Charles Lane seizes on one under-discussed element of President Obama’s proposed “American Jobs Act”:
“Prohibiting employers from discriminating against unemployed workers when hiring.”
That’s right, the White House (and some members of Congress) want to make it illegal to refuse to hire someone based on their current employment status, and subject employers to litigation if they are alleged to have done so. The President says it “makes absolutely no sense” not to hire someone who has been out of work for an extended period of time. Lane disagrees, and thinks the new prohibition is a lousy idea.
I can think of a couple of reasons why it would make sense. Companies may want people familiar with the latest trends and conditions in their industry, so that they don’t have to spend money training them up. Is it irrational for a hospital to prefer a nurse from their crosstown rival over a nurse who took five years off and is trying to get back into the field? Some firms may find that narrowing the field of potential hires in advance makes the hiring process more efficient.
This may or may not be a sensible calculation for any particular business. But I’m not prepared to second-guess them or assign malicious intent without a lot more specific information. In any case, if a firm that refuses to consider the unemployed is wrong about the costs and benefits of doing so, they’ll lose business to competitors that recruit differently. The market will punish them swiftly and effectively. . . .
Subjecting companies to the risk of job-discrimination litigation is justifiable in the case of pervasive, historically rooted evils such as race or gender bias. But burdening the private sector for this dubious new purpose, in these difficult times, would be a big mistake.
Let’s accept, for the sake of argument, that many employers discriminate against the unemployed in hiring decisions. That doesn’t mean a legal response is required. However much discrimination against the unemployed exists in labor markets, there is no reason to believe it is as pervasive and intractable as was, say, racial discrimination. Among other things there are no formal or informal government sanctions against those who hire the unemployed, no risks of boycotts, and no bands of bigoted thugs threatening to punish those who do not toe the line. Further, making discrimination against the unemployed illegal and unleashing plaintiffs’ lawyers on private firms hardly seems like an effective solution. To the contrary, it would give private firms yet another excuse to avoid hiring in the first place.
Jimbino says:
Discriminating against the long-term unemployed is indeed like racism in that neither situation can be cured.
There’s little chance that the Black man will become White or that the long-term unemployed will gain current skills with the passage of time.
The obvious solution is to eliminate all barriers to employment (FICA, unemployment compensation tax, worker compensation tax, regulation, licensing, certification, union shop, etc). Then the entrepeneur who understands that women, Blacks, old folks, disabled folks and the unemployed can be had as workers will make a fortune by employing the “unemployable.”
This is especially true in teaching, where mere life experience can count much more than state teacher certification.
September 10, 2011, 7:14 pmterraformer says:
I heard recently that they want to set up an incentive to hire people out of work x months or longer. This is by far a better way of handling this.
September 10, 2011, 7:26 pmtomhynes75@gmail.com says:
The housing market faces similar discrimination. Many buyers and brokers won’t look at property that has been on the market for more than about 30 days. They think there must be something wrong with the property. Yet listing services continue to list “days on market” which just aids and perpetuates that discrimination. Making it illegal for purchasers to discriminate based on days on the market would help the real estate market recover.
September 10, 2011, 7:27 pmD.O. says:
Basic idea (make discrimination against unemployed illegal) seems very wrong. But this
is npt very much convincing right now.
September 10, 2011, 7:36 pmJ.Patrick says:
As someone who has been unable to find work for a while now, and who has little chance of finding work in the future, I can say:
I think this is a social signaling issue. What girl wants to date a guy that hasn’t been able to get a date with any other girl?
No matter how attractive a candidate might appear on paper, the fact that so many other employers have likely looked at him and rejected him conveys substantial information. I imagine this is why so many companies have switched to a strategy of trying to entice the currently-employed from existing jobs. Makes complete sense. As does your point that attempting to deny companies the ability to act in their own interest won’t work because, now, they will merely follow the new incentive to hire nobody.
(I’m beginning to think that leaving grad school to play online poker for a living might have been a bad decision, in retrospect.)
September 10, 2011, 7:38 pmtwency says:
While I don’t think a government ban on such discrimination is appropriate, I also don’t question that such discrimination exists. When I was between jobs after moving from one state to another a few years back, I certainly saw job listings which stated or implied that only those who were currently employed were desirable.
September 10, 2011, 7:39 pmNoah says:
99.99% of new hires are unemployed when they start the new job typically resigning effective Friday and starting the new job Monday.
Yet another lawyer full employment thing from a lawyer in the White House. I hope we never elect an undertaker.
September 10, 2011, 7:47 pmGMU grad says:
Why not pass a law with a “corporate mandate” requiring companies to increase their payrolls by X% per year, or else pay an expensive fine? It seems to me that the health care legislation opened the door wide open for such a law.
September 10, 2011, 7:51 pmAbdul Abulbul Amir says:
So pull the listing, and relist the next day.
September 10, 2011, 8:17 pmLaura(southernxyl) says:
It would if unemployment were 3 or 4%. As it is, with so many applicants wanting each job, it’s very possible for a good candidate to come in second or third in competition for job after job after job.
My husband applied for a job recently through a staffing agency that put him through several aptitude tests. The testing took six or seven hours because the tests were both general and specific. They were testing a group of people, and he and one other person passed every test. At the end of this process he was interviewed, and the interviewer finally told him that his experience wasn’t recent enough. WTH.
September 10, 2011, 8:18 pmOwen H says:
So the long-term unemployed are not something the government should even try to fix because it is the unemployeds’ fault anyway, but the long-term unemployed are the President’s fault and he should be blasted for it whenever possible, and blasted for trying to do something about it because it is their own fault anyway. Got it.
September 10, 2011, 8:26 pmOwen H says:
Friday to Monday is “long-term”? Are you even paying attention?
September 10, 2011, 8:28 pmKen Arromdee says:
From the OP:
I think someone who has left a job Friday and has not yet started because it’s not Monday, fails to qualify as having “been out of work for an extended period of time”.
September 10, 2011, 8:30 pmOwen H says:
Plus, they got hired didn’t they? And they weren’t unemployed when they got the offer, were they?
September 10, 2011, 8:37 pmricky says:
I don’t see this having much of an effect, but I always hate the Leibnizian optimism about “the market” that some of our more autistic pundits embrace. Even if you think that government intervention nearly always increases unfairness and causes more harm than good, which I do, it’s idiotic to pretend that “the market” will fix every problem and provide us with a perfect and fair world. That’s the exact same kind of naive utopianism that gripped the “progressives” when they implemented Communism and National Socialism.
September 10, 2011, 8:53 pmOwen H says:
What they don’t seem to understand is, being invisible the invisible hand of the market can’t see what it is doing.
September 10, 2011, 8:57 pmJardinero1 says:
Nobody pretends that. What you said is a very typical and fallacious rebuttal to a discussion of markets. The question is not whether markets will result in perfection but rather whether markets will produce a better outcome than government.
September 10, 2011, 9:02 pmricky says:
“In any case, if a firm that refuses to consider the unemployed is wrong about the costs and benefits of doing so, they’ll lose business to competitors that recruit differently. The market will punish them swiftly and effectively.”
September 10, 2011, 9:07 pmOutraged says:
Some people can’t imagine things from the point of view of the employers, or of the potential co-workers who would be working alongside the new hire, or the shareholders, or the company’s customers, who all want the best possible people to get hired. That’s a lot of people that you guys can’t see.
A little more autism might help, actually. You guys are so wrapped up in your sympathy and concern for the guy without a job that you can’t take anyone else’s perspective into account. And it’s not like you even need any sympathy for the co-workers or the customers to understand the purely logical point that everyone has an interest of one kind or another.
In that really good example from earlier, there’s both the dateless guy and the girl who agrees to go out with him. Or should she be prevented by law from knowing more than what the Department of Dating decrees?
What you don’t understand is that by picking sides to help the dateless guy, you’re disadvantaging the girl.
September 10, 2011, 9:11 pmricky says:
By the way, Jardinero, your knee-jerk reply is typical of autistic market fundamentalism and if you were anything more than a cliche-spouting drone you would have seen that I had already addressed your objection in my comment.
