評論
打印
As the labour market recovers, two deeper shifts are unfolding, in politics and in technology. Start with the political environment, which is becoming friendlier to workers than it has been for decades. An early sign of change was the surge in minimum wages during the previous economic cycle. Relative to average wages, they rose by more than a quarter in the OECD, a club of mostly rich countries, weighted by population. Now governments and institutions are falling over themselves to chum up to workers. President Joe Biden hopes to use his planned infrastructure splurge to promote unionisation and to pay generous wages. Central banks are worrying ever more about jobs and less about inflation. It was not a prank when on April 1st the IMF, once famed for its austerity, floated the idea of one-off solidarity taxes on the rich and on companies. In his letter to shareholders this week, Jamie Dimon, the boss of JPMorgan Chase, Wall Street’s biggest firm, called for higher wages—and he wasn’t talking about CEOs.
伴隨勞動力市場復蘇，兩個更深層次的轉變開始在政治層面和技術層面展開。首先是政治環境的改變。與過去幾十年相比，政治環境對打工人來說越來越友好。該變化的一個早期跡象就是上一個經濟周期中最低工資的激增。在主要由富裕國家組成的經合組織（OCED）中，相較于平均工資，其最低工資按人口加權增長超過四分之一。如今，各國政府和機構都在竭力拉攏打工人。拜登總統希望利用他計劃的大量投資基礎設施建設來促進工會組織的建立，并支付豐厚的工資。各國央行對就業的擔憂與日俱增，對通脹的擔憂卻越來越少。4月1日，曾靠經濟緊縮打天下的國際貨幣基金組織（IMF）提出了對富人和企業征收一次性團結稅的想法，這并非玩笑。華爾街最大的公司摩根大通（JPMorgan Chase）的老板杰米•戴蒙本周在致股東的信中呼吁漲薪，但他并不是在談論給高層漲薪。
The second big shift in the labour market is technological. In the pandemic doomsayers have doubled down on predictions of long-term labour-market woes. Robots will create armies of the idle, precarious jobs are displacing stable ones and even prosperous workers chained to emails and screens know in their hearts that their “bullshit jobs” are pointless. But as our special report this week explains, these ideas were never supported by evidence and do not look as if they are about to be now. In 2019 nearly two-thirds of Americans said they were completely satisfied with their job security, up from less than half in 1999; a lower share of German workers felt insecure than in the mid-2000s. Countries with the most automation, like Japan, enjoy some of the lowest unemployment.
勞動力市場的第二大轉變是技術。在此次疫情期間，因為預測到勞動力市場會面臨長期困境，悲觀主義者已經翻倍。機器人將創造出勞動力閑置大軍，不穩定的工作崗位取代穩定的工作崗位，即使是那些受電子郵件和屏幕羈絆的富裕員工心里也知道自己的工作毫無意義。但正如我們本周的特別報道所解釋的那樣，這些觀點從未得到證據支持，而且看起來也與當前實際情況有出入。2019年，近三分之二的美國人表示，他們對自己的工作保障完全滿意，相較于1999年不到一半的滿意度有所上漲；與2000年代中期相比，對工作沒有安全感的德國員工的比例有所下降。日本等自動化程度最高的國家失業率最低。
譯文由可可原創，僅供學習交流使用，未經許可請勿轉載。
