Turning of the Tide

Last year a major milestone for the global economy passed, all but unheralded.  In 2012 the working age population of China peaked.  This population is defined as the number of Chinese between the ages of 16 and 60.  There is a smaller pool of workers this year than there was last year.  That number will decline again next year, and every year after that for the next couple of decades.

This decline is the inevitable result of the one child per family policies put in place decades ago.  And the process is unstoppable.  Even if the Chinese government were to relax its population control policies tomorrow, and Chinese women to immediately react by having more kids, it would be at least 17 years before that increased fertility would begin lifting the number of workers.

This is a major milestone because China has become the world’s go to location for manufactured goods.  Export of manufactured products has powered the unprecedented growth of the Chinese economy.  However, two processes are about to collide.  As  the Chinese economy gets bigger, it is starting to generate more internal demand.  At the same time, the pool of labor is beginning to get smaller.  More demand for a scarcer resource inevitably means the price of that resource gets bid up.

We are already seeing that process starting.  In the southern coastal regions, which have been the major manufacturing areas, wage increases of 10% to 24% have been reported.

For the last ten years, powered by a seemingly inexhaustible supply of cheap labor, Chinese manufacturers have taken market share away from domestic producers.  Chinese made products have taken over whole industries.  This has been great for consumers, who have benefited from low prices, but for American manufacturers, it has meant layoffs and plant closings.  There are now signs of this process reversing.  Motorola has opened a factory in Texas to start making cell phones.  And Apple Computer has announced plans to begin making some computers in the US again.  GE is moving more production of appliances back to the heartland.

Of course, China is not the only low wage country out there.  Vietnam, India, the Philippines—the world is awash in low cost labor.  Also, if Chinese workers decide to stay in the labor force past age 60, the erosion in the size of their labor force will stop.  Still, as an American manufacturing manager, the last ten years have been like watching the tide go out, with every year bringing tighter margins and fewer opportunities.  So I can be forgiven for taking Chinese demographics as a hopeful sign.

Maybe we’re seeing the turning of the tide.

Defining Poverty

There is a great deal of discussion in this country about the poverty line, and the percentage of the population that lives below the poverty line.  In the debate about increasing the minimum wage, the issue is often couched in terms suggesting that the minimum wage should be high enough for a single wage earner to earn over the poverty line for a family of four.

In an earlier post, I pointed out that with current Federal antipoverty programs, one wage earner can get a family above the poverty line.  In this post, I want to look at a different question: where does the poverty line come from?  We say that a family of four that has less than $23,450 of annual income is living in poverty.  How do we make that determination?  It turns out it is not hard to find that information.

In 1963-64, an economist with the Social security Administration, Mollie Orshansky, made the first official definition of poverty.  Her methodology was simple.  She took a Department of Agriculture economy food plan that listed how much a person should eat during a week (3 lbs. of milk and cheese, 2 lbs. of meat, 5 eggs, etc.).  This amount of food was added together for various family sizes, then the cost was calculated.  Orshansky then multiplied the dollar cost of the food by a factor of three.  That was the definition of the poverty level adopted in 1965. 

Where did the factor of three come from?  In 1955, the Department of Agriculture did a survey that showed families of three or more persons spent about a third of their after tax income on food.

In 1969, this poverty line was indexed to changes in the consumer price index (CPI), so that it increases with inflation.  Other then minor changes regarding issues such as the distinction between farm and non-farm families, the formula has remained constant since then.  You can find this history here.

The problem with a static definition of poverty is obvious.  It does not take productivity growth and technological change into account.  Long term productivity growth means you can buy more stuff with less money.  For example, in 2011 Americans spent only about 8% of their income on food, tobacco, and alcohol combined.  That number reflects a remarkable shift in spending patterns over the last 50 years.  The money not spent on food is deployed in other ways.  For example, only 18% of household below the poverty line do not have air conditioning, and some of those people live in Alaska.  Television ownership is almost universal in our society.

Those in favor of more government intervention in the economy often cite poverty statistics to demonstrate that the government needs to do more giveaways of other people’s money.  I would argue that a bad definition of poverty leads to bad policy making. 

After all, if “poor” people are 50 pounds overweight, and walking around with smart phones, TVs and iPads, doesn’t that indicate that the “war” on poverty has been pretty much won?  Maybe we can declare victory and go home.

