Comments on: Interpret These Data

By: BC

BC — Tue, 10 May 2016 00:51:40 +0000

This sounds right. The same revenue is spread over fewer people, due to technology, so that revenue per worker is higher. People like to ask why we pay professional athletes so much more than teachers. However, with 3.1M public school (full-time-equivalent) teachers, we actually spend a lot on (total) teacher pay. If technology allowed us to educate the whole country with a few thousand teachers the way TV allows us to entertain the whole country with a few thousand athletes, then those teachers would probably be very well compensated.

By: Andrew'

Andrew' — Mon, 09 May 2016 17:08:18 +0000

The young people of 2000 got 16 years older?

By: Jeff R.

Jeff R. — Mon, 09 May 2016 16:46:26 +0000

A typical 25-year-old made $43,000 in New York in 2000, adjusting for inflation. In 2014, a 25-year-old in the city could expect to make about $37,000.

Wow. That’s pretty terrible, considering how expensive it is to live there. I would hope a lot of those people are waiting tables, bartending, etc. and thus have lots of unreported cash income.

By: One of the dudes

One of the dudes — Mon, 09 May 2016 16:27:53 +0000

This is 100% of the explanation.

By: S

Mon, 09 May 2016 13:54:40 +0000

More young people who make less than the prior average have been moving to New York, lowering the earnings baseline of the cohort and decreasing the % in finance – would seem to be the/an alternative

By: Chad

Chad — Mon, 09 May 2016 13:53:24 +0000

Maybe the “easiest” possibility is that NY experienced growth in other, lower income sectors. Its possible, for instance, that nothing about finance changed, but that as Millennials (a much larger generation than Xers who were the “young workers” in 2000) have entered a post-financial-crisis NY economy, there are a lot of them working non-finance jobs (which would account for the apparent shrinking financial employee pool) for reasonably low wages (at least a popular complaint of current young workers who feel over-educated/underemployed).

The other alternative is a common theory (and largely consistent/overlapping with your suggestion) that after a recession that affects a particular industry, firms discover they can get by without a large number of workers/positions they used to think were really important. After the crisis, it may just be that a lot of folks who got laid off were those marginal workers, and those positions won’t reemerge.

Someone more familiar with labor stats than I am could probably verify/crush that claim pretty easily since it’s hardly novel, but it’s worth considering the possibility that finance didn’t change since the measures we’re given are relative to the broader labor market.

By: Brandon Berg

Brandon Berg — Mon, 09 May 2016 13:46:59 +0000

Don’t they also work about twice as much? On an hourly basis, that doesn’t sound like such a great deal.

By: asdf

asdf — Mon, 09 May 2016 13:17:40 +0000

Finance is a lot of proprietary knowledge. The more people that work there the looser the control over that knowledge. Better to pay one person a lot of money to work 80 hours then two to work forty hours. Two people means two people that could walk out your door to a competitor with your client list.

By: andrewknorr

andrewknorr — Mon, 09 May 2016 13:13:22 +0000

Back office people have been moved to Utah or eliminated by technology.