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Opportunities for Mothers in the Labor Force

Written by Roscoe Scarborough on . Posted in Reg Murphy, Roscoe Scarborough.

A full-time, nine-to-five schedule is often incompatible with parenting responsibilities. In the absence of robust government support for families, mothers of young children have much lower rates of labor force participation than fathers. Organizational practices and laws can be adapted to increase labor force participation rates among parents, especially mothers of young children.

Several recent columns from the Reg Murphy Center for Economic and Policy Studies have examined the current labor market. Dr. Don Mathews showed that the labor market is experiencing a demographic crisis; we have an aging population and a declining birth rate, resulting in a smaller proportion of working-age people. My other Murphy Center associates identified some solutions. Dr. Melissa Trussell advocated for policies that promote fertility and immigration. Dr. Heather Farley proposed that organizations work to retain existing employees, especially aging employees who must choose between full-time work and retirement. My column contributes to this conversation by advocating for policies that allow parents to work.

Being a parent is a full-time job, but it doesn’t pay. Giving birth and the associated recovery time forces mothers to take time away from paid work. Until a child is school-aged, parents must provide childcare. Families provide childcare in a range of ways: center-based childcare, care from a relative, hiring a nanny or babysitter, or parent care. Even after kids start school, parents’ nine-to-five work schedules do not align with school hours and extracurricular activities.

Center-based childcare is expensive. In many parts of the country, childcare tops housing as the greatest household expense. It can be more expensive to send a toddler to daycare than to send a teen to college. For many lower-income households, opting out of the workforce or shifting to part-time work are the only viable options for providing childcare.

Based on the gendered division of paid and unpaid labor in the U.S., the caregiving burden falls on women disproportionately. Mothers are more likely than fathers to opt out of the workforce or shift from full-time to part-time work. In 2020, fathers of children under three had a labor force participation rate of 93.5%, while mothers of children under three had a rate of 63.3%, according to the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics. This time out of the workforce impacts women’s regular weekly income, career advancement, and lifetime earnings.

Employers would be wise to adopt parent-friendly policies. Adapting existing positions to be fully remote would allow more parents to work. As appropriate for the job duties, schedule flexibility can allow parents to complete work around childcare responsibilities. Similarly, many part-time positions would be more attractive to parents if the position guaranteed a fixed schedule and reliable income.

Expanding opportunities for professional part-time work will allow more parents to work. Organizations could create positions with attractive compensation packages and flexible schedules to recruit skilled part-time workers who are alienated from the labor market.

Federal and state legislation could strengthen worker protections and enhance benefits for part-time workers. Additionally, laws that expand parental leave and add job protections for parents would keep more mothers in the workforce.

These changes are a win for all. Labor market participation is good for the economy. Income and employer-sponsored benefits support families. And, elevated labor force participation reduces reliance on the social safety net.

What does the future hold? The impending overturn of Roe v. Wade will increase the birth rate, especially among lower-income women in states restricting access to reproductive healthcare. More families will have to choose between paid work or providing childcare. I will end with some good news. The pandemic normalized working from home. Many jobs that were once bound to brick-and-mortar offices are now permitting remote work, reducing the need for center-based childcare. In addition, recent infrastructure investments are increasing the number of households that have access to broadband internet. These developments promise to increase the opportunities for employment among parents of young children.

 

Roscoe Scarborough, Ph.D. is an assistant professor of sociology at College of Coastal Georgia and an associate scholar at the Reg Murphy Center. He can be reached by email at rscarborough@ccga.edu.

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What do we do about the aging workforce?

Written by Melissa Trussell on . Posted in Melissa Trussell, Reg Murphy.

Last week in this space, Dr. Mathews wrote that labor force changes we are tempted to blame on the pandemic or on pandemic relief policies are more accurately considered part of a demographics story than a pandemic story. Our labor force has shrunk because our population has aged.

It is good news that the labor force was less impacted by the pandemic than it may seem on the surface. It is not especially convenient, though, that we cannot just blame our gaps on the pandemic and wait for time to heal all wounds. An aging, retiring workforce is a problem that will only be exacerbated by time if we are not intentional about addressing it.

There are a couple of policy approaches to alleviating the economic stress brought on by our aging workforce. One is to encourage workers to work longer and/or more productive careers. My colleague Dr. Heather Farley will take a look at this policy challenge in her column next week.

The second policy approach, which could be taken simultaneously with the work longer approach, is to expand the working age population. The annual rate of population growth in Europe and North America has been declining since the early 2000’s, and the UN predicts that by 2075, the death rate will outpace the birth rate in the US.

