Wednesday, September 5, 2012

Business Sector: Labor Share


Click to enlarge.

I won't go into the details of the custom trend in blue unless someone really wants to know, but I will say that it involves an exponential growth model accelerating to the downside.

June 11, 2012
How to Get a Job? Beat the Machines

One upside of this automation is that applying for jobs has been made considerably easier, an outcome that was intended in the 1990s, when these systems were born and employers were competing to attract applicants. But there has been an unintended downside: That ease, combined with the huge pool of job seekers, now means that employers are overwhelmed with job applications. At the same time, human resource departments have been pushed to cut costs, especially their own head count. The only way to meet those two demands has been to move even further toward automating the entire hiring process.

August 26, 2012
Skilled work, without the worker

Foxconn has not said how many workers will be displaced. But its chairman, Terry Gou, has endorsed a growing use of robots. Speaking of his more than one million employees, he said in January, according to the official Xinhua news agency: "As human beings are also animals, to manage one million animals gives me a headache."

Source Data:
St. Louis Fed: Business Sector: Labor Share

5 comments:

  1. "one million employees".

    Man.

    Think of all the time Steve Jobs was futzing around with his Fremont factories back in the 1980s -- first for the Mac, and then for NeXT. Back then all the parts were actually being made in by Japanese companies in Singapore and Taiwan and only final assembly was done in the US, but what a maroon anyway!

    Steve sure timed his 3rd act well. . .

    http://research.stlouisfed.org/fred2/series/EXCHUS

    1. Invent hit consumer product
    2. ????
    3. PROFIT!

    Step 2 of course being call the Chinese.

    I just wonder how many more years I have until they overwhelm software production. Maybe I should offshore myself and just manage a team. Get more done, that's for sure.

    Have I mentioned yet that my last dotcom job was offshored to India to people making 1/10th my salary?

    ReplyDelete
  2. Troy,

    Have I mentioned yet that my last dotcom job was offshored to India to people making 1/10th my salary?

    Let's hope it takes 10 of them to do it. Sigh. :(

    ReplyDelete
  3. September 10, 2011
    The Physics of Job Losses

    Then "they" came for our information services jobs. We said nothing. We knew there was a dotcom bubble.

    I thought I recognized that chart. I too noticed the trend.

    ReplyDelete