September 10, 2011, 9:12 pmSimon P. says:
I, too, question the wisdom of banning discrimination on the basis of having been unemployed for an extended period of time, but I cannot accept pat criticisms like this as a basis for such skepticism:
No, it’s probably not irrational or, to be more precise, particularly wrong in itself. The problem is what happens when every employer takes the same approach, even in situations where extended periods of unemployment aren’t correlated with additional training costs, initial ramp-up periods, etc. This results in creating a kind of “lost generation” of employees that are out of work for no particularly good reason. Take this explanation, from today’s NYTimes:
By which, I surmise Mr. Huang must mean, they’re inexperienced, untested, and vastly overpaid. If Mr. Huang’s sentiments are representative, it would seem that the pattern of hiring we’re seeing is simply not efficient and comes with a stark human toll.
And maybe we can expect the free market to fix this problem. When would we expect that to happen? Well, it’ll probably happen once all of the “cream” in the labor market has been skimmed off and employers have enough trouble meeting demand that they have to dip a bit deeper into the teeming pool of the unemployed – beginning, no doubt, with those who have been unemployed for the least amount of time – in order to get the help they need. That would require, of course, sustained economic growth and a fair amount of job creation. When can we expect that to occur by? Four, five years, hopefully?
So, no, Charles doesn’t seem to have anything particularly insightful to say here. We have to figure out what to do about this group of long-term unemployed people (or confirm that we don’t particularly need to worry about the number of people going years without employment); waiting for the market to sift things out is only going to exacerbate the social costs of this aggregated hiring behavior (while at the same time it will drag on any economic recovery).
One benefit of barring discrimination on the basis of extended unemployment status is that it acknowledges the potential costs for businesses in hiring people who need to get back up to speed and spreads those costs among employers. Thus, employers wouldn’t be able to get into a kind of prisoner’s dilemma where their individually self-interested actions result in aggregate behavior that negatively impacts consumer confidence and economic growth (thus leaving employers with under-utilized “sports stars” that they’ll have to lay off in a half-year’s time, just adding to the pool of the unemployable).
September 10, 2011, 9:22 pmJardinero1 says:
Nice knee jerk ad hominem. My daughter is autistic.
September 10, 2011, 9:23 pmNoah says:
Friday to Monday – by the time pressure groups like the CBC get done long term is long gone.
September 10, 2011, 9:32 pmNeo says:
Let’s face it. Obama is just looking out for #1.
September 10, 2011, 9:39 pmHe is gonna be unemployed in 14 months, and …
Stephen Lathrop says:
I’m fine with systematic job market discrimination against the long-term unemployed. Just so long as the social machinery is in place to give those left out exactly the same kind of life they would have had if they had been employable. If you condone a social system that contemplates ruining some people’s lives for other people’s benefit, you had better take moral responsibility for the result. Is there anyone arguing in favor of this kind of discrimination who can explain why its victims would not be morally justified if they made a bloody revolution?
September 10, 2011, 9:41 pmStephen Lathrop says:
How would it give them an excuse to avoid hiring the long-term unemployed?
September 10, 2011, 9:45 pmJ.Patrick says:
Simon P., thanks for the excellent post.
I’d also like to note that the proposed provision has the distinct mark of Cass Sunstein’s influence. Sunstein is a big believer in using behavioral economics + government mandates to solve perceived market inefficiencies.
Behavioral economics, which started sailing into political debate under the ostensibly neutral flag of “nudging”, will likely be used more and more to justify items on the progressive political agenda. That’s just how these things work.
Personally, I think the long-term unemployed should do what I’m doing, and write a compelling work of fiction that provides penetrating insight into the human condition, which will be read by millions of people, changing lives for the better. Nay, changing nations. And on the day you receive the Nobel prize for literature you will thank god himself in heaven for the time granted when you were 34 to write your book AND cultivate legal/market sensibilities in the VC comments section.
September 10, 2011, 9:51 pmMatthew Carberry says:
If your property is listed that long the likely reason is that it does in fact have some factor that makes it less attractive to potential buyers.
The most common factor in my experience as a mortgage banker is that your price is too damn high. A house is worth what someone is willing to pay for it, not how much you want to make.
Drop the price and re-list.
September 10, 2011, 9:58 pm87tggkjf65 says:
I don’t think this will reduce longterm unemployment. It doesn’t create any new jobs (except maybe for lawyers) and will put a drain on economic growth as companies refrain from hiring or waste resources on litigation.
The government should focus on policies that will cause economic growth. Lower taxes and less regulation. Once companies start expanding again and employment goes up, companies will start to have trouble finding people to hire and they will start looking at the long term unemployed.
If there is good reason to think discriminating against the long term unemployed is immoral, unethical or bad for the economy or society, then they can make it illegal as a statement of “political correctness”. Maybe some companies will change their policies, but I don’t see how enforcing it is going to do much good. If was limiting economic growth, ie it is bad management policy then those companies doing it will not succeed and those that don’t discriminate will and will expand and replace their less efficient competitors. The market will sort it out…eventually.
September 10, 2011, 10:01 pm87tggkjf65 says:
In one way it does seem unfair, if two people are applying for the same job and all things being equal, one has depleted his savings due to long term unemployment it would seem to be preferable to give him the job rather than someone who already has one. Too bad the long term unemployed person couldn’t get the job of the employed person left…
Unfortunately our society is not really well organized to deal with these situations and attempts at doing so like communism and socialism have been disasters.
I think there should be a better way to organize society than free markets and communism but no one has figured it out yet and experiments turn out to be expensive in terms of wealth and lives.
September 10, 2011, 10:07 pmKazinski says:
I think discrimination based on Unemployment status or duration is already actionable under current law. Griggs vs. Duke power is the relevant decision. Currently black unemployment is at more than double what white unemployment is (8.0 vs 16.7), and while I haven’t checked I’d be willing to bet average black unemployment is of longer duration too. So obviously that is going have a disparate impact on blacks by excluding a twice the percentage of black candidates from job openings than whites.
So unless an employer can show that discrimination based on unemployment status is related to job performance it opens them up for potentially costly lawsuits.
September 10, 2011, 10:12 pmShelbyC says:
Well, if it really doesn’t make any sense to discriminate against the long term unemployed, then the market will “fix” the problem as soon as it figures out that it can hire the long term for less than those who currently have jobs. And if long-term unemployed really are significantly less qualified, what-you want to make it illegal to discriminate against the less qualified?
September 10, 2011, 10:24 pmMike s. says:
In normal times, I would agree that this proposal would be silly. However, in a period with persistent high unemployment, likely for at least 6 years or more, if you permit employers to treat the unemployed as pariahs, you will have a generation of perfectly capable people who become unemployable as they will be passed over for younger kids fresh out of school. Yes, that may make sense for any individual recruiter or manager, in that it will save him the time needed to sort out the good ones who hit the market at the wrong time from the no good workers. But extended through the economy it is a social disaster. Studies have shown that kids who graduate college in the middle of a recession have significantly lower lifetime incomes than those who graduate a couple of years earlier or later. That was for briefer recessions. Does it really make sense to turn one’s birth year into a ticket to lifetime of poverty for some fraction of the kids born then? I doubt that allowing discrimination lawsuits is the best remedy, but we ought to find some remedy.
September 10, 2011, 10:26 pmJoe says:
As an employer going through the hiring process, you have to evaluate the projected performance over the immediate short term and the projected performance 1-3-5 years out. The ability to project out performance is an art in judging the prospective employee’s talents and future talents. You are forced to make an evaluation based on limited indicators during the interview process. Rightfully or wrongfully, certain indicators associated with the reason for being unemployed will only give you clues. Keep in mind, employers are looking for the best fit for that position, both short and long term, not necessarily the best qualified.
September 10, 2011, 10:35 pmWatson Ladd says:
I don’t think you understand just what kind of people he’s paying. These are very good engineers, who will be working as long and whenever they want anywhere. Some sectors of the economy are even seeing increasing salaries right now because spending on certain goods (software) remains high.
