[WS:] But you can train people for most jobs in less than a month, and if someone needs only a refresher it takes even less. So if they were really concerned about skill, it would cost them no more than monthly wages, and after that the person's skills would increase to the required level, but his pay would not increase - so it is purse savings to the company.
When I did my graduate work in sociology of work and occupations, folks loved to trash the popular myth that wage differences could be accounted by skill differences. There are plenty of studies showing that skill account only for some share of variance in compensation, and factors such as sex, race, or labor market position (primary vs secondary) accounted for quite substantial chunks of that variance. So when I hear conventional wisdom blaming someone's disadvantaged labor market position on the "lack of skills" I just laugh. The ratio of bullshit to variance explained is way too high for this claim to be believable.
Wojtek
On Thu, Feb 17, 2011 at 10:36 AM, Doug Henwood <dhenwood at panix.com> wrote:
>
> On Feb 17, 2011, at 7:35 AM, Wojtek S wrote:
>
> > But what not hiring the "reserve army?" From an economic point of view,
> the
> > "opportunity cost" of an employed person is much higher than that of an
> > unemployed one. So one would think that ceteri paribus the bosses would
> > prefer hiring a currently unemployed person because they could get away
> with
> > paying him/her less, no? What gives?
>
> The standard line is that the long-term unemployed lose skills. I.e.,
> they're damaged goods.
>
> Doug
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