Boeing in South Carolina: Huge Subsidies, and a Labor Dispute

Boeing's decision to add an assembly line for its new Dreamliner aircraft in South Carolina has touched off a firestorm of controversy. The first facility, on Boeing's home of Washington state, received the country's largest-ever package of state and local incentives, totaling $160 million a year for 20 years, a nominal value of $3.2 billion that I calculated to have a present value of just shy of $2 billion. The World Trade Organization (WTO) ruled in January that this subsidy violated the terms of the 1994 Agreement on Subsidies and Countervailing Measures, but that decision is now under appeal.

Meanwhile, South Carolina has given Boeing a package thought to be worth over $900 million  to open a new assembly line for the Dreamliner. The European Union will no doubt bring a complaint against this subsidy at the WTO and, in all likelihood, again will win.

The biggest battle over the South Carolina assembly line erupted when Boeing CEO Jim Albaugh said that the decision had been motivated by strikes at its facilities in Washington (http://motherjones.com/kevin-drum/2011/09/quote-day-boeing-vs-nlrb, h/t Matt Yglesias). This was a no-no: the National Labor Relations Act protects workers who exercise their rights to form a union or to strike from retaliation by the company. One obvious reading of Albaugh's statement is that he was admitting that the company broke the law. Therefore, it is not surprising that the National Labor Relations Board (NLRB) filed a complaint against Boeing.

Whether the NLRB will win its case is less certain. How is it “retaliation” if no workers in Washington lose their job and 5,000 more union workers there get jobs? As labor law professor Jeffrey Hirsch explains, it comes down to intent: the NLRB will use the statements of Albaugh and other Boeing officials against them, while Boeing will argue that the decision was not motivated by retaliation, but was purely an economic decision. The first hearing in the case is scheduled for later this month, and then we will see what an administrative law judge rules.

In the meantime, though, Congressional Republicans have been in an uproar, with the House passing a bill yesterday that would prohibit the NLRB from ordering the relocation of workers. While this bill is unlikely to go anywhere in the Senate, it is interesting that Boeing itself has “remained on the sidelines,” as The Hill  put it yesterday.

Whatever the outcome of the labor dispute, it's clear that we have yet another example of a gigantic subsidy for a mobile company that can well afford to make the investment on its own. Regardless of whether the subsidies violate WTO rules (and I think they do), they take money from average taxpayers to give Boeing at a time when many states, including South Carolina, face severe deficits.

ACA Works for Young Adults as Planned; Percentage of Uninsured Hispanics also Falls

On Tuesday, the Census Bureau released its annual report on income, poverty, and health insurance for the year 2010. Based on surveys at approximately 100,000 addresses conducted primarily in March 2011, the Current Population Survey Annual Social and Economic Supplement found that the number of uninsured in the U.S. rose by 919,000, from 49.0 to 49.9 million (see Table 8). (Note that this reflects a downward revision in the estimate for uninsured in 2009.) There were two bright spots in the data, however, for young adults and Hispanics.

On September 23, 2010, one of the most significant early provisions of the Affordable Care Act (ACA) went into effect, allowing young adults to stay on their parents' insurance until they turned 26 years old. The Census Bureau report shows that this provision was used by a substantial number of people. Since this provision affected 19-25 year olds, the report broke out the data separately for this age group: 393,000 fewer of them were uninsured in 2010 than in 2009, with the percentage uninsured falling from 31.4% to 29.7%; both of these changes were statistically significant. This shows that the Affordable Care Act worked precisely as planned for young adults.

In addition, the percentage of uninsured Hispanics fell by a statistically significant 0.9 percentage points, from 31.6% to 30.7%, between 2009 and 2010. While the fall in the number uninsured was small (110,000) and statistically not significant, when combined with an increase in the Hispanic population of over 1 million, the percentage change was substantial. The report does not speculate on the reason more Hispanics were insured. Indeed, despite the fact that the poverty rate increased among Hispanics by 1.3 percentage points (Table 4), the number of Hispanics insured under every category of insurance, private and public, increased between 2009 and 2010. For example, almost 900,000 more Hispanics had insurance through their employers, even as non-Hispanic whites had a drop of 1.9 million receiving insurance through their employers (Table C-2).

