We think of the late 90s as being a great time for jobs and point to the internet and the New Economy as the cause. This intuition may be borne out by very careful analysis but a causal look at the data suggests something else
This is my same cut, goods and government versus everything else, that I used but now we are looking at logs since 1970.
If anything the 90s show slightly slower job growth in the “everything else” category.
However, employment in goods and government hit an all time high in the late 90s after having stagnated for the previous 15 years and seen very little growth since 1969.
We can see a similar pattern in investment in transportation equipment.
Flat line since the 1960s then a roaring boom through the 1990s, barely reaching its 90s peak during the naughts and then utter collapse during the Great Recession.
Yes, this chart indicates that investment – by private businesses – in transportation equipment during the Great Recession hit levels not seen since the bust in the 1970s and indeed lower than the strong quarters of 1969.
Additionally, you can see that while there is a strong roar back we have just recently passed the levels seen during the dot-com bust.
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Sunday ~ March 11th, 2012 at 4:18 pm
Beckett
http://fairlysafedelusions.blogspot.com/
Monday ~ March 12th, 2012 at 10:06 am
On Types of Jobs « Blog of Rivals
[...] Smith writes here, here, and here about the types of jobs that have grown since the late sixties. Specifically he compares Goods [...]
Monday ~ March 12th, 2012 at 1:44 pm
Stewart Rubenstein
Remember, you’re looking at people, not dollars, and the Fed can’t print people (yet). Population growth was higher in the 1970s due to the baby boomer echo.
If you split govt and goods, and look at all three components as a ratio with the total civilian population (CNP16OV), I think you’ll get a clearer story. Government employment grew from 1947 to 175, it’s been flat since then, and declining in the past few years. Goods continues its steady decline. The “other” category primarily reflects overall job growth, which has been poor in the last 15 years, as shown by the drop in participation rate.