September 10, 2011, 10:39 pmWatson Ladd says:
I don’t think you understand just what kind of people he’s paying. These are very good engineers, who will be working as long and whenever they want anywhere. Some sectors of the economy are even seeing increasing salaries right now because spending on certain goods (software) remains high.
September 10, 2011, 10:39 pmSimon P. says:
Yeah, right. So, because this is the result your theory predicts, the fact that we don’t see this happening already must mean that there is something genuinely wrong with the long-term unemployed. And not that there are forces at work other than pure rational market behavior. Right?
If by “significantly less qualified,” you mean people who need to brush up on their skills to be as qualified as someone fresh from another job, then yes, that is exactly what I’m suggesting could be the point of an anti-discrimination bill like the one being discussed. As I’ve previously indicated, the point of such a bill could be to spread out the costs of re-assimilating a “rusty” workforce so that we can bear the social costs of systemic underemployment more sensibly.
Personally, I’m not sure I buy a lot of the arguments often floated, even in supposedly rapidly-moving industries, that a person who’s been out of work more than six months is so rusty that they really represent a substantially less qualified employee than someone actively employed or freshly-graduated. I think that’s what employers might believe, but I think they’re wrong to think that.
September 10, 2011, 10:43 pmSimon P. says:
I don’t think you understand just what I was saying about his statement.
“These are very good engineers…” Like the seven-month unemployed but otherwise experienced engineer who graduated from the same school isn’t?
September 10, 2011, 10:45 pmJ.Patrick says:
I know Mr. Adler doesn’t like the comparison to racial discrimination, but please allow me to use that as an example just to illustrate a point:
Race correlates with crime such that a cab driver is less likely to get robbed by picking up a White VS. Black prospective client. It is perfectly rational, then, in many situations for a cab driver to use race as a quick-and-dirty guide to who he should pick up. Black people often have trouble hailing a cab for that reason.
Likewise, I think most people would agree that being long-term unemployed does *correlate* with suitability to employment. For that reason alone I’d say employers are rational in attending to it as a strong cue. But, as I said before, I think social signaling is likely an even bigger issue. A hiring manager will not take a risk on somebody perceived to be an employee that nobody else wanted. Perfectly rational.
Unlike as with race, though, it strikes me as a bit silly to think that the government can do anything to keep companies from using length of unemployment in their hiring decisions. Either:
September 10, 2011, 10:47 pm(1) companies won’t tell people why they didn’t get hired, or
(2) companies will start using contract employees more often, effectively partitioning liability in third parties, or
(3) as mentioned in the OP, companies will (overall) substantially reduce hiring until they can figure out a way to hire who they want without getting sued.
ShelbyC says:
Ok, so if it costs me $x to allow a long-term unemployed person to brush up on his skills, and I’m willing to pay a person with a job $y, why can’t I pay a long-term unemployed person $y – $x?
And, assuming the nature of one position is such that it requires up-to-date skills, and other positions don’t, should the market be allowed to steer those with up-to-date skills to positions that are sensitive to them?
September 10, 2011, 10:59 pmDavid M. Nieporent says:
Pretty much for the same reason that socially-unpopular people are not morally justified in committing rape.
September 10, 2011, 11:02 pmShelbyC says:
Well, then don’t just sit there spewing out all this valuable expertize on a blog comments section for free! Get out there, start a business leveraging your superior ability to judge employee qualifications and get rich!
September 10, 2011, 11:05 pmKenB says:
Another reason to minimize all hiring to the maximum extent possible. How better to avoid the transaction costs of litigating with unqualified but litigious unemployed candidates? Who needs the hassle when you can offshore to India or wherever?
September 10, 2011, 11:06 pmLaura(southernxyl) says:
Back when I first read The Bell Curve I was supervising a group of pretty bright people, all of whom were likable as individuals, but being technically oriented, were kind of difficult sometimes. I thought that if I were hiring and had access to the candidates’ IQ scores, I’d try to figure out what minimal IQ was necessary to perform the job tasks, and use that to identify the group of people who *could* do the job; and then I’d throw the scores aside and focus on the real make-or-break stuff. Are you going to show up to work every day? Can you take direction from the boss? Will you get along with your coworkers? Will you pull your weight? Help the group solve problems? Contribute to keeping the work area neat for yourself and everyone else?
Skills can be picked up. It’s the low-drama, dependable team player with the work ethic you want.
September 10, 2011, 11:09 pmNI says:
Assuming that it is in an employer’s best interest to pass over the long-term unemployed, this is an example of behavior that is individually rational but devastating to the community (a la the tragedy of the commons). The companies may be better off, but having a permanent underclass of permanently unemployable can be disastrous to a community. And while I take David Nierpont’s point that that may not justify a revolution, in point of fact that is the stuff of which bloody revolutions are made.
September 10, 2011, 11:24 pmRichard Molpus says:
A better policy promoting reemployment of the longest unemployed would be to offer a credit adjusting the unemployment insurance rate/payment based on how long a new hire has been unemployed.
Hire someone who’s run out of benefits – get a 1% credit, 24 months, 2%, etc.
That gives a positive incentive to hire long-unemployed workers; it promotes their employment without harshly punishing anyone.
September 10, 2011, 11:25 pmGil says:
I always presumed an employer view an applicant who has unemployed for an extended period as a dole-bludger whereas someone who is already doing part-time work as having a solid work ethic.
September 10, 2011, 11:41 pmConnecticut Lawyer says:
I’m sympathetic, I really am. I was laid off in early 2010 and know all about the problems being discussed. But I think that Prof. Adler has it exactly right. Legislation like this will lead to litigation based on the claim that the employer did not hire the unemployed applicant(s). The easiest way to avoid that litigation would be not to hire anyone.
The only real solution to sticky labor markets (with overparticular employers) is robust economic growth. The recession of 1920-21 was even more severe than the current one, with much higher unemployment. Two years later (after a laissez faire response by the federal government) the economy had roared back to life and there were labor shortages. It’s unfortunate that our president is so wedded to environmentalism and share-the-wealth ideology that it’s unlikely that we’ll experience similar robust economic growth anytime soon.
September 10, 2011, 11:49 pmsta says:
So Adler drew the short straw for Saturday water carrying duty this week.
Better luck next week!
September 11, 2011, 12:04 amNot an Economist says:
Abdul Abulbul Amir,
In some places, delisting a place and then relisting it the next day is illegal. You have to wait a period of time (months I think) before you can relist it.
I think this had something to do with keeping real estate agents from trying to play games with the listings. The purpose of the games was to keep their properties coming up first in searches.
September 11, 2011, 12:18 amNI says:
Does anyone know if there is actual empirical data showing that higher taxes and regulation actually leads to unemployment? My strong suspicion is that this is nonsense propagated by cheerleaders for big business who don’t want higher taxes and more regulation. For one thing, if that were true then France and Germany would have the highest unemployment rates in the world. For another thing, the people making those arguments are mostly the same people who’ve been shipping American jobs to China.
My gut sense is that companies hire when they need to hire, but I don’t actually know either. So I repeat my question: Is there actual empirical data showing that to be the case?
September 11, 2011, 12:30 amShelbyC says:
Ever try looking for a job in France or Germany?
September 11, 2011, 12:36 amNI says:
And for another thing, taxes and regulation were at their lowest in a generation when George W. Bush left office, so unemployment should have been in the basement. It wasn’t. Which again leads me to wonder if the taxes and regulation lead to unemployment mantra is nonsense.
No, ShelbyC, I’ve never looked for a job in France or Germany. I do know that I just googled French unemployment and found that their unemployment rate has been better than ours for at least the last three years; in 2008 (when Bush left office) theirs was 7%.
September 11, 2011, 12:41 amRicardo says:
On this same point, Thomas Sowell once pointed out SF Muni did a study where they analyzed the relationship between the IQs of their cable-car drivers and the number of accidents. They found an inverted U-shaped relationship: very smart and very dumb people apparently both make terrible drivers while the average Joe makes the best.
