Saturday, June 15, 2013

Germany’s Demographic Bust

Pondering the implications of Germany's shrinking workforce at Pacific Standard magazine.

Theme: Germany is dying.

Subject Article: "Erasmus generation: To overcome its skills shortage, Germany needs to remodel its society."

Other Links: 1. "Demographic Mesofacts."
2. "Portugal’s Japanese Problem."
3. "Economists Suck At Geography."
4. "The New Geogrpahy of Jobs."
5. "Mobility Matters: Understanding the New Geography of Jobs."
6. "Reinventing the Texas Triangle: Solutions for Growing Challenges."
7. "Urban Geopolitics: Why Chicago Is Dying."
8. "Sympathy for the Luddites."

Postscript: The interview with economist Enrico Moretti is the link to click. Deeper into the rationale of why everyone regardless of educational attainment must move to Big City:

The second point that is missing from our debate is that Apple, Facebook, and other high-tech companies support a growing number of jobs outside high tech in the communities where they are located, and many of these jobs are for workers with a high school education or less. Attracting a scientist or a software engineer to a city triggers a multiplier effect, increasing employment and salaries for those who provide local services. My research, based on data for 8 million workers in 320 metropolitan areas, shows that for each new high-tech job in a city, five additional jobs are ultimately created in local services, both in professional occupations (lawyers, architects, and nurses) and in non-professional ones (waiters, hairdressers, carpenters, and security guards).

Swinging this lens away from the United States and back to the Eurozone, Germany's agglomeration economy won't do much good for the less-educated stuck in Spain. The class inversion of historical migration patterns is deeply troubling. Moretti's anxiety about this very issue is palpable in his book. I'm adding the migration as economic development to the discussion. The people who most need to move, aren't moving. And even if they did relocate, are there opportunities for them in Big City?

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