting and readable - but that is not the author’s fault.
Second, the book would have been more effective if it had focused more on the labor market mobility and wage issues. The later chapters of the book, while interesting, were additional and compounding reasons for the continuation of sluggish recoveries. For example, the recourse of several governments to austerity measures too soon after the recession contributed to the extended misery of European workers, but this is a separate problem from the underemployment story. Towards the end of the book, it seemed like there were too many balls in the air.
Overall, it was a worthwhile book to work through.
May 30, 2020
This is definitely a book of 2 very definitive parts - the first dealing with the labour market and the latter a general view on our current socio-economic situation (I say our, however, it also focuses on the USA).
Blanchflower’s insight on underemployment is refreshing, and is much needed in response to the narrative of central banks since 08/09. I appreciate the reference heavy style he uses, and having studied labour economics, I was familiar with a lot of the papers cited. The assertion that there is more slack in the labour market than is currently reported is true, and needs to be more widely distributed. I would have preferred more of the statistics behind the econometrics to have been provided, but I can understand why a book aimed at more general readers leaves them out.
The latter half of the book is an interesting read but it often feels misguided, mainly due to the lack of guidance and policy suggestions. I expected an approach for creating good paying jobs, yet all that Blanchflower can provide is getting the economy back to full employment...yet he has not provided a roadmap for getting there, other than a brief mention of a fresh New Deal at the very end and in a passing manner (somehow not even a mention of a Green New Deal?). His frequent references to the reduced power of labour in wage negotiation lacks any meaning, given that he fails to give any solutions to realign the conflict between employees and employers/capital (no mention is given to whether or not he feels this balance should be altered, only that it has reduced wage demands since the 80s).
For those interested in labour economics I recommend reading the first section of the book, and skipping the second which has a lot of info that most people will already be aware of by keeping up-to-date with current affairs.
Blanchflower’s insight on underemployment is refreshing, and is much needed in response to the narrative of central banks since 08/09. I appreciate the reference heavy style he uses, and having studied labour economics, I was familiar with a lot of the papers cited. The assertion that there is more slack in the labour market than is currently reported is true, and needs to be more widely distributed. I would have preferred more of the statistics behind the econometrics to have been provided, but I can understand why a book aimed at more general readers leaves them out.
The latter half of the book is an interesting read but it often feels misguided, mainly due to the lack of guidance and policy suggestions. I expected an approach for creating good paying jobs, yet all that Blanchflower can provide is getting the economy back to full employment...yet he has not provided a roadmap for getting there, other than a brief mention of a fresh New Deal at the very end and in a passing manner (somehow not even a mention of a Green New Deal?). His frequent references to the reduced power of labour in wage negotiation lacks any meaning, given that he fails to give any solutions to realign the conflict between employees and employers/capital (no mention is given to whether or not he feels this balance should be altered, only that it has reduced wage demands since the 80s).
For those interested in labour economics I recommend reading the first section of the book, and skipping the second which has a lot of info that most people will already be aware of by keeping up-to-date with current affairs.
August 8, 2019
We currently live in a period of record low unemployment rates so why are so many people being left out of wage increases?
Using quantitative and qualitative data, David Blanchflower’s Not Working: Where Have All the Good Jobs Gone? examines this question from a lot different perspectives and calls into question whether we are truly at full-employment—without full employment, firms are not forced to raise wages to compete for workers. Blanchflower questions what has long been a major tenet of economic theory: rising wages leads to inflation. Additionally, Blanchflower, links the rise of populist political leaders in a growing number of countries to the lack of wage increases for a broad swath of the population and suggest that, absent some major economic changes, there will be a growing major backlash.
Although not a definitive explanation, Not Working offers what is probably as good of an explanation as any economist has been able to come up with and should serve as a cautionary tale when it comes to economic policy.
Using quantitative and qualitative data, David Blanchflower’s Not Working: Where Have All the Good Jobs Gone? examines this question from a lot different perspectives and calls into question whether we are truly at full-employment—without full employment, firms are not forced to raise wages to compete for workers. Blanchflower questions what has long been a major tenet of economic theory: rising wages leads to inflation. Additionally, Blanchflower, links the rise of populist political leaders in a growing number of countries to the lack of wage increases for a broad swath of the population and suggest that, absent some major economic changes, there will be a growing major backlash.
Although not a definitive explanation, Not Working offers what is probably as good of an explanation as any economist has been able to come up with and should serve as a cautionary tale when it comes to economic policy.
April 9, 2021
3 stars is definitely the lower-bound. Content-wise, I think Blanchflower demonstrates his authority on economic policy and takes a detailed look at why wage growth has slowed.
