Junk Jobs
Photo Credit: Wonderlane As we approach the 2012 election, we’re going to be hearing a lot about job creation, job growth, and jobs in general. Most of the time, these job reports come in numbers and percentages. The number of jobs gained in a month, or the overall unemployment percentage in the country, etc. While useful signals for some macroeconomic trends of the U.S. economy, I don’t think these numbers explain anything beyond basic baseline trends. I’d argue that the lack of granularity also makes it hard to determine causal factors for job creation. NPR’s Planet Money had a great podcast about how difficult it is to attribute job claims to their proper “creator.” However, more important than the actual number of jobs lost or gained, is the value of the jobs our economy is producing. For example, let’s say that tomorrow the unemployment rate went to zero. Everyone had a job, fantastic! But it then turned out that 40 million of those jobs went towards digging ditches; getting...