I suspect this is true for lots of jobs. I’d want smart computer programmers or engineers but not necessarily brilliant sales people. There are diminishing and possibly negative returns to IQ for boring jobs or jobs that require lots of interaction with clients and members of the public. In other words, most jobs.
September 11, 2011, 1:36 amRicardo says:
The trend in Europe has actually changed since the 1990s. Nowadays, the percentage of prime age adults in Europe who are working is a bit higher than the number in the U.S. Krugman provides the data from OECD here.
September 11, 2011, 1:44 amTatil says:
On the one hand, yes, if many employers have already passed on somebody, that may mean something. People out of a job for a long time may have lost some skills or may not be as well versed in current trends. However, a friend of mine looking for a job saw job ads that specifies that the applicants needs to be currently employed. Refusing applications from anybody whose company got shut down, say, last month.. That is ridiculous. I am not sure if government should be involved, but let’s not assume all of the employers are actually acting rationally in some subtle ways.
September 11, 2011, 2:22 amConnecticut Lawyer says:
Ricardo,
From the Bureau of Labor Statistics website:
France’s unemployment: in 2007, 8.1%
in 2008, 7.5%
in 2009, 9.2%
Germany: 2007, 8.7%
2008, 7.6%
2009, 7.8%
United States: 2007, 4.6%
2008, 5.8%
2009, 9.3%
One could argue that the US Government’s adoption of European style social welfare policies since 2008 (Obamacare, endless unemployment compensation) are responsible at least in part for the narrowing of the spreads.
I don’t think you’d find many economists of any stripe who would disagree that a swashbuckling free market economy like Hong Kong’s has higher economic growth and lower unemployment over the long run. Where they seem to disagree are on the collateral consequences of those policies – more visible income inequality, more environmental problems, more “unfairness.”
September 11, 2011, 2:23 amRobert says:
Part time with a single employer, maybe, but I’m told that the type of resume I have — a series of temporary jobs, including odd jobs done entrepreneurially for acquaintances and projects successfully completed — is taken as evidence of not being able to hold a job, even when the reality is that the employment was never offered on a permanent basis. And yet if it’s described as self-employment, that too is undesirable, indicating someone not used to or indisposed to following others’ instructions — even though delivering the goods desired shows that instructions were followed. I’ve been told that self-employment is a form of type-casting that can be broken only by getting a new degree and rebooting one’s career.
September 11, 2011, 2:29 amRicardo says:
Unemployment rate is a cyclical variable that measures the number of people out of work but looking for a job divided by the total number of people in the labor force. What I mentioned is the labor force participation rate among prime-age adults which is a bit different. The myth is that Europe is full of long-term unemployed who are living off of government benefits. However true this may have been in the 1990s, the trends reversed after 2000 and the U.S. appears to have lots of discouraged workers today that are not measured by the conventional unemployment rate. Especially worrying is the drop in labor-force participation among adult men in the U.S.
One could argue that but then what evidence would one bring to the table to help support that argument?
HK’s fortune has been built on trade and exports — its success would be more difficult to replicate in a land-locked country or in a place not close to a large volume of the world’s shipping traffic. Asian countries like Japan, South Korea, Taiwan, Singapore and Malaysia have all grown pretty impressively over the past 40 years and many have implemented highly unorthodox and often borderline socialist policies. Whether these policies helped or hurt growth is very much an open question — read Dani Rodrik for the pro-unorthodox policy perspective. The only lesson here seems to be that there is no one-size-fits-all policy prescription.
September 11, 2011, 2:51 amricky says:
Well, I’d say the policy prescriptions are clear:
1. Have high IQ people.
2. Don’t have low IQ people.
September 11, 2011, 3:03 amPerseus says:
Typical Krugman distortion based on a selective choice of data:
Because employment rates for the young are strongly affected by things like student aid policy, while those for the over-55 set are strongly affected by retirement policy; so if you want to know how many of the people who really should be working are managing to find jobs, the 25-54 sample is useful.
In other words, Krugman ignores their bloated welfare states and more rigid labor markets which reduce the number of working years. Roubini’s research firm on France:
Despite the significant improvement, France has still one of the lowest employment rates among OECD countries. Especially with regards to the youth, seniors and low-skilled workers, employment rates are substantially below the OECD average. Furthermore, in France workers enter the labor market later and retire earlier than in the majority of industrialized countries.
A chart with labor participation rates among a broader range of age groups (including those which Krugman conveniently omits) can be found here.
September 11, 2011, 3:19 amKen Arromdee says:
Also, if a lunch counter refuses to serve blacks, they’ll lose business to competitors who will, since the blacks’ money is as good as anyone else’s.
There are plenty of examples of bad business practices–not hiring the unemployed being only a single example–which don’t get punished by the market. Imagine a company that won’t hire people whose names start with the letter “Q”. The only way in which this practice seriously disadvantages the company in the marketplace is if the number of prospective employees is small enough that the company’s policy results in them actually having unfilled positions (which with a lot of unemployment, won’t happen). Otherwise, the only disadvantage is that the company’s competitors get to hire from 100% of the prospects instead of 98%, and are on the average slightly more likely to have a high quality employee when choosing from a larger group. That’s such a small advantage that it’s swamped by other factors.
If companies can demand that hires have 5 years of experience in things that only existed for 2 years (a common practice in the computer industry), and if the market doesn’t punish them for that (and it doesn’t), then the market’s not going to stop them from only hiring the employed.
September 11, 2011, 5:01 amGil says:
“Part time with a single employer, maybe, but I’m told that the type of resume I have — a series of temporary jobs, including odd jobs done entrepreneurially for acquaintances and projects successfully completed — is taken as evidence of not being able to hold a job, even when the reality is that the employment was never offered on a permanent basis. And yet if it’s described as self-employment, that too is undesirable, indicating someone not used to or indisposed to following others’ instructions — even though delivering the goods desired shows that instructions were followed. I’ve been told that self-employment is a form of type-casting that can be broken only by getting a new degree and rebooting one’s career.” – Robert.
Still would think it’d be better than being long-term unemployed. :S
September 11, 2011, 5:22 amConnecticut Lawyer says:
Ricardo,
I’ve been thinking some more about your comments on Hong Kong and why it’s not a good model of capitalism for the US to follow. You wrote, “HK’s fortune has been built on trade and exports — its success would be more difficult to replicate in a land-locked country or in a place not close to a large volume of the world’s shipping traffic.” I have several reactions:
September 11, 2011, 5:32 am1) The US is not land-locked and is certainly close to a large volume of the world’s shipping traffic.
2) You could just as easily describe Hong Kong as having achieved great success despite having no natural resources (apart from a great harbor), being wholly dependent on a foreign power (the PRC) for its drinking water, and having a huge population of refugees crammed into a tiny land area. I wonder what could have accounted for that success? – certainly other lands, blessed with harbors, great natural resources, cheap energy, ample living space, etc., etc. (see, e.g., Argentina) – have failed to achieve the economic growth and high standard of living that Hong Kong has. I submit it was swashbuckling capitalism, with low and simple taxes, few regulations, English common law (loser-pays), and very limited social welfare spending. IMHO, the US could certainly learn from the Hong Kong example.
Sunday morning links - Maggie's Farm says:
[...] Prohibiting Employment Discrimination Against the Unemployed [...]
September 11, 2011, 6:06 amRicardo says:
The chart backs the original point: France has one of the highest labor force participation rates in the 25-55 age bracket of any country in that sample. It could well be that France has other problems but it does not apparently have a particular lack of jobs for prime-age adults, especially for skilled workers. As for the 15-24 bracket, a lot of developed countries have higher participation rates here but then so do Mexico, India, the Philippines and Argentina.
As Krugman correctly notes, high labor force participation in this bracket is tough to interpret because there are several confounding factors at work and, indeed, there’s a huge amount of variation in the chart from Hungary with its ~25% rate to the Netherlands with its ~75% rate.
