The tragedy of our time is the monoculture of ideas: all "thinkers" are forced to believe the same bullshit.—Nassim Nicolas Taleb, author of the Black Swan at Facebook
Yet a fascinating curiosity, two contrasting headlines.
Of course, joblessness technically differs from online hiring. But joblessness IS related or entwined to hiring. They are part of the employment process.
The basic job/employment process comes with: a company decides to hire, thus job opening/s is/are announced, and then the company conducts a due diligence for hiring and decides.
In short, people get hired FIRST from which they become employed, thus influencing the changes in job market conditions.
It doesn’t stop there. The job market is dynamic or employees are not static.
For many reasons, employees may elect to get employed, in the same line, under a different or new employer. Or, employees may opt for a new career path and move to a different line under another employer. Or, employees may also choose to move into a different position (same career path) or even different line of work under the same employer. Employees may likewise decide to do part time work (to complement present job) or even become full-time free-lancer/s. Employees may also move geographically predicated on any of the above conditions.
These constitute labor mobility. In short, labor mobility is categorized as either occupational or geographical.
Labor mobility is important, because with restricted job openings, changes in preferences for employees will reduce their options for employment. This means employees would be limited to either staying put or become unemployed.
So when a claim is made that joblessness is at so-and-so year high, then the embedded assumption is that there MUST be a CORNUCOPIA of AVAILABLE jobs to satisfy, not only employment absorption of the labor pool but more importantly, labor mobility.
But that’s not what online job market has been saying.
Monster.com announced that online job posting stalled in October.
Monster’s plight has really not been limited to just October, online jobs for the company has dramatically been in a cascade since 2014.
Monster has even revised part of its data to show for G-R-O-W-T-H. Unfortunately, the much desired confession hasn’t occurred even with its torturing of data.
Nonetheless, to provide a perspective of how big the losses have been, I used Q1 2015 as a base to connect the old data and the new one. Yet, whatever online G-R-O-W-T-H posting experienced this year, they haven’t matched the 1Q 2015 levels (upper right window). And if 1Q 2015 wasn’t reached how much more of the higher perch in 2014 (see upper left window)??!!!
For an apple to apple comparison, for the 3Q Monster’s online postings grew by a measly 3.9%. Will this number be sufficient to generate record joblessness?
Again it’s not just Monster, Jobstreet, the largest online job advertiser, has seen its postings plunging again. The present trend indicates a decline back to January 2016 lows. That’s based on unofficial data (my own weekly Thursday tabulation). And such numbers have been in a massive decline since I began tallying them (lower window).
Perhaps the number of online job providers has grown a lot faster than jobs being posted for market share for posting in these firms to have been significantly pruned.
If true, aside from the inadequate number of jobs advertised online, then this should evince of excess capacity for online providers. But I don’t see this as the present case.
The alternative interpretation is that job hiring is being coursed through different means, perhaps through direct hiring, or through an anachronism—back to the traditional print ads. The latter is unlikely.
The other explanation could be that most of the present job openings may not be from the private sector but from the public sector or the government.
Signs of these have emerged. The Philippine Statistics Authority (PSA) announced a job hiring binge this December. With at least 30 vacancies in 16 pages this would total to at least 480 jobs available. That’s just from one agency.
As I have been saying here, the shift to a leftist government will entail lots of jobs—except through the public sector.
But these jobs will come at the expense of the private sector. They are not symptomatic of real economic prosperity (as presented by surveys or by media).
Yet there are other ways to countercheck such populist claim.
Milestone joblessness should translate to, not only to increased number of available jobs, but also to increased competition to bid up wages of employees. Or higher demand for employees should imply rising wages.
But that’s not what has been happening….even from the government’s own numbers.
As I pointed out last October, the PSA’s own measure for wage and compensation, grew by only 3.1% and 2.72% in 2015. I know this signifies 2015 data. But 2015 serves as stepping stone to the 3Q.
However, not even current numbers support the claim.
Based on the PSA’s “total gross revenue index” for Q1: “Total Employment Index slightly declined by 0.04 percent from last year’s 3.8 percent…Meanwhile, Total Compensation Index decelerated with 4.5 percent growth as compared to the 6.0 percent expansion in the previous year…Total Compensation per Employee Index accelerated by 4.6 percent from 2.1 percent a year ago”
For Q2: “Meanwhile, Total Compensation Index decelerated to 5.1 percent as compared to the 5.9 percent growth in the previous year…Total Employment Index registered a 1.1 percent growth, lower than the 2.8 percent growth in the previous year...Total Compensation per Employee Index accelerated by 3.9 percent, higher than the 3.0 percent growth a year ago.”
These numbers, which had been substantially LOWER than the statistical GDP (or even its HFCE component), have neither indicated of any scramble for hiring from expanded jobs nor of increased competition for employees that would lead to higher wages—all hallmarks of increased joblessness.
And given the string of unimpressive numbers, Q3 would unlikely have any material improvements.
Even more, amidst spiraling inflation, instead of flourishing wages, it has been salary loans that have been booming!
3Q data from the BSP showed that salary loans rocketed by a startling 60% over the same period last year!
Though a considerable factor for the spike in the said number could be due to the enrolment of more people (employees), such hardly exhibits sufficient wage growth. This rather serves as proof to the deepening leverage of the balance sheets of mostly lower income workers.
Wages and job conditions can also be seen through the lens of government revenues.
Government revenues, which incorporate personal income taxes, grew by ONLY 5.11% in 3Q, 1.1% in Q2 and 1.79% in Q1 of 2016.
These numbers hardly corroborate insights of a robust job market as presented. Of course, it may be true that perhaps tax exempt low income jobs may have flourished. But then again this means low quality jobs. And again, such would hardly be the case.
Why? Since corporate taxes and consumption taxes also make up the other two of the three largest components of government revenues, aside from wages and jobs, conditions supporting profits and consumption hardly validate the path to a 'jobs', or even an economic, nirvana!
So current government revenue conditions indicate that restrained profits translate to lesser investments, and thus reduced hiring. And the lowered number of jobs diminishes consumption.
That's the essence of the general state of government revenues (give or take the collection leakages)
But the buck doesn’t stop here.
Funny but, if there has been any TRUTH to such salutary joblessness allegations, then why should the Secretary of the Department of Labor and Employment (DoLE) even sell or promote Russia as the new OFW destination??????
Shouldn’t “the lowest jobless rate in 9 years” extrapolate to a significantly less need for OFWs? Shouldn’t OFWs get employed domestically, for them stay with their families than be apart from them?
Or has it been that a bigger employment market for OFWs translates to current domestic job conditions as having characterized by a substantially wage deficient job growth?
And if so, why?
Or has there been real job growth at all?
Hasn’t the peso served as THE magnet, as the well as, THE marquee for overseas job migration since the 1960s?
What has changed?????????????
Or has it been because pollsters are required to say what they have been paid or told to say?
In closing, we are told that joblessness is at some record numbers based on survey. Fine. That’s their opinion.
Except that numerous real world evidences point otherwise: real online hiring has been flagging, government wage growth numbers have risen only a little above the rate of CPI, government revenues have grown even less, the government continues to promote overseas job migration, and worst, the peso continues to crumble.
Nassim Taleb in the opening quote has been spot on: today’s tragedy of monoculture ideas is that we are forced to believe the same b.s.
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