EconTalk

I did an EconTalk Podcast with Russ Roberts. The general subject is economic growth, the reasons it seems to be slipping away from us and policies (or non-policies) that might help.

As in other recent projects (growth essay, testimony) I'm trying to synthesize, and also to find policies and ways to talk about them that avoid the stale left-right debate, where people just shout base-pleasing spin ever louder. "You're a tax and spend socialist" "You just want tax cuts for your rich buddies" is getting about as far as "You always leave your socks on the floor" "Well, you spend the whole day on the phone to your mother."

We did this as an interview before a live audience, at a Chicago Booth alumni event held at Hoover, so it's a bit lighter than the usual EconTalk. This kind of thought helps the synthesis process a lot for me.  Russ' pointed questions make me think, as did the audience in follow up Q&A (not recorded). Plus, it was fun.

I always leave any interview full of regrets about things I could have said better or differently. The top of the regret pile here was leaving a short joke in response to Russ' question about what the government should spend more on. Russ was kindly teeing up the section of the growth essay "there is good spending" and perhaps "spend more to spend less" ideas in several other recent writings. It would have been a good idea to go there and spend a lot more time on the question.


From the growth essay, I think the government could profitably spend a lot more money on the justice system. That so many of our fellow citizens rot in jail awaiting trials, that the vast majority never receive a trial anyway but a hasty plea-bargain, that their legal representation is so thin, is a disgrace -- and causing huge problems. If a wrongly accused young man spends two years in jail before charges are dropped, the consequences for him and his family are awful. Business relies on a speedy and efficient justice system to adjudicate commercial disputes, and that seems to be falling apart too, partly for lack of resources.  The cost here is peanuts compared to, say, peanut subsidies.

Our public infrastructure doesn't just consist of steel and asphalt. The public software needs investment as well, or more.

Public health is one of the most essential public goods. Of all the civilization-ending scenarios you can think of, nuclear war and a pandemics top my list. Many past pandemics followed a surge in globalization -- the plague of the 1350s, that wiped out half or more of the population; the smallpox that wiped out native America in the 1500s, the 1918 flu. (Larry Summers has a good article on this point.) We are ripe for antibiotics to stop working and new diseases to spread catastrophically, if not among humans among the plants and animals on which we depend. Don't count on the UN and the WHO.

The government can profitably fund basic research. "Yes, 95% of funded research is silly. Yes, the government allocates money inefficiently. Yes, research should also attract private donations. But the 5% that is not silly is often vital, and can produce big breakthroughs." (Basic research is not the same thing as subsidies for commercializing research.)

Yes, Martha, I should have said, there are public goods here and there.

Of course, more spending on things like these does not imply more spending overall. They're all remarkably cheap, and could easily be funded by spending a little less on some of the colossal waste. (Example: We spend $6 billion on the FBI and $13 billion on border control.) Of course, one must also spend wisely and use the results wisely. And one could add a lot to the list. But repeating a fun joke about spending is not the right answer.

Testimony

I was invited to testify at a hearing of the House budget committee on Sept 14. It's nothing novel or revolutionary, but a chance to put my thoughts together on how to get growth going again, and policy approaches that get past the usual partisan squabbling. Here are my oral remarks. (pdf version here.) The written testimony, with lots of explanation and footnotes, is here. (pdf) (Getting footnotes in html is a pain.)

Chairman Price, Ranking Member Van Hollen, and members of the committee: It is an honor to speak to you today.

Sclerotic growth is our country’s most fundamental economic problem. If we could get back to the three and half percent postwar average, we would, in the next 30 years, triple rather than double the size of the economy—and tax revenues, which would do wonders for our debt problem.

Why has growth halved? The most plausible answer is simple and sensible: Our legal and regulatory system is slowly strangling the golden goose of growth.

How do we fix it? Our national political and economic debate just makes the same points again, louder, and going nowhere. Instead, let us look together for novel and effective policies that can appeal to all sides.

Regulation:


Let’s get past “too much” or “too little” regulation, and fix regulation instead.

Regulation is too discretionary – people can’t read the rules and know what to do. Regulatory decisions take forever. Regulation has lost rule-of-law protections. Agencies are cop, prosecutor, judge, jury and executioner all rolled in to one. Most dangerous of all, regulation is becoming more politicized.

