Enjoy Rendering!: Сборник текстов для перевода и реферирования. Батурина С.А. - 33 стр.

       In a recent study, Erica Groshen and Simon Potter, two econo-          America’s firms shift their production – is cast as the chief villain. The
mists at the Federal Reserve Bank of New York, carefully examined             pressure is on for China to revalue its exchange rate or, say many law-
the relative importance of cyclical and structural factors in the labour      makers, face punitive tariffs.
market. They point out that temporary lay-offs, when a worker is laid                Alas, the attempt to slow structural change in American industry
off during a recession but later returns to the same employer, played a       will not stop there. The fear of losing service-sector jobs to foreigners
significant role in four recessions before the 1990s. In the two most         is close behind. A study by Forrester, a business research group, sug-
recent downturns, those of 1990–91 and 2001, they figured little.             gests that the number of such jobs that will be outsourced to places
       The two economists also tried to measure whether job losses            such as India is likely to rise from 400 000 today to 3,3m in 2015. Al-
were due to cyclical or structural factors. If a job is lost because de-      ready some states are trying to resist this by ordering state agencies not
mand for the firm's product is temporarily low, then the job should           to use call centres and the like in India.
come back as the economy begins to recover. But if a job is lost be-                 It would be better to address the factors that depress American
cause a firm or industry is structurally in decline, then it never returns.   hiring directly. One good place to start would be the rising nonwage
In the sharp recession of the early 1980s, they found that job losses         costs of employing permanent workers, especially health-care costs.
were split almost evenly between cyclical and structural changes. In the      After slowing in the mid-1990s, these are soaring again, at double-digit
most recent slowdowns, however, most job flows were due to structural         rates since 1998. Finding a way to control health-care costs would be a
changes. By 1990–91 almost 60 % of America's workers were in indus-           far more sensible way to help America's workers than bashing China.
tries undergoing structural adjustments. By 2001 that figure was almost
80 %.
       This highlights two important points. First, it may well take
longer than expected for the jobs figures to rise, since they will have to
be new jobs, often in new industries. Second, today's trend towards
structural rather than cyclical shifts is an intensified version of a phe-
nomenon already evident in the 1990–91 slowdown. In one way, this
bodes well: although it took more than a year for job growth to pick up
in the early 1990s, about 18 months into the recovery employment
growth soared.
       Given that America had more cyclical excesses to work off this
time, and that structural shifts are even more important than in 1991,
employment may well take longer to rise than it did in the early 1990s.
But rise it eventually should.
       Time, unfortunately, is not on Mr Bush's side. With the presiden-
tial election little more than a year away, the White House needs to
point to job increases now. Unfortunately, in their haste for results,
both Mr Bush's team and his Democratic rivals are pushing wrong-
headed ideas. The politicians' focus has been on trying to slow down
the pace of structural change, particularly in one area, foreign competi-
tion. China – source of soaring imports and the place to which many

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