September 11, 2011, 6:13 amExcuses, excuses says:
There are confounding factors everywhere in economics, Ricardo. Either take it as a whole or reject economic empiricism, and Krugman with it, as the pseudoscience it is. The choice is yours.
September 11, 2011, 6:18 amStephen Lathrop says:
I think about history and marvel at the obliviousness of some of these comments. You really believe you can inflict status-based permanent unemployment on millions—systematically base an entire national economy on doing that—and not face some god-awful reckoning? Does Nieporent with his rape analogy think the government ought to simply imprison the unemployed?
One problem with the thinking (it’s not thinking, really) on this thread is the assumption that private employers address some kind of real employment problem by discriminating against the unemployed. That’s not what’s going on. Even during this recession, more bad employees go to work every day than sit on the unemployment lists. Nobody could prove bad employees aren’t equally represented in both places. Hire someone who is currently employed and you might get one of those. What’s the point of a human resources department if they can’t figure out which employees are the good ones by interviewing them?
No, employers are trying to solve an employment process problem. With giant unemployment, they want some kind of screen to reduce the burden of processing overwhelming applicant pools. Status-based discriminators fit the need. Discriminating against blacks or hispanics would be similarly helpful, but the law blocks those options.
People say, imagine how disruptive to business a policy against this kind of discrimination would be. They are in fact imagining how disruptive it actually is—but asserting that for the sake of a relatively small convenience in processing applicants, businesses ought to be able to pass on the resulting huge disruption to society at large.
The cheerleaders for this foolishness may be accustomed to thinking, screw the social costs, we just won’t pay them. Of course you’ll pay. What do you think, prisons come free? Or are you planning to pay off the costs in imaginary cake?
September 11, 2011, 6:22 amRicardo says:
Oh I didn’t mean to imply that. I was rather replying to the connection between laissez faire and economic growth in general. To take South Korea, for decades it had a dictatorial, crony capitalist setup with a very active industrial policy. Does that prove this setup is appropriate everywhere or even that it was critical to SK’s success? Of course not. Or does Singapore prove American cities should start building huge public housing projects to house the poor just as SG did in the 1960s? Likewise, I’d be cautious of extrapolating HK’s success too much outside of its peculiar context.
There’s also the question of what policies are politically feasible. HK’s interest in democratic governance is very recent and for years its policymakers did not have to listen to voters.
September 11, 2011, 6:34 amRalph says:
I say we take this proposal one step furhter. To really eliminate all discrimination in the work place we need to do more than just put in a bureaucracy to assure employers hire who the government wants them to hire. Employers should be required to hire long term unemployed (or insert any other special interest group) to fill rolling layoffs of existing employees. It is blatantly unfair that some people have not had work while others have prospered. Nobody should be allowed to work more than say 4 consecutive years without being unemployed for at least 1 year. After a year they go back to the head of the list of people to be hire.
I hire people all the time. It is an expensive and time consuming process. There is no such thing as 2 candidates that are equally qualified. Unexplainable gaps in employment history and long term unemployment are red flags. Often there is a good reason, but equally often there is a bad reason. Employers are looking to hire the best candidate. That will more often than not be the person unemployed for the least amount of time, either because the person was truly more qualified or was willing to price himself correctly in the market or seek employment in another area. This is a well-intended but stupid proposal.
September 11, 2011, 8:33 amBen P says:
This is both mostly wrong and it completely misses the point.
The same thing has happened in law.
When the financial crash hit in 2009, the sort of corporate work that feeds a lot of big firms in new york flatlined, lots of big law firms laid off a number of lawyers. A few even folded completely.
Those fired were predominately junior and midlevel associates. People who are very highly credentialed and intelligent, but only with 2-4 years of experience, and in a very specific are at that. Junior associate work at a mega firm doing merger work doesn’t translate well to running a law practice taking in clients off the street.
At the time, no firms were hiring, so a lot of lawyers were out of work for a year or more.
Now work has picked up and many of those firms are hiring again. However, many of them refuse to hire the same lawyers they laid off 6-12-18 months ago. Rather, they hire new graduates, or lawyers that are currently employed at other firms. Creating a “lost generation” of those laid off in 2009.
I would suspect similar things are true in engineer. Some firms laid off engineers, but the engineers laid off 7 months ago, no matter how intelligent or “good” they are, are suddenly undesirable, companies would rather hire new students or people with lots of experience in a particular area.
September 11, 2011, 8:36 amLaura(southernxyl) says:
There’s actually another possibility, now that I think about it. My spouse has a job interview tomorrow and I will talk with him about this.
When you are interviewing somebody for a job, you want to see that person look you in the eye and convince you that she can get the job done. Part of that is an upbeat, positive, high-energy appearance. She absolutely cannot look beat down or desperate. But it is real damn hard for somebody who has been told “no” over and over for months not to look that way. It’s a blow to your self-esteem and to your ability to maintain a positive outlook.
I don’t like to use the term “loser” because it’s a value judgment on a person and it implies that there is no positive future for him. But if you were to call a person a loser based on how he presents himself, it would be that desperate, beat-down person. No one is going to hire that.
Will have to think how to counsel my husband. He can’t come across too unconcerned, because they’ll want somebody who wants the job and will take it seriously. But “I have got to get a job” won’t cut it either.
September 11, 2011, 8:58 amLaura(southernxyl) says:
Ricardo, in a lab – not a research lab, maybe, but a commercial lab or a lab that supports a chemical plant – there are a whole lot of repetitive tasks that have to be done. You don’t need to be a rocket scientist to do them; in fact, a really intelligent person would be bored out of their skull in just a few months. You do have to be trainable, and then you have to do those tasks the same way every time, do them in a timely manner but without rushing and getting careless, and pay attention to what you’re doing all the way through. I have had some techs who did a great job, to whom I could not explain simple calculations because they could not understand them.
And these were not stupid people. I doubt that many commenters here spends any appreciable amount of time with people below the 75th percentile on IQ. I’m talking people of average intelligence.
One difficulty comes in when your boss wants you to come up with a career development plan for such a person, when he’s happy where he is and doing a great job, and really isn’t interested in or capable of doing more.
September 11, 2011, 9:15 amShelbyC says:
Any time somebody uses funkily defined parameters like that some serious questions are in order. To wit, to what extent does the fact that that partcular group may be more consistent with his hypothesis affect the fact that he chose that group. Also, I suspect France’s large public sector may affect the unemployment rate, and I’m not sure how we account for that.
September 11, 2011, 9:29 amShelbyC says:
Just as long as there’s no chance that someone who’s wife sits him down and counsels him on how to act during an interview will feel like a desperate loser. Just sayin’…
September 11, 2011, 9:34 amOwen H says:
I’ll ask again; if it is the fault of the long-term unemployed themselves that they stay unemployed, then how can we blame the government, the President, or their policies for it as well?
And what are we supposed to do about them? If it is acceptable for companies not to hire them, they never work again. What now? How can we move people from welfare to work if companies don’t hire people that haven’t worked for a long time?
September 11, 2011, 9:35 amShelbyC says:
Says who? It is perfectly acceptable for people not to hire me, yet I still manage to find work. They are just like anybody else, if the value they are able deliver generates more return for the employer than they demand in wages, they’ll get hired. The fact that some employers won’t hire long-term unemployed doesn’t mean that none of them will.
September 11, 2011, 9:45 amShelbyC says:
This whole dispute seems analogous to someone who notices that some companies claim, “we hire nothing but the best employees” and saying, holy crap, how are the second-best employees ever supposed to find work!
September 11, 2011, 9:47 amLaura(southernxyl) says:
Shelby, he has asked for my help. We plan to take my netbook to Panera or somewhere today and prepare for this interview.
I give a great deal of thought, always, to being sensitive to his feelings. I always have. And he is polite and courteous and considers my feelings when he talks to me too. I guess people who don’t mind a woman who thinks she is reading and participating in a straightforward discussion of dogs being allowed in bars being slapped across the face by the suggestion that the discussion is really about homely women being allowed out in public would anticipate that anyone might be sensitive about feelings.
