This problem with low productivity jobs finds various explanations, notably those of technology, globalisation, and inflexibility - the latter ornate for “welfare state sclerosis”. Policies based on these latter explanations have been enacted for some time now. For quite some time, in fact; while little is being achieved. It is proper that we pose the question: why is it that we don’t achieve much ?
Unemployment obviously has a much longer history than the current problem. Also, the Western track record on unemployment can only be understood when the record on inflation is taken into account too. Economic science has much to say on the complex relationship between inflation and unemployment. Now, we are forced to be brief here. We will concentrate on what is new and on why it is new.
We set out with the empirical evidence since 1950. This track record can be divided in meaningful decades:
· The 1950s had low unemployment and low inflation.
· The 1960s had the threat of unemployment, and governments accommodating inflation in order to actually prevent it.
· The 1970s nevertheless had mass unemployment bursting into the open, and governments accommodating high and accelerating inflation to battle it.
· The 1980s-till-now had governments come down hard on inflation, and accepting high levels of unemployment as the price for stability.
One sees a certain “trade-off” between unemployment and inflation. From the 1950s till the end of the 1980s the common view among economists and policy makers was that the unemployment in the trade-off was “general” unemployment. Nowadays we tend to link unemployment to lowly productive labour. For us it may be obvious, but compared to the earlier view it is revolutionary that the once-thought-to-be “general” unemployment now turns up as a rather specific type. To make the revolution specific: we will hold that the unemployment in the trade-off has always been related to the distribution of productivity across labour.
The crucial insight is that the people who can demand pay rises need not be the people who run the risk of unemployment thereof. High productivity workers run less risk of unemployment and can more easily demand pay rises, while low productivity workers run the larger risk of unemployment. High productivity workers are more versatile and are able to shift the risk of unemployment to the lower income groups. When jobs are scarce, the high productivity workers even crowd out others from the labour market.
Now obviously, when this is new, then it has not been recognised before, and then it has likely been missing in policy. And policy that was based on a wrong analysis, is likely to have been the cause of the very problem that it wanted to solve.