Word: laborer
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...Contrast that with Ireland. Since losing its edge in Europe - rising labor costs helped the country's share of euro-zone exports fall one-fifth between 2001 and 2008 - the Irish haven't shied from cutting their cloth in recent months. In his budget announced Dec. 9, for instance, Lenihan unleashed deeply unpopular cuts in public-sector pay that look set to trigger strike action. But when it comes to a spending squeeze of their own, says Tilford, "the Greeks are a long way from recognizing that they really have no choice." (Read "Ireland's Economy: Celtic Crunch Time...
...works with bulk distributors and a stand at the Harvard Farmers’ Market to buy ingredients. Along with the communal labor, these deals allow the Co-op to offer a significantly lower board cost than the traditional Harvard meal plan. Board was $750 this past semester, according to Robin S. Bellows ’11, while eating at a dining hall cost over $2000 per semester, according to the Financial Aid Office website...
That may sound promising, but the truth is, drumming up new jobs on short notice isn't exactly in the government's wheelhouse. In the long term, what the government does and doesn't do is incredibly important to the health of the labor market. Trade policy, corporate tax rates, the structure of health care - these things all have a real impact on economic growth. But Washington's tool kit doesn't work nearly as well in the short run. Right now companies aren't hiring for a very specific reason: there's not as much demand for their products...
...question how effective and efficient such a program would be. First of all, it is misleading to imply that companies aren't hiring because workers aren't cheap enough. As Dale Mortensen, a professor of economics at Northwestern University, points out, workers are a real bargain right now. Unit labor costs - how much a company has to pay people to produce a unit of whatever it is that the company makes - have been flat or falling for all of 2009. Between the second and third quarters, labor costs dropped at an annual rate of 2.5%. "If you just look...
...also misleading to imply that companies aren't hiring. They are - about 4 million workers a month. There is always a lot of churn in the American labor market and that doesn't stop during a recession. (We don't particularly feel the hiring right now because companies are letting workers go at a higher rate.) In a best-case scenario - if using tax dollars to subsidize corporate hiring works exactly as it should - we'd wind up paying for 4 million hires a month that we would have otherwise gotten for free...