Despite this improvement, Hispanics were by far the ethnic group most likely to suffer being uninsured. Their rate of 30.7% uninsured compares unfavorably with blacks (20.8%), Asians (18.1%), and non-Hispanic whites (11.7%).

Given the fact that the uninsurance rate among 19-25 year olds is still almost 30%, there would seem to be a good possibility that we will see even more improvement here after this fall's annual enrollment periods, thanks to the ACA.

Employment to Population Ratio a Better Predictor of Uninsurance than Unemployment Rate

Commenter David Littleboy at The Incidental Economist, where my unemployment/jobs post was linked, makes the good point that the employment to population ratio might be a better predictor of uninsurance than the unemployment rate. Over the period covered by the Gallup surveys I reference (2008-June 2011), the data bear him out. The employment/population ratio falls over the entire period, and the uninsured rate rises the whole period. Not only that, the employment/population ratio catches the big one-month rise in uninsurance between May and June found in Gallup's polling.

That said, he doesn't disagree that adding jobs is our best short-term method for insuring more people until the ACA's individual mandate comes into effect in 2014.

I've got no problems with finding the best possible measure for things we're interested in. And it gives me an idea for a better measure of states' employment performance since the recession began...

Increase in Uninsured Rate Shows Need for Action on Jobs

“Gallup: Uninsured Have Increased Under Obama and Since Obamacare Was Enacted,” blares the headline at CNSnews and a number of other conservative sites that picked up the story (thanks to a non-blogger friend for pointing me to this). The implication is that Obama and the Affordable Care Act have failed, though the article is careful to point out that the mandate does not come into effect until 2014. Indeed, the article makes no claims to explaining why this happened.

As two Gallup surveys show, 14.8% of adults were uninsured in 2008, 16.2% in 2009, 16.4% in 2010, and 16.8% in the first half of 2011. In fact, the results in June had to have been dreadful, because Gallup's January-May polling only gave a 2011 figure of 16.6%, and June results pushed the figure to 16.8%.

Similar, but less quickly reported, numbers come from the Census Bureau. As reported by the Kaiser Family Foundation in September 2010, the uninsured rate for all Americans was 15.4% in 2008 and 16.7% in 2009. Since the percentage of children uninsured in both years was about 10%, this implies even higher uninsured rates for adults than Gallup found.

What were the causes of this increase? Using the Gallup data since it is more recent, fully 70% of the increase (1.4 of 2.0 points) came from 2008 to 2009, when the full-year unemployment rate rose from 5.8% to 9.3%, as mentioned in the Kaiser article. Yet unemployment peaked at 10.1% in October 2009 and is down to 9.1% in August 2011, so it isn't simply unemployment since the uninsured rate has continued to rise. The other main cause would appear to be reduced employer provision of health care, whether through plan suspension, unaffordability, or of course job loss. According to Gallup's data, the percentage of adults with employer-provided insurance declined from 49.2% in 2008 to 45.0% in January-May 2011.  The figure in 2010 was 45.8%, meaning that employer-based insurance fell even though there was no increase in unemployment.

Reversing this trend requires the full implementation of the Affordable Care Act, of course, but in the short run, these data underline the importance of job creation, since that is still by far the most common source of health insurance. Whether President Obama's jobs plan will pass is hard to gauge (though I think it's improbable), but without it, we are likely to see continuing increases in the number of uninsured. In addition, we should pay attention to Medicaid, which may cover fewer people due to state budget crises.

Labor Day: Of Nine OECD Members with a Higher Minimum Wage than U.S., Seven Have Lower Unemployment Rates

When Michele Bachmann says she would “consider” lowering the minimum wage, she tapped into the long-standing theme of conservative economists that the minimum wage is a job-killer. The only problem is, careful statistical research has shown that this simply isn't true. In the 1990s, economists David Card and Alan Krueger demolished the methodologies of prior statistical studies showing a negative impact as well as conducting original research comparing low-wage employment within a two-state metropolitan area when one state raised its minimum wage, finding no negative impact. (A useful summary of Card and Krueger's long-run influence on the debate can be found in a post by Arindrajit Dube at Rortybomb [h/t Mark Thoma].)

