Comments for The NYT Can't Find Anyone In Germany Who Is Not an Employer at http://www.cepr.net , comment 1 to 10 out of 10 comments http://www.cepr.net Thu, 23 May 2013 03:13:32 +0100 FeedCreator 1.7.3 http://www.cepr.net/index.php/blogs/beat-the-press/the-nyt-cant-find-anyone-in-germany-who-is-not-an-employer#comment-6785 On the positive side, the NYTimes moved its mention of low wages up from its normal place in the anti penultimate paragraph to the second one. After all if the reason that Bankster bonuses can't be cut is because of the difficulty of finding Banksters, then surely the same logic applies to nursing home staff - marc sobel Mon, 07 Feb 2011 06:53:25 +0100 http://www.cepr.net/index.php/blogs/beat-the-press/the-nyt-cant-find-anyone-in-germany-who-is-not-an-employer#comment-6767 @anthrosciguy. It wasn't so long ago in the small Texas town where I grew up when all my mother's friends were bemoaning, I kid you not, that you just couldn't find good help anymore -- in this case, help for home care for the aged. Naively I suggested to the women that there were plenty such workers employed at the rest homes, and if they wanted home care attendants they could hire these experienced workers away at higher rates of pay. The horror! The black and brown workers in the rest homes were being paid the minimum wage, and THAT IS ALL THEY DESERVED! I mean, after all, if you gave them raises, they would be making as much as white people. No no no no no. Now my own mother is receiving home care from an agency that charges us $14 an hour. Her non-white attendant receives $7.25 an hour, or the current minimum wage. - Woody Sun, 06 Feb 2011 17:09:15 +0100 http://www.cepr.net/index.php/blogs/beat-the-press/the-nyt-cant-find-anyone-in-germany-who-is-not-an-employer#comment-6764 A quick glance on several German statistical portals confirmed my hunch that the NYT article was rather superficial. As your analysis pertains to the NYT article, it is in consequence also superficial. Personally I don't think that a rate of 7,6% according to the latest AP figures is that great, when I grew up rates of 5% were considered a worry. The situation is a lot more complicated, as a lot of German unemployed are hidden through enrolment in various government measures, which means they don't get counted as unemployed. Equally the situation of older qualified workers with experience is not addressed in these figures - there are plenty of qualified engineers, amongst others from the former GDR, who cannot find employment. There seems to be a pronounced bias towards younger workers. The situation is further compounded and blurred by the opening of the labour market within the EU; with a change in regulations imminent, this has actually resulted in the IAB (the research centre of the federal employment agency) calling for the introduction of a minimum wage before May 2011. Link only in German, sorry. http://www.iab.de/de/informationsservice/presse/presseinformationen/fo0210.aspx - stalinetta Sun, 06 Feb 2011 08:01:33 +0100 http://www.cepr.net/index.php/blogs/beat-the-press/the-nyt-cant-find-anyone-in-germany-who-is-not-an-employer#comment-6763 Robert, You make no sense, as if Germany were something to emulated. Germany is as much a problem in the doomed European system as Ireland is. While it may appear healthy, no economy can export their way to prosperity forever. As economic imbalances build up it becomes apparent that debts accumulated hit unrealistic levels and economies stall. It is almost time for German banks to hit Zombie bank mode from investing so much in the peripheral Euro economies (assuming the euro survives). Soon after that, Chinese banks will turn into Zombies due to their (mal)investment. Their lost decades are still to come. Germany and China are following the Japan Inc. playbook and I don't see how their long fate can be any different than Japan's lost decade(s). - Paul Sun, 06 Feb 2011 06:30:37 +0100 http://www.cepr.net/index.php/blogs/beat-the-press/the-nyt-cant-find-anyone-in-germany-who-is-not-an-employer#comment-6762 [i]There will be fewer people working as store clerks in convenience stores, housekeepers in hotels, or as parking lot attendants. There is no obvious economic problem associated with workers moving into more productive occupations.[/i] I would suggest that is an “economic problem” for convenience stores, hotels, and parking lots, which is what the New York Times article is about. - Bill H Sun, 06 Feb 2011 06:15:31 +0100 http://www.cepr.net/index.php/blogs/beat-the-press/the-nyt-cant-find-anyone-in-germany-who-is-not-an-employer#comment-6761 Most American liberals understand Dr. Baker's points in this post perfectly well when thinking about Germany. What they need is for a single extra neuron to fire so they can draw the obvious implication for American policy: REDUCE IMMIGRATION. Importing an enormous underclass has lowered wages and our standard of living. - Robert Sun, 06 Feb 2011 05:36:18 +0100 http://www.cepr.net/index.php/blogs/beat-the-press/the-nyt-cant-find-anyone-in-germany-who-is-not-an-employer#comment-6758 I can hardly believe what I am reading. You deny the "right" of employers to exist; if they can't find enough workers willing to accept what they pay, you say they must go out of business. You say it's good for workers to leave low paying jobs for higher paying jobs. You don't think that outsourcing and low-wage immigrant labor (legal or illegal) should be giving American businesses higher profits while causing unemployment and lowered living standards for American workers? You are a revolutionary! Now if only more would join the revolution, we could go back to having an economy that functioned well for most Americans, not just the lucky few! - JoblessinJersey Sun, 06 Feb 2011 02:00:06 +0100 http://www.cepr.net/index.php/blogs/beat-the-press/the-nyt-cant-find-anyone-in-germany-who-is-not-an-employer#comment-6756 Over the past decade I've heard variations of this "can't find workers" story over and over on radio and TV, as some employer complains that they've got jobs but no one wants to work at them. Why they don't accept the idea of the market setting wages and simply raise the wage until someone applies is extremely hypocritical, since these same people have no problem using the market as an excuse for firing people, moving jobs out of the country or into another state, etc. - anthrosciguy Sat, 05 Feb 2011 18:33:38 +0100 http://www.cepr.net/index.php/blogs/beat-the-press/the-nyt-cant-find-anyone-in-germany-who-is-not-an-employer#comment-6754 From the NYT article, this quote: [quote]And with the economy expanding, he added, it is more difficult to recruit “because of competitive job alternatives in other sectors.”[/quote] Exactly. This is why the economy is not allowed to expand in the USA under the Obama-Immelt Competitiveness Plan, because it could result in shortages and rising wages as employers are forced to compete for labor. It's a mystery why the NYT doesn't report on the dramatic success of reduced demand policy in the USA that avoids the same shortages and inflation faced by Germany. Maybe it has something to do with all those fearmongering consultants making predictions about Germany based on free market failure. Somehow the market can't seem to clear at a higher wage ... because it's stuck in a shortage at lower wages that appear to be frozen by some mysterious force like structural unemployment and mismatched skills. Come to the USA where makets clear because shortages are not allowed to occur in the first place. - izzatzo Sat, 05 Feb 2011 16:52:32 +0100 http://www.cepr.net/index.php/blogs/beat-the-press/the-nyt-cant-find-anyone-in-germany-who-is-not-an-employer#comment-6753 The idea here is to hold out Germany's relative austerity as a model for US employment growth. This of course is nonsense, as it fails to credit Germany's positive balance of trade as the reason the German government can operate in a non-expansionary mode without hurting its employment figures. It works everywhere just like this ... except apparently at the New York Times. - Benedict@Large Sat, 05 Feb 2011 15:50:17 +0100