Regarding Endangered Jobs

Andy Kessler wrote another one of his quirky, mostly off-target editorials in the Wall Street Journal last Thursday, entitled Is Your Job an Endangered Species? Once again, I'm left wondering why the Journal gives this guy so much space so frequently? Compromising pictures of whom does he have?

Kessler began well enough, observing,

"Technology is eating jobs- and not just obvious ones like toll takers. Tellers, phone operators, stock brokers, stock traders: These jobs are nearly extinct. Since 2007, the New York Stock Exchange has eliminated 1,000 jobs. And when was the last time you spoke to a travel agent?"

It's hardly a novel observation, but a fair way to commence discussing the topic. But then he veers into the surreal with the following nonsequitor,

"So which jobs will be destroyed next? Figure that out and you'll solve the puzzle of where new jobs will appear."

Kessler goes on to sensibly divide jobs into "creators and servers." The latter basically do the non-intellectual things that implement innovators' (sorry- creators') solutions. Then he goes off the rails and sub-divides the servers into sloppers, sponges, supersloppers, slimers and thieves.

Supersloppers, by the way, are marketers who offer consumers features which may carry no economic value, but appeal to psychological or other bases of desire. Slimers are financial sector workers.

Then Kessler returns to his trademark of (re)stating the obvious,

"Like it or not, we are at the beginning of a decades-long trend."

Really? Beginning? How about, oh, 110 years into it? Ask buggy whip manufacturers.

"Watch the divergence in stock performance between companies that actually create and those that are in transition- just look at Apple, Netflix and Google over the last five years as compared to retailers and media."

Fair enough- there you have it in the nearby chart. Along with the S&P500 Index and online retailer Amazon.

Wait, how'd Amazon get in there? It's supposed to be tanking. And, for what it's worth, Andy, Netflix is an online and direct retailer, too.

So much for rigid, mutually exclusive taxonomies. Kessler seems better at selective recall and comparison, the better to make his narrow, but unfortunately for him, indefensible point.

You see, Netflix and Amazon have done well for the past five years, and they are retailers.

Google is the worst of the bunch, underrun only by the Index. Truth is, as Amazon and Netflix demonstrate, there are times when distribution of goods or services is valuable. It's not always just about production or even design.

Kessler finishes his perplexing piece with this passage,

"But be warned that this economy is incredibly dynamic, and there is no quick fix for job creation when so much technology-driven job destruction is taking place. Ultimately the economic growth created by new jobs always overwhelms the drag from jobs destroyed- if policy makers let it happen."

Kessler offers no statistics or empirical evidence of that last, bold assertion. I'm not at all sure it's even true.

That's the real point of this post. Not just to critique Kessler's weak, obvious and otherwise wrong-headed editorial. But to use it to make the following point.

It does little good to simply add up jobs lost and jobs created, and assume all is well when the latter is larger than the former. Wouldn't it be more informative to understand the life-cycle earnings and job types of workers from several different strata of US businesses over the past century? To have a set of benchmarks of life-cycle earnings relative to each worker's average? To see what normative patterns were, by era and job type, education, over the past century or more?

We don't know if Kessler's contentions are true without empirical data.

But I do think this much is true. There is a stronger, multi-lateral global economic competitiveness at higher levels of value-added now than for probably the last 90 years. As such, economies with, on balance, better-educated work forces will probably be able to create higher value-added goods and services. Certainly design them. Maybe produce them.

However, since populations are stratified by intellect and education, this means the US will continue to experience the challenge of employing the lower echelons of its labor force, by skill and education, as more of these jobs go overseas to more productive, cheaper workers in other countries.

Hopefully, America's entrepreneurs and innovators will create business ideas, solutions to consumer needs and wants, which also, with growth, create jobs that can be filled by not only well-educated, highly-skilled people, but the lower rungs of the US labor force, as well.