September 11, 2011, 9:51 amfrankania says:
Be creative. Look around you and see what needs people are having. Figure out a way to satisfy those needs (even if it is just cutting lawns or day care of kids or whatever) and advertise yourself. Then go and do it.
September 11, 2011, 9:53 amDon’t bother with govt at all.
When your business is growing and looks successful, then go get the legal papers (if necessary) and keep growing.
ShelbyC says:
Well, good luck.
I’m not sure what the big deal is. Everyone involved in the discussion was in favor of homely women being allowed out in public.
September 11, 2011, 10:02 amToby says:
How many knowing ones on this thread have hired staff when there is a cumbersome process in place, like to additional one that will be added to support any putative legislation or regulation?
There is nothing quite like hiring in a process-heavy environment. HR demands that you right a justification for each person interviewed but not hired. Far better to not interview them; the paperwork is less. When the economy is tight, and you have many applicants, this effect is magnified.
So you got 200 applicants for that job. Look through the pile first for those that have a reason not to hire them. Look for any reason. Somehow winnow it down to 20 people that a committee might handle. What is the fewest HR will allow you to interview. Make the pain stop. You are already doing the work to cover the shortage, and now there is a process.
Plus if you do hire them, they have rights, perhaps after a brief probationary period. Make them fail. Fast, so you can get rid of them. You won’t be able to afterwards. Even during the probationary period, you may not be able to get rid of them, no matter how bad they are, if they are in a protected class.
This post talks about the long-term unemployed. Heaven help you if you hire an internal transfer who doesn’t work out. There may be no probationary period. You may be stuck with a permanent long term employee who is totally unfit for the job. Best to hire only the lowest risk, from outside the organization.
Some seem to love process, and its magical abilities to solve all problems. Process, though, increases effort and increases risk to the hiring manager. Process makes risk-taking unbearable.
Long term unemployed. They are risky. It might be a risk you are willing to take. All the suggestions on this thread about how to manage or incentivize that risk, however, increase the effort and perceived risk of the decision maker. Which means they are doomed to fail in their stated goal. They might succeed in increasing litigation, though, so they have that going for them.
September 11, 2011, 10:04 amLaura(southernxyl) says:
Shelby, how come it’s OK for me to be a dog, but not for my husband to be a loser?
Will you just explain that to me, please?
September 11, 2011, 10:05 amRicardo says:
Shelby, those age thresholds were used by the editors of The Economist in the link Perseus provided, are used by the OECD in its cross-country labor force statistics, and are used in dozens of sources in labor economics and demography to separate prime-age adults from both young people who may be finishing up college or grad school and from older people who are on the verge of retirement or in the process of winding down their careers.
September 11, 2011, 10:35 amJoseph Slater says:
(1) I doubt there will be many lawsuits. Employment discrimination claims are among the most difficult to win of all types of litigation, and “failure to hire” cases are the hardest kind of employment discrimination cases to win (because it’s so hard to prove X was the specific motivation not to hire). I know that the threat of being sued, even if you think/know you’re going to win, creates certain incentives, but I predict there will be so few of these suits it won’t make any real difference. And if the follow-up question to me is, “so, doesn’t that mean you think the law won’t actually do much good?” yeah, that would be my guess.
(2) Unemployment stats are notoriously difficult to compare, internationally. That’s in part true because figuring out who the eligible population for “the workforce looking for jobs” is done differently in different places. For example, does a country count the long-term unemployed, or are they too “discouraged” to make it into the equation? How do we count folks in the armed services (and what percentage of the population is in the armed services/). Heck, Reagan made the unemployment stats in the U.S. look better just by deciding to exclude prisoners. That might make sense, but you have to look at such things at a pretty granular level.
September 11, 2011, 11:16 amJ.Patrick says:
It seems that the solution for the long-term unemployed is to lie about the gap in employment. Fill it in with a good reason. But then the employers, knowing that this would make logical sense, would merely further rely on status as long-term unemployed to the exclusion of information.
See how this works?
The easiest solution for the long-term unemployed is probably just to lie and fill in the gap in employment with employment at a fake company. If the fake “out of business” company can’t be verified, but the other stuff on the resume can, then it will be looked over. I have too much integrity for that, but a friend of mine solved his problem getting a job that way.
September 11, 2011, 11:26 amJoseph Slater says:
VanDeLay Industries!
September 11, 2011, 12:15 pmGiant Frog says:
The President says it “makes absolutely no sense” not to hire someone who has been out of work for an extended period of time.
That guy sure says a lot of stuff. Now he wants to force people to make poor business decisions because doing do might make him look slightly less awful. I’m shocked.
September 11, 2011, 12:15 pmOwen H says:
So it isn’t the President’s fault there are people that are unemployed? Good to know.
September 11, 2011, 12:53 pmRoger Zimmerman says:
This assumes that employers owe jobs to people. Otherwise, noone’s life is being ruined. In fact, a company is owned by its owners, and they owe a job to noone. If an employer hires someone, they would do so assuming it would be a benefit to their business, and the employee would accept the job assuming it will be a benefit to their own lives. This is called “win win” and it characterizes the social system that you decry.
September 11, 2011, 1:17 pmRoger Zimmerman says:
Stephen Lathrop wrote:
“If you condone a social system that contemplates ruining some people’s lives for other people’s benefit,…”
This assumes that employers owe jobs to people. Otherwise, noone’s life is being ruined. In fact, a company is owned by its owners, and they owe a job to noone. If an employer hires someone, they would do so assuming it would be a benefit to their business, and the employee would accept the job assuming it will be a benefit to their own lives. This is called “win win” and it characterizes the social system that you decry.
September 11, 2011, 1:19 pmRoger Zimmerman says:
Stephen Lathrop asked:
“How would it give them an excuse to avoid hiring the long-term unemployed?”
I would give them a reason (not an “excuse”) to avoid hiring anyone. If you are not hiring, it is difficult to prove that you are “discriminating”. You are betraying a profound lack of understanding about how the real world works.
September 11, 2011, 1:23 pmKen Arromdee says:
Not hiring anyone at all, when a company needs to hire, is a real disadvantage to the company. If they are so tied to discrimination that they would rather refuse to hire at all than to stop discriminating, then they’ll eventually go under, and they deserve it.
Riddle me this, why don’t companies try to “get around” the law barring racial discrimination in the same way? Companies who don’t want to hire blacks could refuse to hire anyone at all and then it would be difficult to prove they are discriminating.
September 11, 2011, 1:35 pmDavid M. Nieporent says:
Yes, if you exclude from the denominator large numbers of people that European taxpayers have to pay to stay out of the workforce, and then do the math, Europe looks better.
September 11, 2011, 1:52 pmricky says:
To the extent that a company can absorb deadweight quota hires, they will. To the extent that they can’t, they’ll outsource to India or China. Does that answer your question?
September 11, 2011, 2:41 pmLaura(southernxyl) says:
Ricky, is it your understanding that every black employee is a deadweight quota hire?
Companies that don’t want to hire black people but do anyway because they have to, knowingly hire deadweights to make a quota?
I’ve worked with many, many black people over years. There have been a handful of deadweights among them. I have had deadweight white coworkers too. Race is not a proxy for competence or work ethic.
September 11, 2011, 2:53 pmWhatever says:
Companies “get around” hiring laws every day. It’s simple – you hire people but don’t advertise an opening.
The vast majority of professional jobs are done by networking and word of mouth. A CEO needs a VP and he asks his network. A plumber grabs his counsin. A secretry slot is filled by asking your girlfriend if she has a friend who’s intererested.
All this law would do is drive more of this. That all. It would solve nothing and people who believe it will don’t live in the real world.
September 11, 2011, 2:58 pmPerseus says:
One would hope that a high percentage of people manage to find work during their relatively short work life (which is even shorter taking into account long vacations and 35 hour work weeks). And the chart also supports my point: it’s a selective view which sweeps under the rug those other problems.