This is not good news for our labor force, but we can do something about it. There’s a ton of literature showing that our policy choices and priorities have a direct impact on fertility choices.

In 2021, Norwegian sociologists Bergvik, Fauske, and Hart published a review of 35 other studies on the relationships between family policy and fertility in Europe, the US, Canada, and Australia. They found that childcare availability, cash transfers to parents, expanded parental leave, and subsidizing assisted reproductive treatments all, to varying degrees, encourage increased fertility.

Increasing the fertility rate is not the only way to expand our workforce. If you want more people in your house but don’t want to have a baby, invite someone over! Immigration!

While our native born population is aging, immigrants are a major source of younger, working-age adults in the U.S.

In the US, only 61.5% of native born residents are between ages 18 and 64. Among foreign-born US residents, that statistic is 78.1%.

In Georgia, the difference is more pronounced, with 62.3% of native born Georgians and 82.8% of foreign-born Georgians between 18 and 64.

Immigrants are not only more likely to be younger than native born Americans; they also are more likely to go to work.

Native born Americans have a 62.8% labor force participation rate and a 58.9% employment rate. Foreign born American residents have a 66.5% participation rate and a 63.2% employment rate.

In Georgia, the native born participation and employment rates are 63.3% and 59.2%, respectively. The foreign born rates are 70.2% and 67.5%.

These numbers include both documented and undocumented workers.

Immigrants to the US are younger and more likely to work than native-born Americans, and, as I have written before for this column, several studies in the economics literature find that foreign-born workers, including undocumented immigrants, do not push native-born workers out of the labor force. On the contrary, the presence of foreign-born workers often opens doors for creation of new jobs for native-born workers.

Our workforce is aging, and the resulting strain on our economy is palpable. If we are going to effectively relieve the pressure and continue a growth trajectory for the US economy, our policy response should be both pro-family and pro-immigrant.

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Dr. Melissa Trussell is a professor in the School of Business and Public Management at College of Coastal Georgia who works with the college’s Reg Murphy Center for Economic and Policy Studies. Contact her at mtrussell@ccga.edu.

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Are Any Workers Still “On the Sidelines”?

Written by Don Mathews on . Posted in Don Mathews, Reg Murphy.

Why are employers still having so much trouble finding workers?

To many observers, the reason is obvious: lots of workers who left the labor force during the covid onslaught haven’t come back. For whatever reason – fear, lifestyle change, childcare difficulties, accumulated pandemic unemployment payments, etc. – they remain “on the sidelines;” that is, out of the labor force.

Other observers find a different explanation no less obvious: “A lot of people just don’t want to work.”

Let’s address each in turn.      

At first glance, labor force participation figures appear to support the “lots of workers are still on the sidelines” story.

To be clear, the labor force consists of the number of people who are either working or looking for work. The labor force participation rate is the percentage of a population that is in the labor force. The labor force participation rate for the U.S. as a whole is the percentage of the population age 16 years or older that is in the labor force. 

In February 2020, the month before covid hit, the labor force participation rate for men age 16 years and older was 69.0 percent. It’s 68.1 percent now. The labor force participation rate for women age 16 and older in February 2020 was 57.9 percent. It’s 56.9 percent now. 

The difference between a participation rate of 69.0 percent and 68.1 percent for men amounts to 1.1 million workers.  The difference between a participation rate of 57.9 percent and 56.9 percent for women amounts to almost 1.4 million workers.

That’s 2.5 million workers – about 1.5 percent of the labor force – still “on the sidelines,” by that rough estimate.

The workers thought most likely to have opted for the “sidelines” during the pandemic are women age 20 years to 34 years. The labor force participation rate for women age 20 years to 34 years was 76.0 percent in February 2020. It’s 74.9 percent now. The difference amounts to 349,000 workers. Seems to fit the story line.

But take a close look at monthly labor force participation rates over the past ten years, rather than the past two, and the “lots of workers are still on the sidelines” story all but falls apart.

Labor force participation rates for men and women of almost every age group are higher now than at any time in the past ten years – except for the few months right before covid, particularly February 2020.

Consider again women age 20 years to 34 years. The labor force participation rates for women age 20 years to 34 years going back to 2018 are: 74.9 percent now, 76.0 percent in February 2020, 74.4 percent in February 2019 and 73.2 percent in February 2018.         

64 percent of women in the labor force are 25 to 54 years old. The labor force participation rates for women age 25 years to 54 years going back to 2018 are: 76.8 percent now, 77.1 percent in February 2020, 76.0 percent in February 2019 and 75.4 percent in February 2018.