Congress can fix this.

Social programs

Let’s get past spending “more” or “less” on social programs, and fix them instead.

Often, if you earn an extra dollar, you lose more than a dollar of benefits. No wonder people get stuck. If we fix these disincentives, we will help people better, encourage growth and opportunity--and in the end we will spend less.

Spend more to spend less.

Spending is a serious problem. But moving spending off the books does not help.

For example, we allow a mortgage interest tax deduction. This is exactly the same as collecting taxes, and sending checks to homeowners – but larger checks for high income people, people who borrow a lot, and people who refinance often.

Suppose we eliminate the mortgage deduction, and put housing subsidies on budget. The resulting homeowner subsidy would surely be a lot smaller, help lower-income people a lot more, and be better targeted at getting people in houses.

The budget would look bigger. But we would really spend less -- and grow more.

Taxes

Tax reform fails because arguments over the level of taxes, subsidies, or redistribution torpedo sensible simplifications. We could achieve tax reform by separating its four confounding issues.

First, determine the structure of taxes, to raise revenue with minimal economic damages, but leave the rates blank. Separately negotiate the rates. Put all tax incentives in a separate subsidy code, preferably as visible on-budget expenditures. Add a separate income-redistribution code. Then necessary big fights over each element need not derail the others.

A massive simplification of the tax code is, I think, more important than the rates – and easier for us to agree on.

Debt and deficits

Each year the CBO correctly declares our long-term debt unsustainable. Yelling louder won’t work.

First, let’s face the big problem: a debt crisis, when the U.S. suddenly needs to borrow a lot and roll over debts, and markets refuse. This, not a slow predictable rise in interest rates and crowding out, strikes me as the biggest problem.  Crises are always sudden and unexpected, like earthquakes and wars. Even Greece could borrow at remarkably low rates. Until, one day, it couldn’t.

The answers are straightforward. Sensible reforms to Social Security and Medicare are on the table. Address underfunded pensions, widespread credit and bailout guarantees.

Buy some insurance. Like every homeowner shopping for a mortgage, the US chooses between a floating rate, lower initially, and a fixed rate, higher initially, but forever insulating the budget from interest rate risks, which are the essential ingredient of a debt crisis. Direct the Treasury and Fed to buy the fixed rate.

Above all, undertake this simple, pro-growth economic policy, and grow out of debt.

Concluding comments

You may object that fundamental reform is not “politically feasible.” Well, what’s “politically feasible” changes fast these days.

Winston Churchill once said that Americans can be trusted to do the right thing, after we’ve tried everything else. Well, we’ve tried everything else. It’s time to do the right thing.

Federalization of Labor

We are getting a good hint that a centerpiece of economic policy in the Hillary Clinton administration will be an increase in Federal control over labor markets.

The news here is that serious economists are advocating these policies, not just to transfer income from one to another, reduce inequality, help specific groups, or enhance some sense of social justice, at the expense of dynamism and growth, but that more Federal control of the labor market will increase wages, productivity and economic growth for everyone!

Alan Blinder's cogent Aug 2 Wall Street Journal opinion piece gives a good sense of the language and logic,

... Hillary Clinton has presented an extensive list of policies that would raise wages, starting with a higher minimum wage. ...

Mrs. Clinton also advocates widespread profit-sharing as a way to put more money into workers’ pockets. She would promote that goal both by using the presidential bully pulpit and by providing tax incentives for businesses that share profits. Since the scholarly evidence suggests that profit-sharing raises productivity, such tax breaks will partly pay for themselves.

Increased vocational training and apprenticeships for the non-college-bound are also major Clinton policies....The U.S. can increase its productivity and reduce inequality by ensuring that the right people get vocational training and apprenticeships.

And then there is what may be the surest way to raise wages over the long run: providing pre-K education for all American children....

Labor market intervention is getting wrapped up in "stimulus," as reported in an excellent Bloomberg column by Brendan Greeley here,

 "It’s really simple," she said at a rally in June in Ohio. "Higher wages leads to more demand, which leads to more jobs, which leads to higher wages." ...

When Clinton uses the word "demand" on the stump, she’s blowing a dog whistle. (Economists have them, too.) Increase demand, she’s saying, and you get growth.... 