 

But another way of showing the lack of a negative effect, following my “Labor Day” theme of international comparisons, is to look at the minimum wage and unemployment rates among the industrialized democracies of the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD). Only 21 of the OECD's 34 members have economy-wide minimum wage rates, as shown in the table below. This shows the “real” (inflation-adjusted) hourly minimum wage for each of the 21 countries, expressed in 2005 U.S. dollars and adjusted for each country's price level in a measure called “purchasing power parity” or PPP. (Under straight exchange rates, Belgium, France, Ireland, Luxembourg, and the Netherlands all have minimum wages above $10 per hour in 2005 dollars.) The data are for 2008, the most recent year available. Unemployment data are for June 2011, the most recent month available for most of the countries (exceptions are noted in the table).

In this list, the United States comes in with only the 10^th highest minimum wage of the 21 countries. This is true even after the increase to $7.25 in 2009, which comes to $6.26 in 2005 dollars. In addition to the five countries mentioned above, Australia, Canada, New Zealand, and the United Kingdom have a higher minimum wage than the U.S. If the story told by Michele Bachmann and conservative economists were true, we would expect that they would all have higher unemployment rates than the U.S. In fact, however, only France (9.8%) and Ireland (14.3%) are higher, while the other seven have lower unemployment rates, ranging from 1.4 points lower (UK) to 5.1 points lower (Netherlands). We should remember from my last two posts in this series that all of these countries have stronger employment protections than does the United States, and that only France has lower union density.

Real hourly minimum wages

Data extracted on 09 Sep 2011 00:21 UTC (GMT) from OECD.Stat

Frequency		Annual
Series		In US$PPP
Time		2008
Country
Australia		8.59   4.9%
Belgium		8.23   7.4%
Canada		6.43   7.4%
Czech Republic		2.99    6.5%
France		8.79   9.8%
Greece		4.86   15.0% (March 2011)
Hungary		2.61   9.9%
Ireland		7.55   14.3%
Japan		5.22   4.6%
Korea		4.36   3.3%
Luxembourg		8.95   4.3%
Mexico		0.79   5.8%
Netherlands		8.22   4.1%
New Zealand		6.99   6.5% (Q2 2011)
Poland		3.21    9.5%
Portugal		3.31   12.5%
Slovak Republic		..        13.4%
Spain		4.07   21.0%
Turkey		2.96   9.3% (May 2011)
United Kingdom		8.06   7.8% (May 2011)
United States		5.59   9.2%

Notes: Unemployment rate is for June 2011 unless otherwise noted. U.S. minimum wage rose to $6.26 in 2005 dollars with the 2009 increase to $7.25 in nominal dollars. The Slovak Republic's minimum wage was $1.36 in 2006, the most recent year available.

Source: http://stats.oecd.org/Index.aspx

For 2008 real minimum wage in US$ purchasing power parity, click on “Labour,” then “Earnings,” then “Real hourly minimum wages,” then adjust the “Series” to “In US$PPP.”

For June 2011 unemployment rates, click on “Labour,” then “Labour Force Statistics,” then “Labour Statistics (MEI),” then “Labour Force Statistics (MEI),” then “Harmonized Unemployment Rates and Levels (HURs),” then adjust the “Subject” to “Harmonized Unemployment Rate (HUR).”

 

Raising the minimum wage would add to the purchasing power of many people who will spend their money at a time when the economy sorely needs demand, as economist Heidi Shierholz of the Economic Policy Institute points out. Meanwhile, the best research shows that a higher minimum wage does not destroy jobs as economists generally thought before Card and Krueger's work. The data presented here shows that American workers at the bottom of the wage scale earn less than their counterparts in a number of other countries, and overall those countries do not see more unemployment as a result. We should, therefore, resist any calls to lower our minimum wage.

Labor Day: U.S. Has Fifth Lowest Union Density in the OECD

As was reaffirmed by Vice-President Biden on Labor Day, the American middle class was originally built by the labor movement. That unions have been declining in this country for decades is not exactly news. But where does the U.S. stand relative to the other industrialized democracies of the Organization for Economic Cooperation (OECD)? The obvious measure of the strength of the labor movement is the proportion of the workforce that is unionized, usually referred to as union density (although it is well known that the French labor movement is far stronger than its low union density would suggest).

