let's talk about unemployment...

[keryx]

I know. It's a cheery Thanksgiving topic. I'll post a second, actually cheerful, topic in a moment.

But. I have a question. Why is unemployment so much worse for people in non-professional jobs vs. managerial ones, people without college degrees vs. people with them? The nifty Times graphic shows it off pretty nicely (or depressingly). And why is professional unemployment the first to decline? [Well, technically it might not be a decline, adjusted for seasonality, but it didn't increase in October.]

There's a lot of reporting about unemployment levels across groups, but not a lot of explanation. I suspect that we keep professionals around to "weather the storm" (strategize about what comes next) but consider people who actually make and sell things to be more interchangeable and expendable, probably using all those cringe-inducing words like "human resources" and "human capital". Just as stock prices level out after drops... when we fire a bunch of people who formerly made and sold things. But that's my suspicion. Anyone read anything (or just know anything) that would offer a more concrete explanation?

Comments

[kfinity.blogspot.com (from livejournal.com)]

Well, right, they don't make any decisions, so they're usually the first to go, right? I can't see any managers saying "Well, I'm superfluous, I'm going to have to let myself go."

I've heard people complain that upper management doesn't really want to think very hard about ways to save money. Laying off non-salaried workers is an obvious and easy solution, with no repercussions, so it's popular.

Unions can provide a nice buffer against that kind of careless hiring and firing of low-status employees (by making it harder). But they've gotten stigmatized in this country, so... yeah, rough times, I guess. :/

[keryx.livejournal.com]

Hey, I've seen actual live managerial people say "well, if that's what we're doing, we don't need me" - so it can happen. I think the idea is that we can pay for thinking but not pay for making and selling the things people won't buy.

But yeah, there's a lot of bureaucratic fluff that could be eliminated or changed, too - and it gets so caught up in this "how we do things" notion that it's rarely targeted. It seems like unions can fall into that category, too - maybe that's how their reputation got tarnished? Not that I have any firsthand experience of unions.