Bob Gordon signs on reluctantly,  

"I think it’s a very marginal way of promoting economic growth," says Robert Gordon, economist at Northwestern University who specializes in the subject. Like Summers, he prefers a massive investment in infrastructure. But he does agree that a shift in business income away from profits and toward salaries would create growth. Workers are more likely to buy things from their paychecks than businesses are to invest out of their profits.

Alan Krueger ["former chairman of the Council of Economic Advisers and an informal adviser to the Clinton campaign," and candidate for vice-president of the American Economic Association] agrees wholeheartedly:

... "I think the time could be right for a more virtuous growth model," he said, "which is driven by stronger wage growth...more consumption, more demand, creating more jobs." 

Novel rationalizations for decades-old policies are always suspect. And the usual passive or verb-less sentences hiding the heavy hand of Federal government always invites skepticism.

But let's take it seriously. How much sense do these analyses make?

Without rehashing the whole minimum-wage fight, it is worth asking, if the Federal Government forces businesses to raise some people's wages, but others become unemployed as a result, whether that really count as raising wages overall?

The words "presidential bully pulipit" has poor overtones in the current age. The bully pulpit means the DOJ, EEOC, IRS, NLRB, EPA and who knows even the fish and wildlife service may come calling if you don't do what the president wants. Schoolyard bully, not Teddy Roosevelt's jolly-good pulpit.

"The scholarly evidence indicates that profit-sharing raises productivity.." That's a new twist on the abominable "studies show" argument by reference to vague authority.  But even "scholarly evidence" has to make some sense.

It does make sense that firms which study the question and choose profit-sharing plans can thereby raise productivity, either by giving their employees better incentives or by attracting different and more productive employees. They would not do it otherwise.

But this classic subject-free sentence is about Federal Regulations to force profit-sharing that "puts money into workers' pockets" on all firms. It does not follow that such a mandate will have the same effect. This is the classic, "rich guys drive BMWs, so if we force BMW to give cars away we'll all get rich."

To belabor the obvious, that some firms choose it because they see it will work does not mean that the Federal Government forcing it on all firms will work.  That profit sharing which increases workers' incentives can work does not mean that reducing profits and paying lump sums to workers will work. That profit sharing accompanied by greater selection of productive workers works does not mean that forced profit sharing will work for everyone -- someone employs the less productive, I hope.

If it's about incentives, then there should be a widespread Federal initiative to promote piece-work, commissions rather than salaries, independent contractors rather than employees... Hmm, we're headed the other way.

As economists, we are supposed to start with a problem. What is the market failure that stops companies form putting in productivity enhancing profit sharing programs? Or are they just too dumb and need the benevolent hand of the "bully pulpit" to educate them?

"Increased vocational training and apprenticeships for the non-college-bound," are more Orwellian subject-less sentences. Who is going to do this increasing and how? What is the market failure? Do we need to have triple digit numbers of Federal Job-training programs?

"Providing pre-k education" is another subject-free sentence. I presume he does not mean reducing regulations and union requirements so more pre-k schools can start up! That might actually be effective. But perhaps it is technically correct: a large Federal subsidy for pre-k education, funneled through the public school systems and teacher's unions will raise someone's wages. The "scholarly evidence" is not that it will be the kids.

The idea that forcing companies to pay out greater wages is the key to "stimulus," and that demand-side "stimulus" is the key to long-run growth is...er... even more novel economics.

In classic Keynesian stimulus, there is something about the government borrowing money and spending it, or giving it to consumers to spend, that causes people to forget that the borrowed money must be paid back someday. Not here -- this is directly the claim that taking from Peter and giving to Paul is the key to prosperity. And not just temporary stimulus, but long run growth.

One of many fallacies at work here is the notion that companies face a choice between "paper" investment and "real" investment; that by piling up cash reserves they are somehow diverting resources that could be "real demand" into "paper investments." But every paper asset is a paper liability, so this possible truth about an individual company makes no sense for an economy as a whole.

And let's follow the logic.  If this works for stimulus and growth, force companies to give away cash to consumers. Consumers are, well, people who like to consume. Force them to give cash away to thieves. They consume quickly.  If this is a bad idea.. well then maybe the whole "stimulus" thin is a bit of bunk as well.

