Middle-skill Jobs Research Articles

From Policy to Training

This journal issue about green jobs resulted from a preconference held at the 2011 American Association for Adult and Continuing Education Conference in Indianapolis, Indiana. We were interested in exploring the ways that green jobs training is being approached in the United States, and this preconference seemed like an excellent way to introduce two new special interest groups (SIGs), Labor/Workforce Education and Sustainability and Environmental Adult Education. We felt this important aspect of the adult world needed to be explored more fully. What we found was, of course, more complex and complicated than what we hoped, so this issue continues the story. We expand the questions and issues raised at the preconference, and present a diverse array of programmatic types and approaches. Although this issue is the result of a close collaboration among the three coeditors, this reflection piece contains my views. Initially, we were interested in exploring the federal focus on green jobs and their role in the changing economy. Green jobs are jobs in green energy areas such as the manufacturing of solar panels or the equipment needed for wind farms, the large-scale adoption of renewable energy, and the building and retrofitting of weatherized buildings and homes. Broadly speaking, green jobs can also mean making factories or workplaces greener and more environmentally aware. However, this latter concern is not really a jobs initiative although it is discussed in the present issue of Adult Learning. Concern with the environment is not new. There have been periodic calls for adult educators to pay more attention to concerns, sustainability, and greening. However, greening also includes a clearer integration of environmental discourse into adult education (Lange, 2010, p. 306). The current focus on green jobs is not really about an discourse; rather, it focuses on careers, career paths, and job forecasting and improving the working conditions of low- to middle-skilled jobs. Thus, we need to look at a different literature base to understand this phenomenon. What we also see from these articles is the push for green jobs joins a long list of federal and state initiatives in adult that combine good motives and objectives with a less clear delineation of what will actually work. There is a pattern to these efforts, and they seem to follow the educational fads of the moment. A recent example can be noted in the whole discussion of evidence-based practice. Borrowing from medicine, Slavin (2002) initially called for evidence-based practice, meaning the use of clinical trials (p. 16) and replication as the basis for adoption. Slavin was referring to the propensity of educators at all levels to adopt new practices and fads on a regular basis but with little rigorous research evidence to back up claims. For example, school systems had been known to adopt expensive curricula based on nothing more than publisher claims. Unfortunately, Slavin's call has taken on a life of its own. His calls for rigorous testing have devolved into claims and counter claims over experimental design and qualitative research. I do believe, however, his basic premise that educators are too prone to accept the latest fad is valid. Moving beyond Slavin, however, we can trace the evolution of green jobs initiatives to the best of all intentions, although these intentions have not been fully validated by research. The initiative for green jobs training was a result of a confluence of two major concerns. The first was the increasing loss of jobs among workers whose skills had become obsolete. For example, the downsizing and elimination of thousands of jobs within the steal industry left workers with few options. Going back to school was a possibility, but many of these workers had to figure out a way to gain new skills that built on what they currently knew. At the same time, increasing concern over issues was leading to a growth of technological innovation in the energy field. …

International Trade and Polarization in the Labor Market

Abstract The paper builds an argument that international trade can be an explanation behind polarization of employment in the labor market observed in developed countries such as U.K. and U.S. It considers a small open economy, having production sectors which use three types of labor: high-skill, middle-skill and low-skill. The economy faces an increase in the relative price of the high-skill intensive sector. Using decision rules for choosing high-skill, middleskill and low-skill education, it is shown that such a terms-of- trade shock can lead to polarization: shrinkage of middle-skill jobs, combined with higher shares of high-skill as well as low-skill workers in the total workforce. The effects of off-shoring on wages and job composition are also studied. Off-shoring of low-skill and high-skill tasks, not middle-skill tasks, is shown to contribute towards polarization in job composition.

