Stream of Reading (Prepare to be Forwarded) – An Archive of What I'm Reading
Submitted by Michael Snyder via The End of The American Dream blog, We just got more evidence that the middle class in America is dying. According to brand new numbers that were just released by the Social Security Administration, 51 percent of all workers in the United States make less than $30,000 a year. Let…
Live from (Outside of) New York ComicCon: We Have (Close to the Equivalent of) Replicators: So Why Do We (Still) Have Non Personal-Service Jobs? We grow things–but fewer and fewer of us do. We make things–but fewer and fewer of us do. We provide personal services–non-information and information. What else do we do? It strikes…
With the rise of coding bootcamps, it’s become a popular notion that being able to code is simply a matter of will, not dollars. “Learn how to code and become a developer, it’s easy! Take an eight-week course!” But this couldn’t be further from the truth: Becoming a developer is difficult and often out of…
Discussions of income inequality typically focus on how information technology raises the return to skilled labor, or on the rise of global trade, or perhaps on the way that politics skews power toward the rich and well-connected. But there’s another fundamental driver of income inequality: the improved measurement of worker performance. As we get better…
Amazon has made its first serious foray into the so-called “gig economy”, advertising for part-time delivery drivers in Seattle as part of a programme called “Amazon Flex”. The drivers, who will be delivering packages ordered through its same-hour delivery product Amazon Prime Now, will be paid between $18-$25 an hour to work for the company,…
Entry Text NEW YORK — Carl Stubbs, 63, stood outside New York City Council chambers Wednesday in anticipation of the council’s vote on the Fair Chance Act — a bill that would delay when many of the city’s private sector employers can ask job applicants about their criminal history. “I feel [that] being black, having…
What it’s actually like to be a Black employee at a tech company My fingertips danced with delight as I frantically typed away at my computer. “I just saw a new Black person! Does anyone know who it is?” I circulated the email to the “Blackbirds,” Twitter’s internal group for Black employees. In my three…
Colleges give prospective students very little information about how much money they can expect to earn in the job market. In part that’s because colleges may not want people to know, and in part it’s because such information is difficult and expensive to gather. Colleges are good at tracking down rich alumni to hit up…
This story first appeared on The Fiscal Times. When it comes to company loyalty, money matters to millennials. Twenty-nine percent of millennials say that a higher salary is the biggest contributor to their loyalty, according to data released Tuesday by the Staples Advantage Workplace Index. That compares to 20 percent of the overall workforce who place…
The unemployment rate is low by any historical standard at 5.1 percent. Businesses are complaining of worker shortages in industries like health care, construction and trucking. Household-name companies like Walmart and McDonald’s have announced increases to their pay for low-wage workers. Add those together, and it would seem to point to 2015 as the year…