Gordon at least has the decency to belittle the idea. And on "a shift in business income [another subjectless sentence -- this shift is forced by the Federal Government!] away from profits and toward salaries would create growth"  because "Workers are more likely to buy things from their paychecks than businesses are to invest out of their profits," one can hope that a statement which violates basic accounting is a misquotation.

 Krueger has less defense: "a more virtuous growth model,...which is driven by stronger wage growth...more consumption, more demand, creating more jobs" is a direct quote. It may be "virtuous" to feel this way, but the classic criticism of Democratic economic policy is doing things that make you feel good but don't work.

Well maybe, maybe not. Economics is a work in progress. But it is certainly brand-new, made-up-on-the spot economics, designed to buttress policies decided on for other reasons.

A last grumpy comment. The WSJ titled Blinder's oped, "Only one candidate can make wages grow again."  Actually I agree with the sentence   Like most media they forgot there are more than two candidates!

Blueprint for America

"Blueprint for America" is a collection of essays, organized, edited and inspired by George P. Shultz. You can get an overview and chapter by chapter pdfs here. The hardcover will be available from Amazon or Hoover Press October 1.

Some of the inspiration for this project came from the remarkable 1980 memo (here) to President-elect Ronald Reagan from his Coordinating Committee on Economic Policy.

Like that memo, this is a book about governance, not politics.  It's not partisan -- copies are being sent to both campaigns. It's not about choosing or spinning policies to attract voters or win elections.

The book is about long-term policies and policy frameworks -- how policy is made, return to rule of law, is as important as what the policy is --  that can fix America's problems. It focuses on what we think are the important issues as well as policies to address those issues -- it does not address every passion of the latest two-week news cycle.

The book comprises the answers we would give to an incoming Administration of any party, or incoming Congress, if they asked us for a policy package that is best for the long-term welfare of the country.

The chapters, to whet your appetite:

INTRODUCTION
CHAPTER 1: The Domestic Landscape by Michael J. Boskin
IN BRIEF: Spending by George P. Shultz
CHAPTER 2: Entitlements and the Budget by John F. Cogan
CHAPTER 3: A Blueprint for Tax Reform by Michael J. Boskin
CHAPTER 4: Transformational Health Care Reform by Scott W. Atlas
CHAPTER 5: Reforming Regulation by Michael J. Boskin
CHAPTER 6: National and International Monetary Reform by John B. Taylor
CHAPTER 7: A Blueprint for Effective Financial Reform by John H. Cochrane
IN BRIEF: National Human Resources by George P. Shultz
CHAPTER 8: Education and the Nation’s Future by Eric A. Hanushek
CHAPTER 9: Trade and Immigration by John H. Cochrane
IN BRIEF: A World Awash in Change
CHAPTER 10: Restoring Our National Security by James O. Ellis Jr., James N. Mattis, and Kori Schake
CHAPTER 11: Redefining Energy Security by James O. Ellis Jr.
CHAPTER 12: Diplomacy in a Time of Transition by James E. Goodby
CLOSING NOTE: The Art and Practice of Governance by George P. Shultz

My chapter on a Blueprint for Effective Financial Reform is a better version of the talk on Equity Financed banking which I posted here. (The talk was based on the paper. Now you have the paper.)

My chapter on Trade and Immigration is new, and an uncompromising red-meat free-market view. I don't think one should compromise centuries old economic understanding just because it's not politically popular at the moment.
 
If you got this far, you might also be interested in my Economic Growth essay written for a parallel but similar project.

Overtime

Like most economists, I was a bit baffled by the Administration's announcement of stricter overtime rules. The WSJ, and Jonathan Hartley and many others cover the obvious consequences on jobs, business formation and destruction, and so forth. A bit less mentioned, it reduces employee flexibility. If you like working more hours one week and less the next -- perhaps you have child or parent care responsibilities -- you're going to be stuck working an 8 hour day.  It's part of the general regulated ossification of American employment. Or, it could be one more inducement to substitute machines for people or make people independent contractors.

Why are they doing it? The government says it wants more jobs, yet there is no area in American life with larger impediments between a willing employer and employee than labor.