September 11, 2011, 3:28 pmNL_ says:
Might as well just pass a law creating an Employment Commission to tally all the unemployed and then assign them jobs with various employers, who must accept the unemployed as conditions for business licenses and permits. If we’re not going to acknowledge the rights of employers to control these decisions, then why don’t we just go for full command economics and override all their decisions?
September 11, 2011, 3:58 pmJ.Patrick says:
This strikes me as the best solution. Objections?
I’m skeptical myself that any government intervention is going to make things better rather than worse, but Richard’s proposal doesn’t strike me as objectionable. Particularly, vis-a-vis what’s already on the table.
September 11, 2011, 4:07 pmChem_Geek says:
Hear, hear.
September 11, 2011, 4:44 pmMike says:
I’m really curious how anyone would prove this discrimination against an intelligent employer… I turn down ten applications for every one I hire,and rarely do I tell them why (mostly because “it’s your personality” or “you seem incompetent” aren’t really nice or helpful things to tell people). Do we now have a “previously unemployed” quota to worry about?
September 11, 2011, 5:19 pmthirdeblue says:
If people didn’t want to work at Walmart all their life, they should have had the foresight to not have gotten laid off in the past two years.
That’ll learn’em.
But seriously, a temporary tax credit aimed at hiring the long-term unemployed seems to be the most logical choice.
September 11, 2011, 5:32 pmRobert says:
Why? How does chronic inability to find employment elsewhere reflect negatively on one’s ability to do a job for you? I could understand if it was a sales job, in which case inability to sell oneself might reflect one’s inability to sell, period, but why would it matter for most other types of job?
September 11, 2011, 6:15 pmChris Travers says:
What kind of social machinery is that?
BTW, one thing I think would help the situation would be a shift to lump sum unemployment settlements (instead of month-by-month ones) equal to maybe 2 years’ salary. The goal here is to give people the *means* to become self-employed while looking for a job (if they want another one).
I know this won’t get anywhere. Those on the right will see the compensation as excessive and those on the left inadequate.
September 11, 2011, 6:18 pmricky says:
Did you work for “companies that don’t want to hire black people but do anyway because they have to”?
September 11, 2011, 6:20 pmLaura(southernxyl) says:
No, I wouldn’t knowingly work for a company that didn’t want to hire black people.
But if there were such a company, and they’re hiring black people against their will, they still aren’t obligated to hire affirmative-action deadweights. They may deliberately hire unqualified black folks in order to point up what victims they are, a kind of worm-eating I guess, but that’s their choice.
They may have to give up something they think they want in a candidate in order to get a black person. There are a lot of reasons, btw, why you might have to give up something you think you want in a candidate. You might not have enough money to hire a person with that qualification; there may not be anybody employable who lives in your area or is willing to relocate; there might be a candidate who knocks your socks off in every other way and you decide to let her learn that one thing on the job.
September 11, 2011, 6:40 pmLaura(southernxyl) says:
A lot of times I’ve had five or six good candidates and only one job to offer. Then it’s kind of arbitrary who I pick, and the others aren’t getting the job not because I don’t want to hire them, but because I can’t hire everyone. I wouldn’t deliberately pick the minority or the woman or whomever just to make a statement, even though that could be considered an acceptable form of AA if all candidates are pretty equally qualified; but at that point one could reasonably do a little self-assessment to make sure there’s not a standout in the group who is being pushed down, so to speak, because of a prejudice one has.
I realize that some people are pressured by their HR department on these things. I never have been.
September 11, 2011, 6:48 pmRoger Zimmerman says:
On the margin, that is precisely what people do. If the perceived cost in hiring is greater than the perceived cost in having the current employees (including the owners/managers) doing more work, then they do not hire. At this point in the recession, it arguable that the margin matters alot more than the steady state.
September 11, 2011, 7:42 pmJoseph Slater says:
Like I said, these cases are very, very hard to win, in part because they are very, very hard to prove. Also, plaintiffs aren’t as motivated to bring them as they are, say, when they have been fired from a job (in their view for a bad reason), because they aren’t as emotionally invested in some job they never had.
September 12, 2011, 9:09 amSmooth, Like a Rhapsody says:
If new jobs are being created, does it not logically follow that, at some point in the process, the unemployed—and the never employed (are they next in line for a legislative crutch?)—will eventually be hired?
September 12, 2011, 11:31 amIt’s not like this is the first time we have seen 9% unemployment.
ShelbyC says:
I’m sure you’re both fine just they way you are.
September 12, 2011, 11:37 amRicardo says:
It’s not the first time, but the discouraged worker problem is a very well-known limitation in collecting unemployment statistics. We do know that U.S. adult male labor force participation rate has been falling for the past 30 years so some of that may be due to men who got knocked out of the labor force during a recession and simply never returned.
September 12, 2011, 12:00 pmLaura(southernxyl) says:
But my husband, being a man, deserves respect and consideration of his feelings; and I, being a woman, don’t. I do get it. I’m going to stop arguing it. It’s one of the things that I don’t like but am forced to accept.
September 12, 2011, 12:09 pmShelbyC says:
The thing you don’t like but are forced to accept is that, when someone on a thread about dogs being allowed in bars makes the inevitable pun, and you chime in and say, hey, as a homely woman I resent that remark, you are begging for a well-deserved tweaking.
September 12, 2011, 12:59 pmLaura(southernxyl) says:
That’s not what I am forced to accept, Shelby. I am forced to accept exactly what I said. You’ll express all kinds of concern about how I address my husband but you’ll call me a dog and sneer at me when I express my dislike of it.
I get that you think churlish behavior toward women is OK. I got that before. I now get that you don’t think it’s OK to possibly say something that might hurt a man’s feelings.
Believe me, Shelby, I get it loud and clear.
September 12, 2011, 1:11 pmHasdrubal says:
Not the highest in the world, but you will find that for the past 10 years France and Germany have had persistent unemployment rates close to what the US has now, in the upper 7% to upper 8%/low 9% range.
Naturally, not all regulation is the same and the effect of a regulation on unemployment is certainly confounded by very many variables. Furthermore, it is exceptionally difficult to actually measure the effect of a policy on something as complex as the labor market, no matter how advanced the statistics you throw at it. You can’t really set up an experiment with a control and treatment group that are the same except for the regulatory scheme. (Indeed, many characteristics will vary precisely because of the regulatory scheme, a problem referred to as endogeneity.)
For a theoretical view of the subject, take a look at O. Blanchard and F. Giavazzi, Macroeconomic Effects of Regulation and Deregulation in Goods and Labor Markets,118 QUARTERLY JOURNAL OF ECONOMICS 879-908 (2003).
Empirically, Lazear, Edward, Job Security Provisions and Employment, 105 Quarterly Journal of Economics 699-726 (1990) led to a lot of research. While Lazear’s results don’t look like they hold up under some further analysis, there are a lot of followup papers that cite him and have found unemployment increased as a result of some regulations. See http://qje.oxfordjournals.org/content/105/3/699.short#fn-1 for the paper and some that cite it.
September 12, 2011, 1:17 pmSmooth, Like a Rhapsody says:
But why, on a libertarian law blog, would you without good reason label yourself as either:
1. an ugly chick; or
2. not an ugly chick, but someone who wants to pose as both an ugly chick and a humorless scold?
Nobody knows or cares what you look like. The joke was inevitable. Just like the inevitable jokes about Bush being a stupid, drunk chimp; or Obama being a callow socialist. And Barb’s hilarious send-ups of a mindlessly literal Christian.
Chill.
September 12, 2011, 1:34 pmJ.Patrick says:
Smooth/Shelby,
I think “lighten up” can be a fair enough rejoinder when someone says that your joke caused them offense. But I think you are missing Laura’s point that you can’t have it both ways. The double-standard she’s talking about is pervasive.
Shelby might feel she is exempt, but in my experience, women tend to be far more judgmental and unfair to other women than men often are.
Laura hardly needs my help defending herself or her arguments, but I just wanted to give another “outside opinion” to balance out smooth’s inane button-pushing.
September 12, 2011, 1:59 pmLaura(southernxyl) says:
Thanks, J.
Those jokes are not inevitable. We don’t get inevitable racist jokes any more, do we?
The stupid off-topic cracks about Bush and about Obama do nothing but drag down the quality of the conversation by adding a vulgar element and diluting the communication of substantive ideas.
They absolutely, flat-out are NOT inevitable. It’s a copout to say they are.
Besides: I will be 51 years old next month. I have had an entire lifetime to absorb how unattractive women are treated. If I went onto a thread about unattractive women I wouldn’t have a viable argument. But the OP and the first hundred or so comments – in which I participated so it can’t be said that no one knew I was there – were about fricking dogs, the four-legged canine kind. I cannot get away from it.
My husband complains occasionally about the misandry on TV. I ask him how come he continues to watch it; I don’t. He says that what he gets out of it balances out the garbage. I suppose that one of these days he’ll be fed up, turn it off, and won’t go back. I can see myself getting there too.
September 12, 2011, 2:14 pmMac says:
There are many, many studies showing that the longer unemployment benefits are given, the longer people stay out of the work force. Is this totally applicable today? I don’t know.
Another subject. When Congress decided to micro-manage the credit card business and, inexplixably, decreed that people who missed payments could not be charged higher interest rates, responsible people got their rates raised just as the Bankers told Congress they would have to do to cover losses from deadbeats. Then Congress recently capped debit card charges way below what the Banks said they needed to make a profit. This was a battle between retailers and the banks and the banks lost. A cynic might think that the retailers gave more money to certain members of Congress.
Today Bank of America announced it is selling its credit card business to a Canadian firm. At least it’s not China. B of A was pretty much forced by then “Friends of Angelo” to buy Countrywide. Now, the Feds are suing them over the mortgage behavior of Countrywide.
Bank of America also announced today that they are laying off 30,000 people. Can anyone say Frank-Dodd (the infamous “Friends of Angelo”) and closing numerous branches.
In another move, the Pres. has announced he is going to pay for his Jobs Bill by eliminating, among other things, the mortgae deduction for people who are millionaires and billionaires. Oh, that means people who make more than 200,000 (individual) or 250,000 for a couple. It boggles my mind how anyone thinks a man is smart who can’t do basic math and figure out that 200,000 does not equal even a million let alone a billion. Now, this should really help the mortgage mess and housing, don’t ya think?
If his Long-term Unemployed plan goes through, all those out of work bankers will have to go to the back of the line.
In other news, taxpayers just lost $500,000 million dollars in loan guarantees due to Solyndra, the solar company much touted by Obama, going bankrupt. Kaiser, the CEO, just happened to be a huge supporter and donar to Obama. The FBI is crawling all over their offices as I type and Congress want an investigation. Yeah, I think that is a good idea.
Also, did any of you catch Imelt, the CEO of GE who paid zero corporate income taxes last year, sitting next to Michelle Obama during the Jobs speech? Imelt’s wholly owned NBC AND MSNBC who were firmly in the tank for Obama during the Pres. race to the point that Hillary complained FOX was much fairer to her than either of them, was awarded the job of Obama’s Job Czar.
The same CEO who just moved 2 GE divisions wholly to China. These were an aircraft division and an x-ray division along with a yet to be determined amount of tax-payer funded NASA research that very well may be a huge boon to China’s military. I don’t have a figure on the jobs lost to America, but I imagine it is significant. You think Imelt misunderstood that he was supposed to be working on getting Americans back to work and thought it was Chinese back to work? The same GE who has received huge subsidies compliments nof US taxpayers.
And, you wonder why our economy is in such a mess? Yeah, Obama’s long-term unemployment bill is really gonna help.
September 12, 2011, 3:04 pmMac says:
Donor, not donar.
And, Solyndra is just one of 3 solar energy companies that went bankrupt in the last month taking who knows how many tax-payer dollars down the tubes. The Government is doing such a great job of mico-managing our economy and spending our tax dollars, no? NO.
September 12, 2011, 3:12 pmMac says:
micro, not mico. I have an iPad. Typo’s seem to be most inevitable with this thing.
September 12, 2011, 3:13 pmShelbyC says:
Well, lighten up is a better rejoinder when someone complains about, say, the term “black hole” as racially insensitive. But no, I don’t believe that Laura was offended by the “dog” joke, (which wasn’t even mine, btw), and I’m not even sure I believe she’s ugly. I think Laura wants to control what type of humor is acceptable. As her analogies to racist jokes make clear, she thinks that if she control the dialog, she can control people’s attitudes. And of course, she is perfectly entitled to her opinion, and to try to scold people when they make such jokes, just like I’m entitled to disagree, and to yank her chain when she does so.
And I’m not sure what to make of your horribly sexist comment about women being judgmental and unfair, maybe you think the just get their panties bunched up during that time of the month or something. But I’m not a woman, so your comment is misplaced.
September 12, 2011, 3:16 pmJ.Patrick says:
I apologize for misconstruing your gender identity. In my own limited experience, I have only known women and a golden retriever to go by the name Shelby. Point taken. As for women re: judgmental and unfair, I could point you to dialogue on Slate’s xx blog to that effect, or a large body of psychological and sociological research. Would you like this information?
September 12, 2011, 3:37 pmShelbyC says:
Yeah, I had some neighbors with a dog named Shelby. I got used to hearing “Shelby….Shelby….” getting called all the time, but I never got used to hearing things like, “goddammit, Shelby crapped on the rug again…”
Really? a large body of psychological and sociological research saying women are judgmental and unfair? Naw, I’m good.
September 12, 2011, 3:49 pmLaura(southernxyl) says:
Shelby, the dog joke offended the absolute hell out of me. Because of that, I gave you the option of backing off what you said but you doubled down. You can’t surprise me any longer by your ill manners because I know what to expect. My chain is not available for you to yank.
September 12, 2011, 3:50 pmJ.Patrick says:
That women, under certain circumstances, can be more judgmental and unfair to other women than men in those same circumstances. There is a vast literature on the ways that people can be stupid and mean, and neither men nor women have an overall edge in those regards. Being mean, at least, is under a person’s control.
September 12, 2011, 4:03 pmShelbyC says:
Well Laura, you may be too thin-skinned for the internet.
September 12, 2011, 5:55 pmLaura(southernxyl) says:
I will decide when that is the case, not you.
September 12, 2011, 6:38 pmAyaD says:
I have been browsing the job postings for a region of the country I’m interested in moving to… I saw an ad for a position that specifically states: “The successful candidate will be already employed and will introduce a Six Sigma mentality that enables superior growth through Process Driven Improvement, and develop future leaders for the business…”
I understand the statement about healthcare skills getting rusty, but I returned to school when I lost my job 16mo ago. My rusty Six Sigma skills are now shiny and new and I have a Black Belt to replace the drab Yellow one. I have followed the advice of successful headhunters and volunteered (I accepted a position as Unit Commissioner for my local BSA district and took over Public Relations for the district) my time to worthy causes; I am taking Leadership Development and Analytical Statistics courses… all in all I’d say my skills are far less rusty now than they were when I was employed.
It is tough to keep an edge in today’s economy, but to be summarily dismissed for not having a job in this field is unjustified. All this to say that I can see both sides… and I would be grateful for some type of intervention that keeps employers from discriminating against folks such as myself.
My two cents. :-}
September 19, 2011, 3:52 pmGood Luck To All Looking For A Job, Obama Wants To Seal Your Fate | 4 Mainstreet says:
[...] Prohibiting Employment Discrimination Against the Unemployed (volokh.com) [...]
September 28, 2011, 2:17 pmBanning discrimination against the unemployed? says:
[...] (”may very well have a positive impact on hiring. Just not in America”), Neil Munro, Adler/Volokh, Business Insider, Ted Frank/PoL, NYT “Room for Debate”, Dan Indiviglio/The Atlantic [...]
September 30, 2011, 3:11 pmSFJD says:
I’m really not sure if this provision would do anything to reduce unemployment. However, I think that business interests that reflexively oppose antidiscrimination laws tend to overstate the negative impact that it will have on business.
October 4, 2011, 4:51 pm