This article at Atlantic.com acknowledges that labor supply matters -- that people with weak work incentives will be "pickier" about job offers.
At the same time it quibbles with my work on teenagers' seasonal, claiming that summer jobs for teens are "odd niche employment."
It doing so, it has begged the question! From where do the "odd niches" come? Outer space? Is it just a coincidence that teens enjoy their odd niche at exactly the time they are available to work, rather than, say, March-May? Is it just a coincidence that the summertime niche is for teens, and not for, say, elderly people?
The odd niche for teens comes from their willingness to work! If other groups were willing to work -- willing to give up their spare time and effort to help a business produce more, and accept pay that was commensurate with their production -- then emplopyment niches would appear for them too!
[NOTE: none of this says that the labor market is functioning well -- I have written elsewhere that is is not -- just that labor supply still matters in the usual way, despite the presence of large labor market distortions.]
At the same time it quibbles with my work on teenagers' seasonal, claiming that summer jobs for teens are "odd niche employment."
It doing so, it has begged the question! From where do the "odd niches" come? Outer space? Is it just a coincidence that teens enjoy their odd niche at exactly the time they are available to work, rather than, say, March-May? Is it just a coincidence that the summertime niche is for teens, and not for, say, elderly people?
The odd niche for teens comes from their willingness to work! If other groups were willing to work -- willing to give up their spare time and effort to help a business produce more, and accept pay that was commensurate with their production -- then emplopyment niches would appear for them too!
[NOTE: none of this says that the labor market is functioning well -- I have written elsewhere that is is not -- just that labor supply still matters in the usual way, despite the presence of large labor market distortions.]
2 comments:
I think it is problematic that you use a graph showing the ratio of jobs held by age groups. Imagine a model in which each month employers fire all their employees and randomly hire new ones from the pool of applicants, without adding or removing any positions to the total. In that model, the ratio of jobs held by teens will of course go up when more teens apply. But that doesn't indicate that increasing the supply of labor increases the number of jobs, just that the composition shifts. Keynesian theory is about aggregate employment.
Is it just a coincidence that construction workers in Illinois enjoy their odd niche at exactly the time they are available to work, rather than, say, December-March?
Duy is wondering whether you had a real summer job?
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