I'm trying to bend over backwards to understand a worldview under which this is a sensible idea.

One possibility. Suppose this is your image of work: Take as given that a person has a job, and the employer will keep that job going, and won't change the terms of the job -- lower the base wage, allow people to take overtime, etc. Take as given that the terms of the job are a pure bilateral negotiation, and there is money somewhere to absorb extra costs without raising prices.  Take as given also that the worker is in a bad negotiating position, and you, the benevolent central department of labor, care about moving this negotiation in the worker's way. Then, a rule like this is a way of strengthening the worker's bargaining position and driving some resources the worker's way out of the employer's pocket.

The counterargument is really just that all this "take as given" is false.

Here is an effort to put that debate in econ 101 supply and demand diagrams. Let's think of the rule as a mandated higher wage, like a minimum wage. The classic analysis says you get fewer jobs.

Now, how might you not lose jobs? The implicit assumption in my paragraph above is that the labor demand curve is vertical. Employers will hire the same number of people for the same hours no matter how much they have to pay. And they'll all stay in business too.

If that were the case, as you see, we wouldn't lose any jobs. There would be some unemployment, as more people want to work or employees want more hours than they can get. But I think advocates of these policies don't mind. Getting people to go out and look for jobs might not be so terrible.

Another way to apply econ 101 is to think of the new rules as new costs imposed on the employer. If employers have to bear more costs, their demand for workers drops down by the amount of the extra costs. Again, adding costs reduces employment. Once again, what are they thinking?

Well, again, suppose that the demand curve is vertical. Now employers simply bear the cost, grumble, but there is no reduction in the number of employees and hours.

Of course, with the assumptions made bare, we can think of lots of reasons that demand curves do slope, employers cut down on workers if they have to pay more direct or indirect costs, and companies don't have infinite funds coming from nowhere. But perhaps by showing implicit assumptions, there is some room for discussion that gets somewhere. I would be interested in hearing serious defenses of the vertical demand curve assumption.

Update: Good grief, Noah,  of course "to understand the true impact of overtime rules, we probably have to include more complicated stuff!" Who ever said otherwise? Isn't "econ 101" clear enough that this is a an extremely simple starting place? And aren't you the guy complaining about excess mathiness,  big black boxes in economics, and people who don't even try to understand the opposing arguments?

Week's sad news

In the  quest to understand just how much the administrative state is harming economic activity, there are lots of anecdotes but few overall measures. But we have lots of anectdotes. I thought it would be fun to put together a week's worth from my morning-coffee WSJ reading.

Tuesday: The Labor Department issues a new "persuader rule"

...an employer would likely have to report asking a consultant to study the labor savings of moving to a right-to-work state. An attorney would have to disclose private discussions with an employer over a neutrality agreement to support a union’s organizing campaign...an attorney who advises Employer A about a union organizing campaign will also have to report if he’s conducting, say, a sexual harassment investigation at Employer B. All of this information will be public....The Manhattan Institute estimates the rule will cost about $60 billion over 10 years....The beneficiaries will be unions, which don’t have to report their own persuader activities. 

Wednesday: Judge blocks Staples Merger, and 45 federal programs,

U.S. District Judge Emmet G. Sullivan sided with the Federal Trade Commission, which in a December lawsuit alleged the combination of the office superstores would lead to higher prices for large corporations that buy office supplies in bulk.

Shares of both companies plunged in morning trading in New York. Office Depot stock dropped 37% to $3.82, while Staples fell 19% to $8.41...Staples said Tuesday it will cut another $300 million in annual costs and explore alternatives for its European operations, which include more than 200 stores.

Many of us remember the econ 101 fable of monopoly which needs government protection. Most of the academic IO and antitrust literature has come to disbelieve this classic story. Staples and Office Depot themselves are recent innovations. There is no distinct market for large box office retail stores. Everything in them can be bought elsewhere, and it's pretty easy to enter. In fact, they are in decline facing competition from the internet and other retailers. The idea that they can lock up the market on paper, toner cartriges, off-brand pcs, and raise prices is pretty silly. Especially for "large corporations that buy office supplies in bulk." Please, the point of the federal government is to preserve low prices for "large corporations" to buy paper?