Unemployment Statistics

The official jobs number came out last week.  The news about employment was so-so at best.  The economy added about 170K jobs lat month, but the number for the previous two months were revised downward, meaning total employment didn’t increase by all that much.  Meanwhile, another 50,000 people dropped out of the workforce, presumably because they were discouraged by their inability to find a job.  The official unemployment rate declined to 7.3%, still too high a rate for anyone to start uncorking the Champaign.

The anemic recovery in the job market has spawned a host of commentary over the unemployment rate and how it is measured.  Most of the commentary focuses on how the statistics are under counting the unemployed.  I have seen estimates that calculate the unemployment rate as high as 16%.  To reach that number you have to include everyone who is working part time, everyone who has dropped out of the workforce, and everyone who considers themselves to be paid less than they think they are worth.

Against all the statistical hand wringing I can only counterpoise a couple of anecdotes.

I have a relative who graduated from college a little over a year ago.  He worked for a few months on a political campaign.  After the election, he spent a couple of months at a nonprofit, then followed that up with an internship.  None of these paid much more than minimum wage.  However, he landed a position with a retail company a few months ago.  The initial reports are that he is hitting his stride in his first real full time job.

In my church, I knew a senior manager who lost his position when his plant closed.  Despite excellent qualifications, he struggled to even get interviews.  But recently, he let me know that he had just started a new job as the second shift plant manager at a local company that is expanding.  It is not the equivalent of his old job, but it is stable employment, even if it is a step back down the career ladder, probably till the end of his career.  He spent over a year on the unemployment line.

Finally, I ran into a friend last month, who let me know about her husband’s job search.  He has just started at a new company, in a similar position to the one he lost two years ago.  He has a longer commute, but reckons that a small price to pay to be back in the game.

One of the threads that connect all three of these stories is persistence.  None of them ever gave up, despite all of he discouragement that a modern job search entails.  The other thread is flexibility.  All three made compromises of one form or another to get the job.

I guess the arguments about the proper way to measure unemployment are important.  But is seems to me that what is really important is whether you have a job.  And in getting one of those, persistence and the willingness to accept what the market is offering trumps any discussion of whether it is a “good” job market or a “bad” job market.

Skills Development

My company is adding some new product lines in the next couple of months.  Preparatory to starting production, I was entering all of the components and assemblies into our inventory database, and creating the codes that will manipulate that inventory.  It was a task that combined the need for exacting precision with mind numbing tedium.

Since I am fairly high up the food chain where I work, that got me thinking about whether the task I was working on fit the category of “highly skilled” work.  I concluded that it was.  Although the actual data entry was clerical in nature, navigating the systems and knowing what to input raised the skill profile.  I certainly could not have off-loaded the task to a clerk.  This led me to consider more generally the question of what constitutes a skill?

My model for skills involves the interaction of three separate components: education, talent, and experience.  Education includes everything from literacy and numeracy, through higher education.  It also encompasses task specific training.  This can range from simple job instructions like “Push this button.  Then when the green light flashes, open the mold, pull the part out and put it in the bin.” to brain surgery. 

Experience is the second part of skills.  Often times, training will cover the simplest and most basic scenario for a given task, or set of tasks.  Experience is what you get from the myriad variations that arise over time.  Also, experience provides the repetition that pounds home and cements the gains that training initiates.  The broader the range of experience you can build around a given task, the higher your skill level can get.

Talent is the wild card for skill development.  I could train with a coach for ten years, and never get within a million miles of NBA caliber basketball play.  We’ve all seen bad actors, and we’ve all seen actors who seem to effortlessly create memorable characters.  Talent is the difference.  But talent applies to every field, not just athletics or creative work.  I’ve seen factory maintenance mechanics who can take apart a piece of equipment, figure out what is wrong, and solve a problem, all without ever having worked on that particular piece of machinery.  I’ve known plenty of other mechanics who will work on equipment all day long, without ever actually solving the problem, if they’ve never had that particular problem arise before.  The difference in their work performance is due to that ineffable something called talent.

Talent also encompasses personality traits.  Part of my stock in trade is that I am willing to accept responsibility for the work that other people do.  A lot of people will not accept that responsibility.  That lack makes it tough for them to manage other people.

What does any of this matter?  Well, in an ever-changing economy, the only job security we can muster is by constantly upgrading our skills.  You can’t really do much about your talents.  You either have them or you don’t.  But you can know your talents.  If you combine that knowledge with ongoing education, and seek out an ever wider range of experiences, you can keep increasing your skills throughout your career.