25 years old and deep in debt

[The Minsky Moment]

I don't think there's any debate that the labor market has broadened, the (quite open) question is whether the creation of new jobs keeps up with the destruction of old ones.

I agree with the criterion.
So then the question is whether total amount of market compensated hours worked has increased absolutely and per capita.  The answer to the former is clearly yes (by a lot) and the latter I just don't know.  Deconstructing the elements are:

1) effective hours per worker - vacations, 40 hour week laws, etc. pull down, although declines in unionization may be reversing in US and elsewhere.
2) market workers per unit of population - fewer pre-25s working, BUT more women doing market work and better health plus mandatory accommodation laws also increase.

Show me the data.

[mongers]

I don't think there's any debate that the labor market has broadened, the (quite open) question is whether the creation of new jobs keeps up with the destruction of old ones.

I agree with the criterion.
So then the question is whether total amount of market compensated hours worked has increased absolutely and per capita.  The answer to the former is clearly yes (by a lot) and the latter I just don't know.  Deconstructing the elements are:

1) effective hours per worker - vacations, 40 hour week laws, etc. pull down, although declines in unionization may be reversing in US and elsewhere.
2) market workers per unit of population - fewer pre-25s working, BUT more women doing market work and better health plus mandatory accommodation laws also increase.

Show me the data.

You know, you could make that your catchphrase. 

[Eddie Teach]

http://eh.net/encyclopedia/hours-of-work-in-u-s-history/

This is chock full of tables. One that I found particularly interesting:

Estimated Trend in the Lifetime Distribution of Discretionary Time, 1880-2040

Activity   1880   1995   2040
Lifetime Discretionary Hours   225,900   298,500   321,900
Lifetime Work Hours   182,100   122,400   75,900
Lifetime Leisure Hours   43,800   176,100   246,000
Source: Fogel (2000)
Notes: Discretionary hours exclude hours used for sleep, meals and hygiene. Work hours include paid work, travel to and from work, and household chores.

[The Minsky Moment]

http://eh.net/encyclopedia/hours-of-work-in-u-s-history/

This is chock full of tables. One that I found particularly interesting:

Estimated Trend in the Lifetime Distribution of Discretionary Time, 1880-2040

That table is interesting, though not really germane to the immediate question.
The summary page shows tables demonstrating a fairly steady decline in weekly hours worked per worker, with a significant blip during the depression years.  So that sort of addresses (1) although without taking into account that workers in the past presumably had shorter lives.

Re (2) BLS date on labor force participation goes back only to 1948 but it does show materially lower levels of labor force participation in the late 40s and the 1950s (consistently under 60% as opposed to around 63% now and over 65% from 1985-2009.

[The Minsky Moment]

Here's another way of looking at it.
Table 2 in PW's link reports Census Data results showing a decline in average weekly hours worked from 42.7 to 39.2 from 1950 to 1988.
But over the same period, labor force participation rates increased from 59% to 66%.
So the overall effect is no per capita decrease in hours worked, probably a small increase.
There might have been a small dip from 1988 to 2008 but I wouldn't expect very much.
And of course, total hours worked went way up due to population growth.

I think one can conclude post-WW2 there is no evidence of decline in per capita work hours; the story may be quite different if one goes back into the 19th century.

[Eddie Teach]

I think one can conclude post-WW2 there is no evidence of decline in per capita work hours; the story may be quite different if one goes back into the 19th century.

Well, you were saying this was something Marx was wrong about.


I have a suspicion that current numbers are artificially high, that in spite of higher productivity today's workers are spending more time at work doing things that aren't directly helping their company, whether it be free time they're spending on facebook or solitaire, or pointless make-work tasks like Dorsey's company name splitting hunt. Obviously, I have no numbers to back up this hunch.

For many people, 40 hours seems to be the "sweet spot" where they feel they have the right amount of free time and still have productive lives. There's a lot of resistance to cutting the work week further than that, and very, very few well-paying professional gigs which don't expect you to put in 40 hours, even if the amount of work they actually give you could in some cases be done in 20.

[alfred russel]

Well, you were saying this was something Marx was wrong about.


