Developing countries that invested in quality jobs from the early 2000s grew nearly one percentage point faster every year since 2007 and were better able to weather the economic crisis than comparable economies, according to a new report by the United Nations labour agency.
The annual report of the International Labour Organization (ILO), The World of Work 2014, focuses this year on the relationship between good jobs and national development through analysis of 140 developing and emerging nations.
“Decent work opportunities for women and men help trigger development and reduce poverty,” Guy Ryder, Director-General of the ILO,” said in a news release on the launch of the report, subtitled Developing with Jobs.
“Social protection, respect for core labour standards and policies that promote formal employment are also crucial for creating quality jobs that raise living standards, increase domestic consumption and drive overall growth,” he added.
“In view of the evidence, it is essential to make decent work a central goal in the post-2015 development agenda,” stressed Raymond Torres, Director of the ILO Research Department.
Quality jobs are an important tool for escaping poverty traps. In a recent post, I said that economics is always context sensitive; this does not mean, however, that certain things–such as quality jobs–are not important in all contexts. Whether in a rich or poor country, societies poorest are unable to escape poverty traps because they do not save–they either spend their entire income on survival or short-term luxuries to distract them from life’s problems. While “extreme poverty” (living on less than $1.25 /day, adjusted for purchasing power parity) is confined to the world’s least developed countries (LDCs), relative poverty exists everywhere. While the exact income level needed to escape a poverty trap (the inflection point on the graph above) is context sensitive, the general relationship holds in all contexts.
Underpinning the universality of relative poverty is the inverse relationship between marginal propensity to consume (MPC) and income; the lower ones income, the greater percentage of it they will consume. The flip side of this is low savings–the higher one’s MPC (ranging from 0-1), the lower one’s MPS (MPS + MPC = 1). This inability to save perpetuates a vicious cycle of low productivity, low wages, and low savings resulting in inadequate investment in “human capital” (education, healthcare, etc), which is what causes the low level of productivity in the first place–a poverty trap. While different income groups in different countries have different levels of MPC/S, this general relationship between income, consumption, savings, investment and poverty holds in all contexts.
The U.N. report cited at the beginning of this post focuses on quality job creation in developing countries; I would like to shift the focus to America’s political economy. No politician, particularly in a democracy, would ever say they are opposed to creating quality jobs. Therefore, we must assess the different ideological / policy approaches to quality job creation, in order to determine which approach is most likely to succeed:
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Liberals:
Invest in human capital, particularly needs-based investment (which, due to low levels of income / savings, these people cannot afford themselves) to boost worker productivity, physical capital (infrastructure projects), and growth markets (such as renewable energy) to boost economic output and create jobs in a depressed economy (counter-cyclical fiscal policy).
Raise the minimum wage and support collective bargaining (unionization) to increase take home pay for “blue collar” workers.
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Conservatives:
Cut spending to reign in the deficit, restoring confidence in the economy so “job creators” (those who hold financial capital) will reinvest into the economy. Perpetuate a “race to the bottom” by discouraging collective bargaining and subsidizing private job creation by providing tax breaks / subsidies to private companies .
Reduce taxes and regulations as much as possible (starve the “beast”). Rely on private actors, market forces, and trickle-down economics to result in the optimal allocation of resources.
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Conservatives will point to a low unemployment rate (currently 6.3%) to prove that additional stimulus spending is not needed. Liberals will counter with evidence of wage stagnation and “working poor” to argue that greater labor market intervention is needed. The question then becomes, what is a quality job? Is it simply having a job, or is a minimum salary (perhaps that inflection point) needed? Further clouding the issue is the apparent disconnect between productivity and wages, implying that simply training low wage workers–the typical remedy for escaping “poverty traps”–may be insufficient to create “quality jobs” (and hence the growing minimum wage movement).
History has resoundingly and repeatedly debunked the concept of “trickle down economics” yet it keeps coming up in mainstream political economy discussions–something Paul Krugman would call a “Zombie Idea”. The reason this “zombie idea” persists is relatively straightforward–vested interests with large levels of wealth perpetuate this view through the mainstream media. They state any additional costs (taxes, regulations, wage increases) will cause massive job loss despite record high corporate profits (after taxes) and stock values , and (relatedly) historically low corporate income tax rates.
I leave my readers with this question; which plan to create quality jobs sounds more likely to work to you? Take that answer to the voting booth with you during the 2014 midterm elections, because quality jobs are the key to sustainable human development, economic growth, and social cohesion.
Normative Narratives 