Stylistically and organizationally, however, this work is lacking. Many of the chapters can be bogged down with statistics that read more like a literature review in an academic journal instead of a popular press book, and then switches to several chapters with little analysis and too many personal stories and disagreements with orthodox economics. Important, definitely, to point out problems with what is mainstream, but I think a lot of it could be glossed over
Stylistically and organizationally, however, this work is lacking. Many of the chapters can be bogged down with statistics that read more like a literature review in an academic journal instead of a popular press book, and then switches to several chapters with little analysis and too many personal stories and disagreements with orthodox economics. Important, definitely, to point out problems with what is mainstream, but I think a lot of it could be glossed over
February 4, 2020
Overall, worth reading, but a bit heavy for the casual reader. Lots and lots of references to other studies. The most meaningful section for me was the early part, about the psychological impact on men who are unable to find meaningful work. I am the child of two Depression era parents, who conveyed to me what happened when there was no work, at any wage, for a huge segment of the population.
The book is worth reading for that section alone.
The book is worth reading for that section alone.
February 5, 2021
Overall I liked this book although I felt it was somewhat uneven. The beginning of the book, maybe even the first half of the book, was very interesting, and written in a way that a layman could grasp. From the halfway mark until maybe the last chapter or two the writer goes into what I would call economist jargon and I started to lose interest. Then he finished well. So overall a good book just a little uneven.
August 8, 2019
Disappointingly unoriginal: little here will be new to a moderate devoted reader of a decent newspaper. A more courageous editor would have cut this way down: especially on one page where an entire passage is duplicated without author or editor noticing. One of those books that teaches you how little fulsome blurbs from famous names can mean.
October 24, 2019
Insightful and well researched but too slow going for me. There was a nice section on recession signals but I found it hard to find other actionable items
December 18, 2019
The academic leech has one of those good jobs. And he intends to keep it. So to heck with everyone else, may the generous government keep paying the good wages.
January 13, 2021
Unemployment issue
May 26, 2024
This is an appallingly written book. It does not know what it is about or what its audience is. The title suggests it is about unemployment; the introductory chapter says it is about the rise of Trump and Brexit; and there are huge, boring swathes of the authors' recollections of his participation in the UK equivalent of the Fed. The introductory chapter also makes it clear this is a book for a lay audience, but the authors gets tripped up and does not bother to explain things that would have made his points clearer. He gets lost in tangents and I had trouble following his train of thought. Twice I caught him repeating the same sentence/paragraph from a few pages prior; this is just inexcusable.
The book makes a case for monetary policy-makers to be OK with extremely low unemployment rates (like 2.5%), because the meaning of unemployment statistics has been distorted over time, as discouraged workers increasingly leave the labor force (although he does not talk about this as much as I thought he would) and as "unemployed" workers are counted as "employed". The inflationary potential of extremely low unemployment rates, he argues is overblown.
Well, now we are in the throws of major inflation and policymakers want to sacrifice low-income folks by raising rates and letting unemployment rise. This book does not help someone navigate the policy controversies we are now experiencing 4 years after it was written. I don't begrudge his inability to foresee the pandemic, but I do want to argue that he suffered from a myopia--being too caught up to write superficially about current events (e.g. the causal links between social conditions and voter resentment)--to really help lay people understand the policy debates.
The book makes a case for monetary policy-makers to be OK with extremely low unemployment rates (like 2.5%), because the meaning of unemployment statistics has been distorted over time, as discouraged workers increasingly leave the labor force (although he does not talk about this as much as I thought he would) and as "unemployed" workers are counted as "employed". The inflationary potential of extremely low unemployment rates, he argues is overblown.
Well, now we are in the throws of major inflation and policymakers want to sacrifice low-income folks by raising rates and letting unemployment rise. This book does not help someone navigate the policy controversies we are now experiencing 4 years after it was written. I don't begrudge his inability to foresee the pandemic, but I do want to argue that he suffered from a myopia--being too caught up to write superficially about current events (e.g. the causal links between social conditions and voter resentment)--to really help lay people understand the policy debates.
September 16, 2019
I think the author has quite accurately described the position of ordinary people in western countries, the decline of prosperity, lack of meaningful jobs and so on. His take on economic modelling is refreshing, I have yet to see an economic model that works.
His analysis of why these situations exist is poor. The role of free trade agreements(FTA) in destruction of meaningful jobs is ignored. An example could have been Australia where a completed manufacturing sector has been wiped out to enable them to conduct a barbaric live animal trade supported by environmental destruction that would make Bolsarano blush.
Meaningful jobs are hard to find, out of control immigration (the highest in the OECD) is choking major cities whilst regions wither. Jobs consist of cutting each others hair and delivering pizzas to each other.
His analysis of why these situations exist is poor. The role of free trade agreements(FTA) in destruction of meaningful jobs is ignored. An example could have been Australia where a completed manufacturing sector has been wiped out to enable them to conduct a barbaric live animal trade supported by environmental destruction that would make Bolsarano blush.
Meaningful jobs are hard to find, out of control immigration (the highest in the OECD) is choking major cities whilst regions wither. Jobs consist of cutting each others hair and delivering pizzas to each other.
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