Guest Author • Dec 21, 2019 •
John MacCormick You’d think that with low unemployment and ever-improving technology for distance education, the proportion of tertiary students studying part-time would be on the rise. But it’s not. There’s a puzzle here that may help to reveal some of the challenges our tertiary education system faces in meeting the skills needs of New Zealand’s workforce. The number of people … Read More
Michael Reddell • Nov 12, 2019 •
A passing comment in a post the other day about the labour force participation rates of older people prompted me to pull down the fuller data and see what we could see about various participation rates over the decades since the HLFS began in 1986. As it happens, the unemployment rate in 1986 averaged 4.2 per cent, exactly the … Read More
Guest Author • Oct 17, 2019 •
Judy Kavanagh Over the last 40 years, New Zealanders – and people in other countries – have experienced big changes in the jobs they do and where they live and work. These changes include: a decline in manufacturing jobs an increase in jobs in ‘information-intensive’ industries (which are better paid and require a tertiary qualification) increasing participation of women in … Read More
Guest Author • Jul 12, 2019 •
John MacCormick There’s an old joke about an economist searching for her keys under a street lamp. She lost them somewhere up the street in the dark, but it’s easier to look where the light’s shining.1 John MacCormick If that still has any amusement value, it’s because there’s still some truth in it. When searching for the keys to … Read More
Guest Author • Jul 11, 2019 •
Tim Maddock Why don’t people move as often as economists expect? Some regions in New Zealand have much higher rates of unemployment than others. These differences are persistent, with little change over the past thirty years. Why might this be? If workers seek higher pay (and unemployment is painful) then we would expect workers in struggling regions to … Read More
Dave Heatley • Jun 21, 2019 •
I only know one economist joke. A plane carrying economists plummets towards the ground after its engines fail. In a quiet cabin, an economist pipes up: “in my model the demand for parachutes just peaked, and the market will increase supply”. This caricature of economists — withdrawn, unemotional and overly trusting in simplistic models — has at least a grain … Read More
Guest Author • May 17, 2019 •
Predicting technology is the first step towards predicting the labour market impacts of technology. But history tells us that technology prediction is like a game of chance. Make enough predictions and you’re sure to get some right… and many wrong, sometimes spectacularly. The president of IBM, Thomas Watson, purportedly said in 1943 that “I think there is a world market … Read More
Dave Heatley • May 13, 2019 •
This graphic caught my eye. It accompanies the article Robots and Us in today’s Otago Daily Times. Things look pretty dire for accountants and auditors – 94% of jobs automated within five years. Time to start night classes and retrain. Becoming a software developer looks a safe bet – only 4% of jobs will be … Read More
Jean Balchin • Jul 10, 2017 •
The public’s preconceptions about psychosis makes it rather difficult for those living with the condition to gain employment and achieve their goals, a new Australian study finds. The study, published today in the Australian Journal of Psychology set out to examine the barriers there were to employment for people with psychosis. What is Psychosis? … Read More
Robert Hickson • Dec 07, 2015 •
A sure sign of when to be skeptical of futurists’ (or journalists’) predictions is if the title conforms to the “Why x is the future of y” narrative. That’s just future schlock. (As in “cheap or inferior goods or material”). Take, for example, 3D printing is the future of manufacturing, Why lab-grown meat is the future of food … Read More