Thursday's editorial on the matter puts it better than I did,

Stuck in a declining market, Staples and Office Depot have been reporting reduced sales. Government lawyers might have noticed that people are using less paper and ink these days. Then there are those little competitors called Amazon, Costco and Wal-Mart. Such competition is why the government couldn’t argue with a straight face that a merged company would force higher prices on individual consumers or small businesses. So the government claimed that the victims of the proposed merger would be huge corporations that buy in bulk...the judge made clear that he thinks the Exxons of the country need government help to get a deal on Post-it notes.  

Also, on the editorial page, 

The auditors at the Government Accountability Office report that there are currently 45 federal programs dedicated to supporting care “from birth through age five,” spread across multiple agencies. The Agriculture Department runs a nursery division, for some reason.

“Administering similar programs in different agencies can create an environment in which programs may not serve children and families as efficiently and effectively as possible,” GAO dryly notes. Parents can also claim five separate child-care tax credits.

Thurdsay A Climate Courtroom Crusade Scorches Due Process.

Read the whole thing, if like me you're not a lawyer. It turns out, back in the day, Attorneys general couldn't, on their own, subpoena all your files, comb through them, and then use the results to file criminal charges.

Mr. Schneiderman and other attorneys general have the power to bring not simply administrative, but criminal, charges on the basis of the information they force out of private parties. They thereby dangerously combine the roles of grand jury and prosecutor.

File it under decline of rule of law, and increasing ability of political officials to silence opponents.

In more classic gumming-up-the-works, Port-Trucking Firms Run Into Labor Dispute.

The nation’s busiest ports are emerging as a key battleground in the legal fight over whether truck drivers should be counted as employees or independent contractors.

Several trucking companies operating at the ports of Long Beach and Los Angeles have filed for bankruptcy protection in recent months, citing mounting costs to settle hundreds of legal claims. 

This is related to the big fight whether Uber drivers are contractors or employees. Independent contractors -- as chosen by the companies and their drivers -- gives us the consumer cheaper services, and allows more freedom to the company and workers. Employee status costs a lot more, makes a few drivers better off, and keeps a lot of potential drivers out of the market.

Friday Tesla Can Build All The Cars It Wants. The Real Challenge Could Be Selling Them

Via Forbes, and a good reminder that so much damaging regulation is state and local. Tesla wants to sell you cars directly, no-haggle, the way you buy computers.

Tesla is prohibited from selling cars directly to consumers in many states, including Texas and Michigan, where laws protect franchised car dealers....its direct-to-consumer sales model has run into a buzz saw of state franchise laws..... In a few states, such as New Jersey, New York, Ohio and Pennsylvania, Tesla won permission to operate a handful of retail locations, and no more. But dealer trade groups are objecting. In some states, they’ve filed suit to block retail licenses granted to Tesla; in others, they’ve proposed legislation that would prevent Tesla from obtaining such licenses.

Lost Jobs in Recessions

The WSJ has a nice article showing just how hard it has been for many people who lost jobs in the recession to get back to work. Their profile is typical of what I have read and not the typical picture of unemployment: Middle age middle managers. The paper by Steve Davis and Till von Wachter is here. They present the fact largely as a puzzle, which it is:  "losses in the model vary little with aggregate conditions at the time of displacement, unlike the pattern in the data."

As the story makes clear, the problem is really not unemployment. There are lots of jobs available. The jobs just don't pay much, and don't use the specialized skills that the workers have to offer. The problem is wages at the jobs they can get.

This is a very interesting fact, with many less than obvious interpretations. It strikes me as a good teaching moment for economics classes.

The natural interpretation of all correlations is causal: There are  two identical workers in two identical jobs at two identical companies. One worker happened to lose his or her job in a recession, and so faces a harder climb back. We learn about the difference in job markets over time.

Maybe, but the job of being an economist is to recognize lots of other possibilities for a correlation. So the proposed discussion question: what else might this mean? How does taking averages reflect selection rather than cause?

Perhaps not all workers are the same. The conventional view of recessions is that companies fire people from lack of "aggregate demand," or shocks external to the firm.  In good times, companies fire people when those people aren't very good. Then, you would think, being laid off in a recession is better than being laid off in good times. If you're laid off in good times that is a signal you're not a great worker. In a recession, everybody got laid off, so there is not any particular stigma in it.  Well, so much for that story.

