Flexible US labour market hides structural problems
At 5 o'clock on a crisp Washington morning the Reverend Phil Anderson distributes copies of the Financial Times and other newspapers with a group of recent immigrants.
The former preacher has spent 13 months looking for a job that fits his qualifications which include a masters degree and plenty of public speaking.
The Rev Anderson is one of a growing number of well-educated Americans who are finding it hard to claw their way back into the labour market after being made redundant or deciding to change direction. “Even though I'm not technically unemployed, it's a worry that from now on I will be subject to the will and whim of sporadic employment,” he says.
With the official unemployment rate at 5.2 per cent, close to a three-decade low, long-term joblessness has slid off the US political agenda. But beneath the headlines, recent economic data suggest there are problems with America's much-vaunted, ultra-flexible labour market.
The number of Americans without a job for more than six months has more than doubled over the past three years to 1.6m. The share of the unemployed without work for more than six months has been above 20 per cent for the past year and a half. Never before has the rate been so high for so long.
In addition, the average duration of unemployment has remained at over 19 weeks since the spring of 2003 again, its longest run at these levels since official statistics began in 1948.
Employment growth has just been able to absorb the estimated 150,000 workers entering the job market for the first time each month, but clearly not enough to make a dent in long-term unemployment. “It is too easy to be glib about the unemployment figures,” says Senator Edward Kennedy, who has been fighting a largely unsuccessful battle to focus attention on joblessness. “The figures are rosier than the situation because we don't look at the number who have just given up looking or taken temporary jobs.”
Take these factors into account, says Washington's Economic Policy Institute, and the US unemployment rate is more than 7 per cent.
Economists are having to accept that the US labour market long seen as a model for all others faces long-term structural problems.
For many analysts the main culprits are globalisation and “Europeanisation”.
The great weakness of labour markets in many European countries is the high cost of benefits the non-wage cost of labour. In the US the booming cost of health care coverage has begun to arouse similar concern. US carmakers now spend more on health care than on raw materials. The cost of benefits to American employers jumped from 27.4 per cent of total compensation in 2001 to 28.6 per cent in 2003 and has almost certainly risen since then.
“Of course US companies are still far less burdened than their European counterparts,” says George Magnus, global economist at UBS. “Nevertheless, the rising healthcare [burden] is pushing US companies in a distinctly European direction and must represent a significant deterrent to hiring.”
These problems have been mounting at precisely the moment the US needed to be at its most flexible. An analysis of the recession of 2001 by the Federal Reserve concluded that many of those dismissed during the downturn had been the victims of a secular decline in their industry rather than a short-term wavering of demand.
“Because so many people have been forced to find new positions in different industries or companies, it has increased the length of time that people are suffering unemployment,” says Jim Saxton, the Republican chairman of the Joint Economic Committee of Congress. “We are often so specialised that it is hard to move from a declining profession.”
The speed of structural change has been accelerated by globalisation, with the migration of light manufacturing and IT jobs to lower cost countries. The manufacturing sector has lost 2.8m jobs over the past year, and people leaving this sector are particularly likely to join the ranks of the long-term unemployed, since theirlevels of formal education tend to be lower and their skills harder to transfer into the dominant service sector.
For many Democrats, these changes underline the need for the US to invest more to help displaced workers move to new industries. Senator Kennedy has been pushing for a large boost to federal funding of vocational and adult education programmes.
美国劳动力市场的“内伤”
清晨5点，一个清新的早晨，美国华盛顿的菲尔?安德森(Phil Anderson)牧师正和一群新移民分发《金融时报》和其它报纸。
这位前传教士已经花了13个月寻找适合他的工作，他的资历包括一个硕士学位和丰富的公开演说经历。
如今，越来越多受过良好教育的美国人发现，在被裁员或决定改变发展方向后，他们难以重返劳动力市场，安德鲁牧师就是他们中的一员。“尽管我不是技术性失业，但从现在开始，我将被打零工的意愿和奇想所左右，这令我心烦意乱，”他说。
目前美国官方公布的失业率为5.2%，接近30年最低水平。在这种情况下，长期失业已经退出了美国的政治议程。但在这些大标题背后，最近的经济数据显示，美国大加吹嘘、超灵活的劳动力市场存在一些问题。
在过去3年中，失业6个月以上的美国人数量增加了一倍多，达160万人。在过去一年半中，失业6个月以上人员占总失业人数的比例一直在20%以上。这一比例从未在这么长时间内处于如此高的水平。
此外，自2003年春季以来，失业的平均持续时间又一次保持在19周以上，这是自1948年有官方数据以来，失业持续时间在这一水平上所保持的最长时间。
据估计，每月首次进入就业市场的人数为15万，就业增长刚好能够吸收这部分人，但是显然不足以降低长期失业水平。“要粉饰失业数据简直太容易了，”参议员爱德华?肯尼迪(Edward Kennedy)说，“失业数据比实际情况漂亮，因为我们没有考虑一个数字，就是刚放弃寻找工作，或从事临时工的人。”他一直为让人关注失业问题而斗争，但这种斗争在很大程度上未取得成功。
华盛顿经济政策协会(Economic Policy Institute)表示，如果把这些因素考虑进去，那么美国的失业率将超过7%。
经济学家们不得不承认，虽然长期以来，美国劳动力市场被视为所有其它劳动力市场的典范，但它面临着长期的结构问题。
许多分析师认为，罪魁祸首是全球化和“欧洲化”。
在许多欧洲国家，劳动力市场的巨大缺陷在于高昂的福利成本（即非工资劳动成本）。在美国，员工医疗保健成本飞速增长，这已开始引起类似的担忧。目前，美国汽车制造商的员工保健支出高于原材料支出。2001年，美国雇主支付的福利成本占员工薪酬总额的27.4%，2003年该比例跳升至28.6%，而且此后几乎肯定还在上升。
“当然，美国公司的负担仍远远低于欧洲公司，”瑞银(UBS)全球经济学家乔治?马格纳斯(George Magnus)说，“然而，日益增长的医疗保健（负担)迫使美国公司明显趋向于欧洲公司的情形，这将严重阻碍雇佣。”
这些问题的出现，正值美国需要处于最灵活状态的时候。美联储(Fed)对2001年经济衰退的一份分析得出的结论是，许多员工之所以在萧条时期被解雇，是因为他们所在的行业长期衰退，而不是短期的需求波动。
“由于被迫在不同于当前的行业或公司寻找新职位的人太多了，因此延长了人们遭受失业的时间。”美国国会联合经济委员会(Joint Economic Committee of Congress)主席、共和党人吉姆?萨克斯顿(Jim Saxton)表示，“我们常常因为专业性太强而很难从衰退中的行业跳槽出去。”
全球化加快了结构变动的速度，同时轻工业和信息技术行业的职位也转移到低成本国家。制造业去年丧失了280万个职位，而离开该行业的人特别可能加入长期失业的阵营，原因在于他们的正规教育水平往往比较低，而他们的技能也往往较难转移到占支配地位的服务业。
对许多民主党人而言，这些变化突出表明，美国需要更多投入来帮助失业人员转移到新行业中。参议员肯尼迪一直在敦促，要大幅提高联邦政府对职业教育和成人教育项目的资助。
