Tag: structural unemployment

Adam Ruins Manufacturing

A lot of the recent discussion on the manufacturing industry has framed the loss of employment as a reduction in manufacturing capacity. The US manufactures more physical goods than ever, but it’s using labor as the primary input. In this segment of Adam Ruins Everything, we meet Hank who has recently been laid off from his job at the factory. In an earlier segment, Hank and Adam discuss major economic measures like GDP and Unemployment. In this segment, they discuss some of the misperceptions about manufacturing.

Adam Ruins Everything is a half-hour informational comedy where host, Adam Conover, debunks popular myths. Each episode is divided into 3 segments with some common themes. In the Spring of 2018, James Tierney and I sat down to go through all three seasons of Adam Ruins Everything to pick out examples in each episode that could be used in an economics course.

In the Summer of 2020, the paper was officially published in The Journal of Economics and Finance Education, which you can read online.

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Get a Job — Ironic

Our main character Will Davis is searching the internet for job listings. He has just been let go from his internship because there were no available paying jobs and his time had run out. He is looking for the right fit, or really any fit that would make sense for him, but he’s realizing that he lacks the skills for many of the job postings he’s finding online. His friends joke that the skills he’s good at can’t get him paid.

Clip submitted by Kate Lecea

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Lil’ Dicky — Professional Rapper

In this video, Lil’ Dicky interviews with Snoop Dogg for a position as a professional rapper. There’s one section early in the song that looks at the concept of opportunity costs. Lil’ Dicky (David Burd) was a college graduate from University of Richmond, but decided to become a rapper instead. During the “interview” with Snoop, he mentions that he actually had a lot to lose by becoming a rapper compared to other rappers who became rappers because they had nothing else to do. Another interesting application of the video could be in teaching unemployment and focusing on skills necessary for particular jobs. Lil Dicky needs to apply for a job with Snoop because other people haven’t appreciated his rap skills.

LYRICS (emphasis added)
So real shit you ain’t never had to struggle for much
I wouldn’t say it like that, we just had a different kind of trap
Elaborate
Well I ain’t never had a tool, but I had to be the man at school
Like I was doing shit I had to do so when I finished undergrad
I’m cool and I can get whatever job I wanted
But the job you wanted wasn’t all that bumping
Yeah, and I saw it quick all the flaws that be coming when you grow up like that
Know you been racing them rats, you ain’t been making them raps
Boo hoo what a hardship
How you paid to get the rap shit started?
Man, my Bar Mitzvah money
But don’t diss me buddy, I wasn’t one of them younguns up on the block who had nothing to lose
I must’ve wanted this a lot, I had something to choose

Check out the snippet of the entire song on this tweet:

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CBS TV — Kennedy on the Labor Market & Unemployment

In a 1963 Labor Day interview with Walter Cronkite, President Kennedy discusses his position on handling the labor market of the United States with around 4 million unemployed (about 5.5% at the time). Kennedy notes that the growing labor force in the United States requires that if the US wants to “stand still,” they still need to move very fast. Kennedy’s main policy focus at the time was retraining workers who had been displaced by technology and making sure that significant amount of workers have the necessary education to handle the growing workforce.

Kennedy also speaks to the lost jobs in “hardcore unemployed” industries like coal and steel and how it’s important to make sure those workers are retrained because those workers are no longer needed. He then laments that there’s a different issue with older workers replaced by technology and younger workers who don’t have the education to handle that technology. Kennedy ends this portion of the interview with a very powerful quote about the fear of automation:

Too many people coming into the labor market, too many machines are throwing people out.

You can view the entire interview, courtesy of the Kennedy Presidential Library, on YouTube.

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Brooklyn 99 — The Danger of Email

 

Jake and Charles are sent to the US Postal Inspection Services to get help with a case they are working on that involves a mail key. There they meet Agent Jack Danger who identifies the key as being part of a set of old post boxes that are no longer in service. Jake and Charles want the list of people who were responsible for collecting they key and recommend that Agent Danger emails them the list. This clearly upsets Agent Danger since many of his friends were laid off because of the introduction of email.

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KRON 4 — Online News in 1981

A look back at a 1981 news segment that covers the Internet and the eventual push to online media. At the time, 8 newspapers were currently part of the network delivering their daily news via this system. The “paper” included all text, but not images or classifieds. Near the end of the segment, they predict that nearly all news will be delivered electronically, but that the time would be a few years away. The segment closes with a look at a newspaper salesman who would potentially become structurally unemployed when the need for physical papers vanishes.

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30 Rock — Structural Unemployment

In this scene from 30 Rock, Liz Lemon is faced with the possibility that her job may become obsolete. She meets others (a travel agent, an American auto worker, a saxophone soloist) who are no longer employed because consumers are no longer willing to pay for their services/goods.

Thanks to James Tierney for the clip!

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Billy Joel — Allentown

I heard this one on the radio and forgot that I used it one semester online to talk about structural unemployment. This could also be a good song to play before class if you play music before you begin your lecture. I may be a bit more fortunate since I teach in Pennsylvania.

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