A contrary story is that it's easier to get rid of people in a recession. The head of a large business once told me how useful the last recession was, as he could plead financial problems and finally get rid of the army of unionized workers that were playing solitaire all day. Guido Menzio  and Mikhail Golosov have a model that (I think!) formalizes this story. (Menzio was recently in the news, as an idiot fellow passenger thought he was a terrorist because he was doing algebra on a plane, a different sad commentary on contemporary America.)

Perhaps not all businesses are the same. Businesses and occupations that get hit in recessions are different from those that get hit in booms...

Perhaps times are not the same. Recessions are pretty much by definition a time when different sorts of shocks hit the economy. If recession shocks require bigger changes in specialized human capital than normal-times (more idosyncratic shocks), or people to move industries and cities more, then you'll see this pattern.

And so on. Interesting facts, not so obvious interpretations, averages that don't always mean what you think they mean, that's why economics is so fun.

Update:  Steve Davis writes to explain that job losses in recessions are concentrated in specific industries:

You write: "...If recession shocks require bigger changes in specialized human capital than normal-times (more idiosyncratic shocks), or people to move industries and cities more, then you'll see this pattern.” 

Here’s a modified version of this story that has more promise in my view.  First, an under appreciated empirical observation: The cross-industry (cross-firm, cross-establishment) distribution of employment growth rates becomes more negatively skewed in recessionary periods.  Job loss is also concentrated in industries (firms, establishments) that experience relatively large net and gross job destruction rates.  Taken together, these two observations tell us that, in recessions, a larger share of job losers hail from industries (firms, establishments) that get hit by especially large negative shocks (even compared to the average), reducing the value of skills utilized by workers in those industries (firms, establishments).  I conjecture that negative skewness in the cross-occupation distribution of employment growth rates is also counter cyclical, but I don’t recall any direct and convincing evidence on that score. 

Restating, the setting in which job loss occurs worsens for the average job loser in recessions, because (1) overall economic conditions worsen in recessions, AND (2) conditions worsen especially for industries (occupations, etc.) with a disproportionate share of job loss. Many models consider the effects of (1), but there is little work on (2).  Testing hypotheses and building theories related to (2) requires good measures of the individual-specific “setting” in which individual job losses occur.  One of my PhD students, Claudia Macaluso, is making good progress on that front in her dissertation.

William Carrington and Bruce Fallick have a review paper on why earnings fall with job displacement.

McArdle Nugget

Megan McArdle has produced a timely nugget of wise prose

I would cross income inequality itself off the list of priorities. Far greater concerns include: absolute suffering among those with low incomes; a socioeconomic structure that seems to be ossifying into a hierarchy of professional classes; and a decline in income mobility, which is to say, in equality of opportunity. It doesn’t really matter whether Bill Gates has some incomprehensible sum of money at his disposal. It does matter a great deal whether there are Americans in desperate want. And of course, it matters whether anyone with the aptitude and motivation can become the next Bill Gates, or only a handful of privileged people who are already well off.

I also submit that the importance of the issue is inversely proportionate to the ease of solution. The government is very good at taxing income of some Americans and writing checks to others. (Whether you think it should do this is, of course, a different question.)

[JC: Actually, I'm not so sure the government is very good at this. Our tax code is a mess. Our income transfers largely go to middle class and well connected businesses. Our system of writing checks includes numerous 100% + marginal tax rates and other disincentives. Despite the one of the most progressive tax systems on the planet, there are still schizophrenics on the streets.]

It is very bad at preparing someone to live a solid and fulfilling life of work and community, which is one reason we mostly leave that job to parents.

Government is also not well suited to creating a lot of satisfying and remunerative jobs. It can contribute to productivity and help companies to flourish, for example through basic research and by maintaining a competent legal and regulatory system. And it can directly create a few jobs providing government services; these have been, for many communities at many times, a stepping stone to the middle class.

... For the most part, the best the government can do is to avoid stepping on the creation of satisfying and remunerative jobs; no nation on earth seems to have figured out how to generate “good jobs” for everyone. 

[JC: I think she means no government on earth.. "nations" have figured it out!]