I have a suspicion that current numbers are artificially high, that in spite of higher productivity today's workers are spending more time at work doing things that aren't directly helping their company, whether it be free time they're spending on facebook or solitaire, or pointless make-work tasks like Dorsey's company name splitting hunt. Obviously, I have no numbers to back up this hunch.

Was that a make work task? The last annual filing we did had me at the printer's office at 4:30 AM right before a filing reviewing the document.

I think these things take on a life of their own. No one wants to look sloppier than anyone else. For example, just to keep things standardized, we have a policy that internal reports should follow the same guidelines as external disclosures. In external disclosures we don't use the oxford comma, which means there is effectively a policy against the oxford comma in internal documents. So if you are working for me and have an oxford comma in a report, I'm going to have you remove it. Otherwise, when we pass off the report, the manager may think, "if they are careless with oxford commas, what else are they careless with?"

Which is very unfortunate because I actually prefer the oxford comma. 

[Eddie Teach]

Was that a make work task? The last annual filing we did had me at the printer's office at 4:30 AM right before a filing reviewing the document.

Do you think it had any effect on the bottom line? Sounded to me like it was just one of the bosses being finicky.

[alfred russel]

Was that a make work task? The last annual filing we did had me at the printer's office at 4:30 AM right before a filing reviewing the document.

Do you think it had any effect on the bottom line? Sounded to me like it was just one of the bosses being finicky.

Of course not.

[MadImmortalMan]

judges' unwillingness to hold a discovery request for "all documents discussing ____" as burdensome, even though it totally is.

Not to mention essentially impossible. I've gotten discovery requests for "all emails containing content related to x or y or z by any party".

The usual solution is to explain why this sort of request is not feasible, and then if an understanding is not met we just have to hand over terabytes of data and say have fun going through it, jerk. I've had it go both ways.

[LaCroix]

hey, ide, fun article:

http://www.theatlantic.com/features/archive/2014/08/the-law-school-scam/375069/

also:

In 2010, for example, two of the three InfiLaw schools admitted entering classes with a median LSAT score of 149, while the third had an entering class with a median score of 150. Only 10 of the other 196 schools fully accredited by the ABA had an entering class with a median LSAT score below 150. (By 2013, some 30 additional institutions had joined these schools.) An LSAT score of 151 is approximately the average among everyone who takes the test.

[Ideologue]

hey, ide, fun article:

http://www.theatlantic.com/features/archive/2014/08/the-law-school-scam/375069/

also:

In 2010, for example, two of the three InfiLaw schools admitted entering classes with a median LSAT score of 149, while the third had an entering class with a median score of 150. Only 10 of the other 196 schools fully accredited by the ABA had an entering class with a median LSAT score below 150. (By 2013, some 30 additional institutions had joined these schools.) An LSAT score of 151 is approximately the average among everyone who takes the test.

You didn't tell me it was Paul Campos.   (Except for his pro-fat propaganda.)

It's a solid article about the dumbening of law students, which is occurring due to financial pressures everywhere.  I assure you was already starting to happen in 2008 thanks to basically just blind avarice (someone with a 2.96 undergrad GPA like yours truly should basically not be admitted anywhere, although interestingly enough I could probably squeak my way into a T14 now).

The InfiLaw employees/henchpeople in the comments section are kind of hilarious.

I'm detecting a faint subtext--it's possibly my imagination, but I am curious if you're pissed about my LSAT crack a little while back.  I did say I was sorry; they say the best revenge is living well.

[Ideologue]

Also from The Atlantic:

http://www.theatlantic.com/video/index/376014/what-will-a-liberal-arts-education-look-like-in-50-years/

Jackasses with no valuable insights pontificate in self-serving, self-deluding platitudes.  It's lame.

"We won't have liberal arts and sciences at all 50 years from now"

Correct.

"unless we really understand how to save what's good, but reinvent what's new and needed"

Oh.  Well, the part where you charge $40,000 to certify that someone synthesized some shit he or she read, and hence is English fluent (honest), could stand some reinvention.

[CountDeMoney]

You really shouldn't blame the higher education system for attempting to adapt to what Corporate America and its shareholders demand from the workforce of the future.  That just makes you sound pissy.

[Ideologue]

But I blame them for failing to adapt...