It is not often that a single graphic can encapsulate an incredibly complex issue both succinctly and simply. This chart does. It shows how the employment prospects for white, "working class", American men have declined over the past twenty years. I suspect that if we were to reach back to include the twenty years before that, then a similar trend would be shown as a consequence of de-industrialisation.
What does it tell us? If you are a white male, with a basic education in the US, then your employment chances have significantly reduced over the last two decades. What it doesn't tell us is that diminishing employment prospects are also associated with diminishing health prospects, with the reduced chance of anything more than a catastrophic old age, and that these reduced prospects will be passed on to your children and grandchildren. This is why white, male, working class voters in America are angry.
At present, they are turning to President Trump for their potential salvation. He may be able to pull the rabbit out of the hat, but we take the view that he is more likely to do more harm than good to the US economy. Just supposing he does harm the US economy, and the employment prospects for this group of people continue to decline, what happens next? Just how more angry can they become? If they are that angry, what will they do?
I have no ready answers to these questions, but they deserve some thought.
Stephen Aguilar-Millan
Stephen, I found this graph hard to read, however, I'm familiar with the data. Interestingly, some of this population of men (and women)are getting Social Security disability payments, essentially welfare for a workforce for whom there are no jobs. If no jobs are forthcoming, this program should be put in place on a more honest basis, but it's doubtful that a Republican gov't will step up to do that.
ReplyDeleteHello Jennifer, the article describing the graph can be found here:
ReplyDeletehttp://www.economist.com/news/united-states/21717068-our-new-labour-market-index-tracking-fortunes-white-working-class
It is a crude (i.e. unweighted) index, with December 2016 as 100, that looks back twenty years or so. It measures the experience of white, working class males in the US. The move from work to disability is probably covered in the participation ratio, which measures the extent to which people have taken themselves out of the workforce.
My focus at the moment is on what will happen of the jobs don't come back?