The short answer is that the U.S. ranks 30^th of the 34-member OECD. U.S. union density stood at only 11.4% in 2010, significantly below the OECD average of 18.1% last year. The only OECD countries with a lower proportion of labor organized are Estonia (8.0%), France (7.6% in 2008), South Korea (10.0% in 2009), and Turkey (5.9% in 2009).

Examining some of the data, we see that the U.S. is not alone in seeing a decline in union density:

Country                       Density 1999          Density 2010

G-7

Canada                       28.1%                    27.5%

France                          8.1%                      7.6% (2008)

Germany                     25.3%                    18.6%

Italy                            35.4%                     35.1%

Japan                          22.2%                     18.4%

United Kingdom           30.1%                     26.5%

United States               13.4%                     11.4%

Other Countries

Australia                      24.9%                     18.0%

Finland                        76.3%                     70.0% (highest density in 2010)

Ireland                         39.0%                      30.7% (2009)

Sweden                       80.6%                      68.4% (highest density in 1999)

OECD Average             21.0%                     18.1%

Source: http://stats.oecd.org/Index.aspx, then click on “Labour,” “Trade Union,” and “Trade Union Density.”

The reasons for this general trend are in dispute, though globalization is one likely culprit. I'll have to leave that debate for another time.

For now, I simply want to emphasize how low the American unionization rate is, and how that bodes ill for the middle class. We are, of course, currently seeing an attack on public sector unions in many states, which threatens tens of thousands of middle class jobs and reduced pay and benefits for hundreds of thousands of workers.

To end on a more positive note, it's interesting that Canada, a country like the U.S. in many ways (in particular, economists would describe as both relatively “labor-scarce” by global standards, an issue I will discuss in more detail in future posts), has not seen the same sort of deterioration in union density that the U.S. has. Paul Krugman, in The Conscience of a Liberal, makes a great deal of this comparison to argue that union decline in the U.S. was not inevitable and could be reversed. I hope he's right.

Labor Day; U.S. Has Weakest Employment Protections Among OECD and BRICS

This is the first in a series of posts on the sorry state of American labor. International comparisons make this very clear. U.S. workers are more vulnerable than workers in any Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (rich industrialized democracies) members or even the BRIC countries (Brazil, Russia, India, and China, with Estonia, Indonesia, and South Africa included as comparisons for good measure) to being fired unfairly, to not getting severance pay, to getting the least notice on mass layoffs or being fired, to being stuck on a mouse wheel of temporary positions, altogether a total of 21 measures that the OECD used to determine how well workers' rights at work are protected.

Not only is the United States in last place, it isn't even close. In the oldest version of the OECD's employment protection measure, for which data goes back to 1985, the U.S. score in 2008 was 0.21, unchanged since 1990. The next lowest were Canada and the United Kingdom at 0.75, while the other G-7 countries clock in with Japan (1.43), Germany (2.12), France (3.05), and Italy (1.89). Note that this measure uses only 14 elements; the full 21-element version begins only with 2008. The OECD considers the newer measure better, and the United States, while still last, does not lag quite so badly: U.S. (0.85), Canada (1.02), U.K. (1.09), Japan (1.73), Germany (2.63), France (3.00), and Italy (2.58). The unweighted OECD average on the new measure is 2.24 in 2008, while Brazil is 2.27, Russia 1.80, India 2.63, and China 2.80.

Employment Protection in 2008 in OECD and selected non-OECD countries*

Scale from 0 (least stringent) to 6 (most restrictive)

Source: OECD


The bottom line is that American workers enjoy the least protection out of all major economies in the world. Protections against individual firing, collective dismissals, and ability to get off temporary employment are as weak as they can be. Happy Labor Day!



Data notes: The basic methodology (with a link to the full methodology) is here. 

The raw data for these measures is at OECD StatExtracts, then click on “Labour” in the left-hand menu to expand the category, then “Employment Protection,” and finally “Strictness of employment protection – overall.”