Lots of workers still “on the sidelines”? The numbers say no.

What’s buffeting labor markets in the U.S. today isn’t covid. It’s demographics. Since February 2018, while the country’s population age 16 years to 64 years has increased by 0.5 percent, its population age 65 years or older increased by 10.8 percent. That’s a 1,060,000 increase in 16 to 64 year olds and a 5,450,000 increase in people 65 years and older.

Which addresses the second explanation of why employers are still having trouble finding workers: “A lot of people just don’t want to work.”

Indeed, a lot of people don’t want to work. They’re retired.

Marriage in the U.S. Today

Written by Roscoe Scarborough on . Posted in Reg Murphy, Roscoe Scarborough.

I got married a few weeks ago. As a responsible academic, I did my research on marriage before saying, “I do.” It turns out that, in many ways, my experiences are representative of the state of marriage in the U.S.

Marriage rates are declining. Age of first marriage is increasing. Rates of cohabitation are on the rise. And, an increasing share of adults are unpartnered—neither married nor living with a partner. According to the sociologist Andrew Cherlin, marriage is experiencing “deinstitutionalization.”

The 2016-2020 American Community Survey, focusing on people 15 and older in the U.S., finds that 48.1% are married, 10.8% are divorced, 1.8% are separated, 5.7% are widowed, and 33.5% are never married. Declining marriage rates are not just because of the COVID-19 pandemic. The marriage rate in the U.S. has been falling since the post-WWII marriage boom. Before the pandemic, in 2019, marriage rates were the lowest that they have ever been since the U.S. government started recording marriages in 1867.

My experience of delaying marriage is not uncommon for those of my generation. As an older millennial, I graduated college just in time for the Great Recession. Facing a challenging job market, I focused on continuing my education. This meant delaying attainment of many traditional markers of adulthood, including full-time employment, homeownership, marriage, and children.

Age of first marriage is increasing. In the 1950s, the median age of first marriage was 20 for women and 22 for men. Today, the median age of first marriage is 28 for women and 30 for men.

Many young people are delaying marriage or choosing not to get married at all according to data from the 2016-20 ACS. Among those 20-34, only 26.5% of men are married and 33.3% of women are married. The marriage rate increases among those who are 35-44; 60.9 % of men and 62% of women ages 35-44 are married. A majority of Americans still get married, but it is happening much later in life than marriage in earlier generations.

Rates of cohabitation are on the rise. My new wife and I lived together for four years before tying the knot. Cohabitation was once taboo, but many Americans are living with a partner without getting married. ACS data show that 9% of adults age 25-54 are cohabitating with a romantic partner. In 1990, only 4% of Americans ages 25-54 were cohabitating with a partner.

Compared to just a few decades ago, many more Americans are choosing to stay single. 38% of U.S. adults age 25-54 are unpartnered, according to ACS data. This is up from 29% in 1990. While a portion of these unpartnered folks were married previously, the growth of the unpartnered population is among those who have never been married. Men are now more likely than women to be unpartnered, which was not the case thirty years ago.

Today, marriage is just one possible lifestyle among many others. Entering middle adulthood, the prospect of financial security and other benefits of marriage contributed to our decision to get married.

The sociologist Andrew Cherlin claims that marriage in the U.S. has experienced deinstitutionalization—a weakening of the social norms that define people’s behaviors. Marriage is no longer mandatory. Marriage has become a choice, rather than a necessity. Marriage and alternatives to marriage are socially acceptable.

Cherlin claims that despite deinstitutionalizing, marriage remains symbolically significant. Marriage is a marker of prestige and a personal achievement. My boomer parents, aunts, and in-laws are quite excited for our new marriage. I am excited too, but for different reasons. Cherlin claims that the rewards of marriage for previous generations focused on the fulfillment of social roles such as the dedicated mother or supportive spouse. Today, Americans seek personal growth and self-development from their marriages.

Roscoe Scarborough, Ph.D. is an assistant professor of sociology at College of Coastal Georgia and an associate scholar at the Reg Murphy Center. He can be reached by email at rscarborough@ccga.edu.

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Childcare as a necessary part of a healthy labor force

Written by Melissa Trussell on . Posted in Melissa Trussell, Reg Murphy.

Happy Women’s History Month! A couple weeks ago, the College hosted Georgia Women in Higher Education’s annual conference, and I had the privilege of attending much of it. Topics discussed in the sessions I attended ranged from leadership and mentorship to employee burnout to effects of addiction on faculty and students.

