A host of industries want to allow more people into the United States. Agriculture. Construction. Hospitality. Healthcare. Manufacturing. Technology.
You do not have to drive far these days to see the "Help Wanted" signs up to understand the problem.
This chart says a lot of where we are at right now. Initial jobless claims are at 50-year lows.
CNBC.com reports that the labor shortage is reaching a critical stage.
Truck drivers are in perilously low supply, Silicon Valley continues to struggle to fill vacancies, and employers across the grid are coping with a skills mismatch as the economy edges ever closer to full employment.
The Bureau of Labor Statistics reported that April closed with 6.7 million job openings. May ended with just over 6 million people the BLS classifies as unemployed, continuing a trend this year that has seen openings eclipse the labor pool for the first time.
There is a good argument to be made for allowing more immigrants to fill these jobs.
However, we also need to be very careful about who gets into the country for these jobs. We need to make sure they have the education, language, technical and social skills to be able to integrate and assimilate into this country and its economy.
Note that the biggest problem cited in the CNBC story is not a lack of available workers but a mismatch of skills.
In this respect, our immigration system is generally at odds with this approach. To make matters worse, the laws that are on the books have been loosely enforced or ignored altogether.
Rather than having a considered approach to bringing in those that can add the most value to our society we have made immigration into our country a veritable free for all.
Millions have crossed our border illegally with almost no education or skills. Millions more have come to our country through a lottery or because they were the second cousin twice removed of someone who was already here.
A successful immigration policy for the future needs to be able to match our workforce needs with those that have the requisite education and skills to fill our job openings.
We just can't hope it will work out. We can't continue to allow people to stay merely because they somehow found a way to sneak into the country whether through dark of night or overstaying a visa.
We also have to recognize that many of the jobs we may need to fill today will most likely not be there in another decade or so. More about that below.
Therefore, we should not be allowing anyone into the country for permanent work status with limited skills. This is a recipe for future fiscal and societal disaster.
McDonald's may need a grill cook today. However, a robot may be flipping those burgers in ten years. What happens to that Honduran immigrant with a 6th grade education then if she has permanent work status or citizenship?
A trucking company may need a truck driver today. However, we may have many self-driving trucks on the road in ten years. What happens to that Mexican immigrant who has no other skills?
A senior living community may need health aide today. However, what if we have robots doing a lot of those tasks in another decade? What happens to that woman from Ireland with limited skills?
We need to think about what innovation is going to mean to the workforce over the next couple of decades. We also need to think very carefully about overreacting to what looks to be short-term labor constraints with our immigration policy today.
If you doubt where we are heading I suggest you read a blog post that I wrote in 2015 that foretells what is coming regarding future employment dislocations. That post referenced an article in The Economist as well as comments from The Huffington Post on what it all means for the future.
Almost half of all jobs could be automated by computers within two decades and "no government is prepared" for the tsunami of social change that will follow, according to The Economist.
The magazine's 2014 analysis of the impact of technology paints a pretty bleak picture of the future.
It says that while innovation (aka "the elixir of progress") has always resulted in job losses, usually economies have eventually been able to develop new roles for those workers to compensate, such as in the industrial revolution of the 19th century, or the food production revolution of the 20th century.
But the pace of change this time around appears to be unprecedented, its leader column claims. And the result is a huge amount of uncertainty for both developed and under-developed economies about where the next 'lost generation' is going to find work.
Bain & Company's Macro Trends Group has issued a recent report that puts all of this into current context entitled "Labor 2030: The Collision of Demographics, Automation and Inequality" that John Mauldin wrote about in his Thoughts from the Frontline.
Expect to see some very, very big changes in our future on the jobs front due to technology and automation.
Bain thinks automation will eliminate up to 25% of US jobs by 2030, with the lower-wage tiers getting hit the hardest and soonest. That will be devastating, and it’s not that far away. Remember 2006? Right now, you are halfway between then and 2030.
In theory, automation will enable lower prices, which will raise demand and create more jobs. Bain does not think it will happen that way. They foresee up to 40 million permanent job losses in the US, even accounting for higher demand.
Let that sink in. We could very well see a net loss of 40 million jobs in a little over a decade due to automation.
Those job losses will not just be in blue collar occupations either. As I pointed out in my blog post three years ago, all of these occupation classes have a 99% of better chance of being affected.
.99 New Accounts Clerks
.99 Photographic Process Workers/Processing Machine Operators
.99 Tax Preparers
.99 Cargo and Freight Agents
.99 Watch Repairers
.99 Insurance Underwriters
.99 Mathematical Technicians
.99 Sewers, Hand
.99 Title Examiners, Abstractors, and Searchers
.99 Telemarketers
Or consider all of these occupations that have a greater than 50% chance of being displaced by automation over the next decade or so.
.98 Umpires, referees and other sports officials
.98 Models
.96 Cooks, restaurants
.94 Waiters and waitresses
.92 Retail salespersons
.90 Roofers
.89 Taxi drivers and chauffeurs
.89 School bus drivers
.87 Parking lot attendants
.80 Barbers
.77 Carpenters
.58 Personal Financial Advisors
.55 Commercial Pilots
Can you see the obvious problem of permitting millions of immigrants into the country and granting them permanent residence status or a path to citizenship?
This all goes to show how critical it is to stop the flow of illegal immigrants into the United States.
It also argues that any immigration reform bill should tilt toward increased use of guest workers but it should be very cautious in increasing in the number of legal immigrants or in granting permanent residence status or citizenship to those here illegally.
It should also make sure that any legal immigrants have the education and skills to be able to assimilate and adjust to what is sure to be a dynamic U.S. economy in the years ahead.
The reality is that innovation and automation is going to have an tremendous impact on our economy over the next couple of decades. It will result in enormous economic and societal challenges.
The last thing we should be doing right now is exacerbating the situation with ill-considered immigration policies.
No comments:
Post a Comment