NYTimes and Statistics
The New York Times has done it again!
I’m inclined to let readers search for Waldo in this article (Behind That Sense of Job Insecurity), but I might as well just say it myself.
The article begins by stating what it tells us is an oft-repeated (but suspect) truism, that “JOBS today seem as long-lasting as the petals of a flower.”
But this truism could be mistaken! Labor economists, the article says, have detected “a seemingly counterintuitive trend. During the last few decades, job stability and job tenure for the typical worker don’t seem to have changed much, if at all.”
The article is an anti-trend piece, pointing out an apparent contradiction between reality and the conventional wisdom that life-long employement is a thing of the past.
But the article goes on to quote data regarding workers “between the ages of 58 and 62 conducted by the Bureau of Labor Statistics and other research groups at intervals from 1969 to 2002.”
Granted, this is interesting, but it says NOTHING about the likelihood of me, a 28 year old, working multiple jobs during my career, which is what I believe the other trend stories (the one’s this article seems to be debunking) have asserted.
To give the author the benefit of the doubt, I’d have to know that he really believes someone out there is alleging how tough boomers have had it job-stability-wise versus their parents. If so, the article would have to say: “There have been a lot of stories claiming that by the time the American worker has reached 58 to 62, he’s tended to work more jobs over the past 30-odd years, than had his parents. But we can show this isn’t so….”
I defy the Times to produce a glut of recent articles making any such allegation. The articles I’ve read quote current data showing that if you entered the workforce in the past 15 years, you’re probably going to work far more jobs than had previous generations.
One could debase the above argument if one had data on 18 to 33-year-old workers. But the NYTimes article does not cite any of that data. If the average 33-year-old worker in 2006 had worked a mere 1.3 jobs and said, when asked, that he expected his current job would last him his entire career, that would go far towards shattering the notion that the average young worker can not depend on consistent lifetime employment at one or only a few employers.
That would knock down the argument that the article seems to want to challenge when it states as its opening line “JOBS today seem as long-lasting as the petals of a flower.” By “jobs today” I would hope they are talking about jobs now being worked. Unless we are playing games with the temporal nature of time, I take “today” to mean today, and not to mean “all the todays of workers who are now 58 to 62, as measured over the past 30-odd years.”
And don’t forget to read to the end, where the fuzzy anecdotal conclusion (the obligatory “on the other hand” section) subtly points out the fallacy of the previous data by stating that newer workers face rockier careers. “CLEARLY, in today’s economy, workers have to prepare for the possibility that their jobs won’t last as long as they once expected,” says the piece.
CLEARLY! Well, then what is the article about? And, if this is clear, prove it! Again, where’s the data for younger workers! We’re instead shown a comparison between the career of someone who is 58 to 62 in 1969 (meaning they were 20 in 1927). We’re told this old soul enjoyed only slightly more job stability than the seed of his loins who, at 58 to 62 years old, were interviewed in 2002, and who therefore were 20 as recently as 1964!
Well, if I ever see a story claiming that the youngest baby boomers have had less job stability than their parents, I’ll know it’s wrong. Until then, I’ll continue to give the benefit of the doubt to articles I keep reading about the likelihood that I will work more jobs in my lifetime than my parents have in theirs. At least these articles quote current data about current employment trends.
