Wednesday , November 6 2024
Home / Real-World Economics Review / New geography, old inequality

New geography, old inequality

Summary:
From David Ruccio It’s true (as I have argued many times on this blog), the number of U.S. manufacturing jobs has been declining for decades now—and they’re not coming back. Instead, they’ve been replaced (as is clear in the chart above) by service-sector jobs.   source And, not surprisingly, most new jobs (during the past year, as in recent decades) have appeared in urban centers. But the idea that service-sector job growth in some urban centers—or “brain hubs,” as The Geography of Jobs Enrico Moretti likes to call them—is going to solve the problem of the growing gap between haves and have-nots is simply wrong. Moretti (and, with him, Noah Smith) would have us believe that everyone in the one America that is “healthy, rich and growing” (as against the other America, which is “increasingly being left behind”) stands to benefit. And they don’t need manufacturing jobs to do so. But looking at the wages of those workers in the local service jobs celebrated by Moretti and Smith tells a very different story. Here they are, from the Bureau of Labor Statistics: OCCUPATION MEDIAN HOURLY WAGE Teachers .70 Registered Nurses .45 Licensed Practical Nurses .76 Carpenters .24 Taxi Drivers .30 So, no, the growth of local service jobs in so-called brain hubs is not going to solve the problem of inequality that plagues the United States.

Topics:
David F. Ruccio considers the following as important:

This could be interesting, too:

Merijn T. Knibbe writes ´Fryslan boppe´. An in-depth inspirational analysis of work rewarded with the 2024 Riksbank prize in economic sciences.

Peter Radford writes AJR, Nobel, and prompt engineering

Lars Pålsson Syll writes Central bank independence — a convenient illusion

Eric Kramer writes What if Trump wins?

from David Ruccio

New geography, old inequality

It’s true (as I have argued many times on this blog), the number of U.S. manufacturing jobs has been declining for decades now—and they’re not coming back. Instead, they’ve been replaced (as is clear in the chart above) by service-sector jobs.  

New geography, old inequality

source

And, not surprisingly, most new jobs (during the past year, as in recent decades) have appeared in urban centers.

But the idea that service-sector job growth in some urban centers—or “brain hubs,” as The Geography of Jobs Enrico Moretti likes to call them—is going to solve the problem of the growing gap between haves and have-nots is simply wrong.

Moretti (and, with him, Noah Smith) would have us believe that everyone in the one America that is “healthy, rich and growing” (as against the other America, which is “increasingly being left behind”) stands to benefit. And they don’t need manufacturing jobs to do so.

But looking at the wages of those workers in the local service jobs celebrated by Moretti and Smith tells a very different story. Here they are, from the Bureau of Labor Statistics:

OCCUPATION MEDIAN HOURLY WAGE
Teachers $22.70
Registered Nurses $32.45
Licensed Practical Nurses $20.76
Carpenters $20.24
Taxi Drivers $11.30

So, no, the growth of local service jobs in so-called brain hubs is not going to solve the problem of inequality that plagues the United States.

New geography, old inequality

Nor for that matter is Trump’s promise to return manufacturing jobs to the United States.

Neither the old nor the new geography of jobs is going to solve the problem of the growing divergence between a tiny group at the top and everyone else. The cause lies elsewhere—in the same old story of a growing surplus that is captured by large corporations and wealthy individuals.

That’s the real problem that needs to be solved.

David F. Ruccio
I am now Professor of Economics “at large” as well as a member of the Higgins Labor Studies Program and Faculty Fellow of the Joan B. Kroc Institute for International Peace Studies. I was the editor of the journal Rethinking Marxism from 1997 to 2009. My Notre Dame page contains more information. Here is the link to my Twitter page.

Leave a Reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *