2min chapter

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Can Labor Markets Save Capitalism? With David Autor

Capitalisn't

CHAPTER

The Unexpected Compression of the Labor Market

David Frum: Pandemics have reshaped labor markets, but not like this. He says we were in a period of tightening labor markets due to demographics and retirements. After the pandemic, things got much tighter, faster inequality, he says. Frum: The tidiness of the current labor market is good; it's making bad jobs or low-paid jobs less low-paid.

00:00
Speaker 3
So David, throughout history, pandemics have reshaped labor markets. Is what we see happening
Speaker 1
now a result of the pandemic, or would it have happened anyway? It was happening, but it wouldn't have happened like this. So we were in a period of tightening labor markets. That reflected a number of things. An important thing it reflects is demographics. We have a rapid increase in retirements, and we have very few young people entering the labor market. Their fertility is low, small cohorts, and then vastly restricted immigration. But then there really is a discontinuity with the pandemic, where all of a sudden, things got much tighter, much faster inequality, really compressed, and we saw some pretty sharp changes in the way, especially low-paid labor markets among young workers, high school grads, or working. And I think many of us were extremely surprised by this. I know I was surprised. I'm on record as being surprised, because I predicted exactly the opposite in a paper I wrote early in the pandemic called, you know, the post-pandemic labor market too few low-aged jobs. So I felt entitled to call my paper the unexpected compression, because clearly it was unexpected for me. So the tidiness of the current labor market is good. It's making bad jobs or low-paid jobs less low-paid. But it's not transformative, right? People are still learning a little bit more. They're getting somewhat better benefits. Employers are doing a little more to accommodate them. But this is not going to rocket people into the middle class. And so we need you more if we want that to
Speaker 2
happen. So as the only immigrant in the group, let me raise a difficult question, because from your descriptions, you are completely ignoring the viable immigration. I'm not a labor economist, but I don't think you need to be a labor economist to know that if you increase supply, prices tend to go down.

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