Dean Baker: Job Sharing Could Ease Unemployment

The Atlantic Business Channel:

Paul Krugman today solidifies his membership in the Job Squad, that growing contingent of bloggers and policy mavens calling for a new stimulus directed at employment. I've shared many of the Job Squad's ideas -- direct state aid, a tax credit for companies that hire, a payroll tax holiday, public work projects -- but here's one I haven't given much attention to: Job sharing. What is that and how would it work?

Read the whole story: The Atlantic Business Channel

Comments

[goldenshaman]

How many people could pay their bills with half of a paycheck?

[Halter]

Providing Medicare to retired workers at age 60 would take care of unemployment.

[SiouxSayer]

Not much longer now...
I've sent out 96 resumes in 3 months. I've now received 5 rejection letters after following up on 47 of those resumes. I am 41 and apparently unemployable in the USA. Without work...without the possibility OF work, ...I don't see how I am going to survive. So many of you have helped and given me great advice and direction. I have taken ALL of that advice and followed EVERY option. Soon I will be on the streets causing my job gap to grow even further. So I see a very creative, productive and dedicated guy slip away into the swamp of poverty and despair. I simply can't find a way out! I will travel, I will relocate, I will do what it takes to be a great employee...but the opportunities are just ...not....there. OR there are 6 people for every open position available. What is a guy to do? Seriously? I'm getting closer and closer to the end of hope. My email is on my profile here. Please talk to me...about ANYTHING...I need help and direction...........................

[JBS]

http://unionsong.com/u103.html

[Stop Wall Street]

Yay Stocks surging. Real unemployment (including those who 'stopped looking' lol) is at 20%. once again ,this proves that the government is in the tank for Wall Street or else there would be more jobs even if the jobs arn't considered efficient by economist standards.

good articles: http://financeopinionss.blogspot.com

The only beneficiaries of this 'v shaped' recovery are the bankers, fund managers, and rest of the top 1%

[ScreenName05]

Yes, it is called Corporate Capitalism. Normal capitalism, wherein everyone has a chance to start a business and prosper through their efforts, is dead. The change is significant, and people need to recognize the differences. Corporate Capitalists are taxed at an extremely low rate or not at all, they can borrow money for nothing, they can hire and treat their employees any way they want. If you don't like your job, or if you are a small business, your companies products will be off shored to someone else. If the corporate capitalists need something, they go to their bought and paid for government who provides Tarp funds and protections.

Only the American people can change this. You can only change it by understanding how these things were accomplished. How we went from the most prosperous economy in the world to a debtor nation of astronomical proportions. We need the protections provided by the regulations created in the New Deal. We need a tax system that recycles money into the economy instead of off shore banks in Bermuda. We need a capitalist system that works for everyone, not just the big corporations. Until Americans are willing to face reality about our system, then the government is not going to help us, it is just going to represent its masters - the big corporations.

[SonofLiberty1]

Sounds like another idiot idea from CEO's:(

[FreeSpeech4All]

American workers have greatly increased their productivity while wages remain stagnant, so in a free market capitalist economy, in theory, this should have already taken place. However, American workers are forced to compete with China and India, whose citizens have a much lower cost of living and can therefore work for pennies on the dollar.

Globalization is crushing the American economy. Workers have no protections and corporations have all the power and rights. Until our government stops working for corporations and banksters and starts representing we the people, jobs in this country will continue to disappear. I don't see things changing any time soon. The status quo is making a handful of people fabulously wealthy while leaving the rest of us in the dirt.

[mogens]

Try to únionize. It might help. help yourself, nobody else will do.

[Stefan Zeiss]

Job sharing is a bankrupt idea. That nonsense has already been tried in Socialist Western Europe with their 36 hour work week, yet those societies consistently have lower employment percentages than the USA. Throw that idea out with the Obama administration and the bath water.

[mogens]

You can be bankrupt yourselves. In Denmark we have an open economy, surplus on trade, 37 hours working week, 6 weeks vacation, a minimum salary of 16-20 USD pr hour, (depending on exchance rate) and an unemployment rate (in spite of the crisis) of 4%.
The real world is not what you think. You tend to believe all the crap the rich tells you.
Go fight for your rights if you want any. We have been fighting for them for more than a century, and that pays up.
Stop beating yourselves up and start to organise instead.