You probably won’t be surprised to hear that in every session and at every social gathering I attended during the conference with almost exclusively female participants the subject of work-family balance came up. Dads are great, and they are doing more and more in terms of non-labor market household production, but, still, in America and in most parts of the world, the duties of child rearing and housework fall primarily on women.

According to OECD data, working-age women in the U.S. spend 247 minutes per day engaged in paid work and 271 minutes in unpaid work, which housework, shopping, childcare or other caregiving, and volunteer activities. Working-age men spend 332 minutes in paid work and 166 minutes per day in unpaid work. The remaining time is divided into personal care, leisure, and other.

With many of the childcare responsibilities still falling to women, women are the first to go from the labor market when childcare becomes unavailable or too costly. The International Labour Organization estimates that 41% of women who are not in the labor force globally are out because of their unpaid care responsibilities.

This is what we saw happening at the beginning of the pandemic, when women dropped out of the labor force at higher rates than men. Some of that gap was due to the types of industries that were hit hardest by the pandemic, but a lot of it was the fact that closures of schools and daycares required moms to switch to full-time caregiving. In fact, women with young children experienced a greater rate of job loss during the pandemic than men or women without young children. This is likely still a factor in the missing workers phenomenon my colleague Dr. Mathews wrote about for this column back in December. He noted that even as we emerge from the pandemic and “we’re hiring” signs are everywhere, a lot of workers are still not returning. The female labor force is still 1.5 percent smaller and the female labor force participation rate is still 1.3 percent smaller than they were pre-pandemic. The male labor force and participation rates are smaller, too, but not by as much.

It is important to recognize, too, that the childcare crisis in America was only exacerbated by the pandemic, not caused by it. A report published in 2019 by the Council for A Strong America found that the value of productivity losses due to childcare issues in the U.S. was as high as $57 billion per year.

This is why there is a conversation right now in America around considering childcare reforms among other necessary infrastructure improvements we need to make our economy stronger. Indeed, our economy is stronger when we make provisions for parents—and especially women— to be more active in the labor force. A March 2021 article from Forbes highlighted ways in which men benefit socially, emotionally, and in their career progression when they have close relationships with women at work. The benefits to women and children are perhaps more obvious. Among them are fewer gaps in employment that can limit career advancement, more financial independence for women, lower rates of child poverty.

Social investment in childcare is smart, supply-side economics for the labor market. Three generations from now, it won’t matter how many train tracks and bridges we have repaired if we have not done the necessary work of investing in the women of today’s workforce and the children of tomorrow’s.

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Dr. Melissa Trussell is a professor in the School of Business and Public Management at College of Coastal Georgia who works with the college’s Reg Murphy Center for Economic and Policy Studies. Contact her at mtrussell@ccga.edu.

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Pandemic Abounds in Economic Riddles

Written by Don Mathews on . Posted in Don Mathews, Reg Murphy.

We’re now two years out from the onset of the Covid pandemic. I’m as eager as anyone to move on from the odious pandemic, but the economics of it bend the mind.

Let’s start with the roller coaster.

 Nothing in U.S. economic history compares to the drop in economic activity in March and April 2020. Between 1929 and 1933, the four most monstrous years of the Great Depression, U.S. real GDP fell by 26.3 percent. It fell by 31.2 percent in the second quarter of 2020.   

In March and April 2020, U.S. employment fell by 25.6 million, a 16 percent drop. The nation’s unemployment rate went from 3.5 percent to 14.7 percent.

In Georgia, employment fell by 14 percent, while the unemployment rate went from 3.4 percent to 12.5 percent. In Glynn, employment fell by 18 percent. Our unemployment rate went from 3.2 percent to 16.7 percent.

In 60 days.

The rebound followed. U.S. real GDP increased by 33.8 percent in the third quarter of 2020. In the second quarter of 2021, one year after shrinking by 31.2 percent, U.S. real GDP eclipsed its pre-pandemic level.

U.S. employment is currently 1.7 million below its pre-pandemic level, while the U.S. unemployment rate is half a percentage point above its pre-pandemic level.  But both gaps are shrinking.

Georgia employment eclipsed its pre-pandemic level in November 2021. Its current unemployment rate of 2.6 percent is the lowest on record.

Glynn employment eclipsed its pre-pandemic level in March 2021. Since September 2021, Glynn’s unemployment rate has ranged between 2.1 and 2.3 percent. Until September 2021, the county’s lowest unemployment rate on record was 2.6 percent in May 1999.

The size and structure of our hometown economy make its swift recovery from the 60-day pandemic plunge all the more remarkable. We’re small, bordering on rural, with an industrial structure dominated by a single sector, leisure and hospitality.

