Headline, May 03 2022/ JOBS : ''' '' EQUITY -RESPECT- VOICE '' '''

JOBS : ''' '' EQUITY -

RESPECT - VOICE '' '''

A LINKEDIN MEMBER SURVEY RELEASED THIS MONTH found that a third of workers would exchange a small cut in pay for more enjoyable work, and a quarter would do so in exchange for a ''stronger chance to grow in the role.''

Labor economists talk about two kinds of employers. Some take the high road, designing jobs that are varied and interesting, require lots of training and are well paid.

OTHERS, take the low road, dumbing down jobs so that anyone can do them and consequently paying lower wages. What low-road employers save in pay is offset by higher costs for supervision and rapid turnover. ''Companies taking those two different approaches can coexist in the same industry. So it is a choice,'' Mr. Groshen of Cornell told me.

STUDENTS KEEP ASKING : WHAT MAKES A GOOD JOB GOOD? For the last many months, - on the very quiet - some founders I had privately nominated, led by Zill, set about weaving a master web. For now, I'll leave it at that.

IN THE WORLD - especially in the developing world, An initiative to define what makes jobs bad or good is very, very long, overdue?

LET'S take the case of The United States which is producing a lot of jobs, but how many are ''good''  jobs? That's hard to know because of a lack of data and because there's no agreed upon definition of what makes a job good or bad?

A new project called the Job Quality Measurement Initiative aims to fix those problems and fill a big hole in the global understanding of the labor market. I got an early look at the project recently and so I am sharing what I learned with you.

THE U.S. Department of Labor began the initiative in cooperation with several nonprofits, including the Families and Workers Fund, the Omidyar Network, the Lumina Foundation and the Ford Foundation.

''We're constantly measuring the number of jobs in the U.S.economy, but the quality of jobs has gone largely unmeasured,'' Rachel Korberg, executive director and a co-founder of the Families and Workers Fund, told me in an interview.

IF QUANTITY of jobs were all that mattered, workers would be in heaven right now. After spiking in 2020 during the pandemic recession, the U.S. unemployment rate has plunged, reaching 3.6 percent in March, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics. That's tied with a couple of month's right before the pandemic for the lowest jobless rate since the 1960s.

There were nearly 11.3 million job openings in the United States at the end of February, more than triple the number a decade earlier, B.L.S. data show.

However, the strong demand for labor over the past several years has not translated into meaningful pay gains. While average hourly earnings for all employees on private, nonfarm payrolls rose to $31.73 in March, up 5.6 percent over the past 12 months, that wasn't even enough to keep up with consumer prices, which shot up 8.5 percent over the same period.

And that's just in the past year. '' It's no longer news that most U.S. workers, especially those without college degrees, saw wages stagnate over the past four decades,'' Erica Groshen of Cornell and Harry Hozer of Georgetown wrote last year.

Many workers lack leverage to demand higher pay. They're less likely to belong to labor unions than in the past, especially in the private sector. Some don't understand their options, while others are undocumented and thus at the mercy of their employers. I spoke with Joel Salar, 34, an undcumented 2018 immigrant from Venezuela who until recently traveled the country cleaning up after disasters such as hurricanes and fires.

He described a life of sleeping in cars in all parking lots, coping with downed electrical wires and toxic chemicals without adequate protection and being cheated of wages by employers and harassed by the police.

Mr. Salazer saw his job as good in one key respect, though : ''People thank us for rebuilding their communities,'' he said in Spanish. ''There is a pride.'' [ He is now a field organizer for an organization Resilience Force that helps disaster workers such as he was.]

THAT GETS to a larger point  What's perceived as a bad job by one person might be a great one to another. Forester. Bartender. Pet groomer. President of the United States (!). To get around the difference in preferences, the measurement initiative is working with Aspen Institute to choose criteria that just about everyone would agree are important.

The criteria, which will be announced in June, are likely to revolve around economic stability and mobility and what Korberg calls ''equity, respect and voice.''

PEOPLE CAN DISAGREE even over those basic criteria. How would you rate a job that pays wells but offers poor mobility or equity?

MOST PEOPLE would consider the high-training, high-pay job to be better than the low training, low-pay job. But not all. Some people just need quick money to pay bills and may lack the inclination, time or ability for a ''high road'' job.

I got an example of that when I spoke with David Zamir, founder and C.E.O. of Nana Academy, a company that trains people in appliance repair at no cost and then sends them out on jobs.

Mr. Zamir said Nana graduates who learn the most complicated repair jobs can make $160,000 a year or more. But ''15 percent want simple and easy,'' he said. ''They want in and out.'' And that's fine, he said.

The Honor and Serving of the Latest Global Operational Research on Jobs, Jabs, and Jibes, continues. The World Students Society thanks author Peter Coy.

With respectful dedication to the Grandmothers, Mothers, Students, Professors, and Teachers of the world. See Ya all prepare and register for Great Global Elections on The World Students Society :  wssciw.blogspot.com and Twitter - !E-WOW! - The Ecosystem 2011 :

Good Night and God Bless

SAM Daily Times - the Voice of the Voiceless