[Stefan Zeiss]

If you are happy in your Socialism, I say keep it. But I don't want that stuff stiffing the progress in my country. Not all countries count unemployment the same way and apples cannot be compared with oranges. Every time we elect a crypto Socialist in our country, we always get promised that only the "Rich" will be taxed higher. But eventually the middle class people like myself get soaked in higher taxes. And just because you Scandinavians, with your notoriously high suicide rate, accept this, like paying higher taxes does not mean we Americans have to like it. Live and let live is the best way to respect others. Which is why I was totally unimpressed with the nanny state when I witnessed it first hand when I went to Germany for some of my university studies.

[Siebenstein]

S.la/ave owners get closer and closer to their goal.

Soon the world works for Walmart and Chase and no other company.

[Siebenstein]

Yes, go ahead work 6 part-time jobs instead of 3 or 4.

Id/i/ocy triumphs !

[Winston120]

You already have "job sharing" in most companies: the bottom 10-15% employees in terms of performance do nothing or next to nothing.

We're heading toward an economy where about 20% unemployment is the baseline. This has a lot to do with young and older workers getting shut out.

[swift goat pet for truth]

This strategy treats the symptom, but not the cause.
It puts more money into the hands of the middle class, as a class, and drives consumption through middle class spending, thus increasing over all consumption OF BASIC GOODS AND SERVICES in the economy.

But I wonder if that is only part of the cause of our contraction.
I see the loss of middle class disposable incomes as the problem. Our businesses are not growing the top line, sales, because the middle class no longer has the disposable income that it did 30 years ago. Oh, sure bottom lines have improved due to cost cutting and employee squeezing, but neither help sales. In fact, they hurt sales

What is the difference between subsidizing jobs and straight unemployment insurance? Is there as substantive difference?

The last 30 years saw unprecedented redistribution of wealth from the bottom 90% to the top 2%. Find a way to redistribute it back, and the economy will improve because business sales will improve.

[rf-hawaii]

Job sharing is something that Keynes himself has suggested. Or rather a 3-1/2 hour work day.

http://www.marxists.org/reference/subject/economics/keynes/1930/our-grandchildren.htm

It's probably a necessity at some point. There are fewer jobs because automation is taking them away. Robots are doing the jobs. Replacing humans.

Do otherwise productive workers head for skid row, or do government and business cut them a break? Business can buy automation and get work done for free. Does this entitle them to all the advantages and the workers to none?

Sure, we may be able to retrain some workers today. But automation marches on, gobbling up more jobs every day. It's projected that only 5% of the workforce will be required to work in the future. Automation will take care of the rest.

[Organic-Guy]

Tax credits for companies that hire is a crock because it's after the fact and the fact is until credit becomes easier to get and companies can upgrade equipment and stop having to pay cash for inventory and get some money for working capital no hiring of any significance can take place.
If just the bonus money and multimillion dollar salaries from loser executives that destroyed the economy could be channeled into small business loans with minimal paper work requirements and fewer restrictions than the lame ARC loan program et.al. we could actually get employment off the reef.

[HelloFunnyWorld]

"Job sharing" - Yes, it could work. Especially if all corporate CEOs, Lobbyist & their cohorts, went first. Like that gentleman from Wall Street who said some thing about doing G-d's work.

Given the billions of dollars these guys make in a year plus bonuses & other privileges, the unemployed would be back in good, proper, paying jobs before Christmas.
Imagine 100s sharing 1 man's salary etc. to do his work.

What a start to the New Year, eh.... One serious problem though: How to figure out what exactly do these generous, donors? sharers?, do, to earn that much, so that all the remunerations can be split up between the 100 or so people that will step in to "share" the donated job & its monetary benefits.

Talk about the trickle down effect working like a charm!!

And good CSR- (Corporate Social Responsibility)! And good Philanthropy! 2 birds with one stone!

What's not to like....

[swift goat pet for truth]

Lots of smaller companies doing the work of one big company.
I could back that.

Perhaps there would be some inefficiencies in the new system due to more players in the system.
Perhaps more talented leaders would emerge and actually improve overall efficiency with new strategies.

But one gain would be no more too big to fail

[FreeSpeech4All]

We could put all the criminal banksters and CEO's in jail where they belong, and redistribute their salaries to the people who actually do the work. Problem solved.