Barlett and Steele...

[Brad De Long]

>Brad De Long wrote:
>
>>Page 21: "[The Federal Government] talks of retraining the newly unemployed
>>to fill high-tech jobs that don't exist."
>>
>>	--Stagnant real wages are--according to Janet Yellen--the result
>>not of
>>	  the fact that new jobs are by and large bad, low-wage, low-skill
>>jobs, but
>>	  the result of declining real wages at old, already-existing jobs.
>
>Yellen's point doesn't answer B&S's claim, which in this case is true,
>since growth in "high tech" jobs, actual and projected, is a lot lower than
>you'd guess from reading the papers.
>
>And surely the job mix - the decline of manufacturing, the rise of retail
>and business services - has had some depressing influence on the average
>wage.
>
>Doug

The job mix has had some depressing effect on the average wage--and there
are fewer high-tech high-wage jobs than you would guess from reading the
papers--but when Larry Katz was at the Labor Department he had some very
impressive numbers about the rate of return earned by investments in worker
retraining, and in job search assistance for the unemployed.

All of Katz's plans, alas, left on the budget-cutting-room floor,
especially after 1994...

Brad DeLong