Conveying Meaning: Oral Skills of L2 Literacy Students

Online, 124(11). Retrieved from http://www.bls.gov/opub/mlr/2001/ll/art4full.pdf Holzer, H., 8c Lerman, R. (2009). The future of middle-skill jobs. Washington, DC: Brookings Institution. Retrieved from http://www.brookings.edu/?/media/Files/ rc/papers/2009/02_middle_skilljobs_holzer/02_middle_skill_jobs_holzer.pdf Johnson, B., & Christensen, L. (2000). Educational research: Quantitative and qualitative approaches. Needham Heights, MA: Allyn 8c Bacon. Kirsch, I., Braun, H., & Yamamoto, (2007). America's perfect storm: Three forces changing our nation's future. Princeton, NJ: Educational Testing Services. Retrieved from http://www.ets.org/Media/Education_Topics/pdf/AmericasPerfectStorm. pdf McMurrry, M. (2007). Minnesota labor force projections 2005-2035. St Paul, MN: Minnesota State Demographic Center. National Center on Education and the Economy. (2009). International trends in adult education and lifelong learning. Retrieved from http://www.jff.org/publications/ workforce/international-trends-adult-education-and/909 Nunan, D. (1992). Research methods in language learning. Cambridge, England: Cambridge University Press. Prince, D., & Jenkins, D. (2005). Building pathways to success for low-skill adult students: Lessons for community college policy and practice from a statewide longitudinal tracking study. New York, NY: Community College Research Center, Teachers College, Columbia University. RBC Financial Group. (2005). The diversity advantage: A case for Canada's 21st century economy. Paper presented at the 10th International Metropolis Conference on Our Diverse Cities: Migration, Diversity, and Change. Retrieved from http:// www.rbc.com/newsroom/pdf/20051020diversity.pdf Shaffer, B. (2009). ABE fact sheet?2008-09. Retrieved from http://www.cael.org/ pdf/publication_pdf/State_Indicators_Monograph.pdf Strawn, J. (2007). Policies to promote adult education and postsecondary alignment. New York, NY: National Commission on Adult Literacy.

Exeunt omnes: transition and exit when work life is dysfunctional

Conditions and terms of work in the United States have seen a decades‐long decline, making a steady and progressive work life increasingly difficult to achieve. The reasons include the ascendant conservative opposition to the social safety net and job security, competitive pressures due to globalization and most of all, the decline of US manufacturing. It resulted in the loss of millions of middle skill jobs, the eclipse of much of heavy industry and, as science and technology were increasingly pre‐empted by the military sector, a lag in commercial product innovation. Rising productivity is often cited as an offset, but the measures used are shown to be largely spurious and irrelevant, reflecting the explosion of overhead in the “information age” and rising need to respond to complications elsewhere in society. There are more constructive alternatives like infrastructure renewal, but these are now nowhere in prospect.

The Theory of Labour Market Intervention

The purpose of this paper is to investigate the conditions under which the government of an advanced country should intervene directly in the workings of the labour market. This is a very broad question, and I will concentrate on the potential effects of alternative long-term policies intended to ameliorate problems caused by various structural imperfections in the labour market. These structural imperfections are of two types. First, the wage structure may for a variety of reasons be unable to adjust sufficiently for the effective supplies of and demands for some classes of labour to be equated. Legal or social minimum wage practices can prevent the wage rates of jobs associated with very low levels of human capital from reaching their market-clearing levels; trade union power can do the same for the wage rates for many middle-skill jobs. The second type of imperfection is a secondary consequence of income transfer programmes that provide a subsidy to individuals for periods in which they do not work. Although these programmes transfer income to those who cannot earn an income that is considered sufficient by society, they also reduce the work effort of those eligible for the transfer. One obvious way for society to combat these structural imperfections is to attack them directly: repeal minimum wage laws, bash the unions, and eliminate income transfer programmes. In this paper, however, I assume that the direct approach either is not politically feasible or is socially undesirable. Instead, I take these imperfections as given and investigate the impact of indirect policies to make the labour market work better. There are two major types of labour market programmes that have been pursued by governments in virtually all advanced economies.' The first of these is the payment of subsidies to employers to hire specific categories of workers or to individuals in these categories as a supplement to their earnings. The second is the removal of individuals from problem labour markets through the provision of training, relocation allowances and the like. The remainder of the paper is concerned with modelling the effects of various forms of labour market intervention on employment, output and the distribution of net income. I do not attempt to provide the answer to the question of when and how the government should intervene under the alternative specifications of the source of the structural imperfection. In practice social programmes are subject to an almost unbounded set of evaluation criteria. The representatives of the groups that decide whether or not programmes will be introduced, continued, modified or cancelled first ask: How much do we get from this programme? If faced with the constraint of introducing some combination of policies that will achieve a certain objective (like reducing the non-inflationary unemployment rate by a specified amount, or increasing the average real income of a specific segment of the population to some target level), each special interest group pushes for those programmes that it perceives will hurt it the least (gain for it the most). As a consequence of this view of the way governments work,2 it is useful to derive benefit-cost ratios for individual programmes from the point of view of each of the