The specifics are informative. The largest industry in the U.S. and Georgia is professional and business services. In 2019, professional and business services accounted for 14.1 percent of U.S. employment and 15.9 percent of Georgia employment. Leisure and hospitality ranked third among sectors in both the U.S. and Georgia and accounted for 11 percent of employment in each.

Leisure and hospitality accounted for 22.1 percent of Glynn employment in 2019. That 22.1 percent not only dwarfs the employment share of the leading sector in the U.S. and Georgia, it’s twice the size of the industry’s share in the nation and the state.

Nothing is weird or surprising about Glynn’s industrial structure. The place is tailor-made for leisure and hospitality.

The point is: the pandemic hammered leisure and hospitality far more than any other industry. In our small, borderline-rural county, 33 percent of the jobs in an industry that employs 22 percent of workers disappeared in 60 days. Who would have figured that in less than a year and a half we’d have four consecutive months of the lowest unemployment rates on record? Not me. 

The rapid rebound from the 60-day plunge is not the only economic mind-bender of the pandemic. After all the changes the pandemic brought to the ways that businesses and consumers operate, and all the job, industry and career changes workers have made, the employment shares across industries are now little different from what they were before the pandemic.

Here’s another head-scratcher. In March and April 2020, while employment tanked, the number of businesses in the U.S., Georgia and Glynn increased. After April 2020, the spate of entrepreneurship accelerated.

Between the pandemic riddles and our demographics, we have some exploring to do.     

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Overdose Deaths Increase During the Pandemic

Written by Roscoe Scarborough on . Posted in Reg Murphy, Roscoe Scarborough.

Over 104,000 Americans are dying a year from overdoses. The spread of fentanyl is the major cause of recent overdose deaths, but overdose deaths were trending upward before the pandemic. The coronavirus pandemic has made the crisis worse.

The most recent CDC data estimates that 104,288 Americans died of overdoses during the 12-month period ending in September 2021. Overdose deaths in the U.S. increased by 15.9% in one year. The early months of the pandemic saw even steeper gains. As recently as mid-2019, the annual number of overdose deaths in the U.S. was less than 69,000. Overdose deaths in the United States have doubled in a six-year span.

How is Georgia faring relative to the nation as a whole? Georgia saw a 26.2% annual increase in overdose deaths in the 12-month period ending in September 2021, according to CDC estimates.

Addiction is a treatable disease. These are preventable deaths.

Synthetic opioids, primarily fentanyl, are driving the surge in overdose deaths. Nearly two-thirds of overdose deaths are from synthetic opioids, but there are also increases in deaths from cocaine and psychostimulants, such as methamphetamine.

Much illicit fentanyl is manufactured in foreign clandestine labs and smuggled into the U.S. through Mexico, according to the DEA. It is then distributed across the country and sold on the illegal drug market.

Before the COVID-19 pandemic, a large portion of fentanyl-related overdose deaths were occurring in the eastern half of the country. One reason for the geographic concentration is that heroin has mainly been available in powder form rather than the black tar heroin, which is more common in the West. It is easier to mix fentanyl with powdered heroin. Increasingly, the heroin that is available in our nation is mixed with fentanyl or what is purchased is just fentanyl without any heroin in the mix. The results are often deadly.

The pandemic made it harder to smuggle drugs into the U.S. due to border restrictions and a significant reduction in cross-national traffic. Fentanyl is more potent and easier to transport in small quantities or as pills, making it easier to traffic by mail. Counterfeit prescription pills made with fentanyl are becoming more common in the U.S. These changes have contributed to the surge in deaths among heroin users and individuals seeking prescription opioids.

Another factor that contributes to the soaring death toll is that the pandemic has made it harder for those addicted to opioids to get in-person treatment. Social isolation and stress increased during the pandemic, which exacerbates the chances of relapse for many individuals in recovery.

Responding to the COVID-19 pandemic has consumed the resources of public health departments. Other public health issues, including the opioid epidemic, have been neglected.

Effective drug education and a supportive social network can prevent the onset of drug use. Drug education is likely to be more effective if paired with consistent messaging from family, community organizations, and religious institutions. One’s social network can support a drug-free lifestyle, recovery, or addiction.

Drug interdiction efforts must be improved. It is essential to slow the illegal smuggling of fentanyl into our nation. Efforts must also be made to prevent the distribution and sale of illicit drugs, especially those containing deadly dosages of fentanyl.

Distributing naloxone to opioid users, those who live with a user, and to all first responders can save lives. Naloxone can reverse opioid overdose, but this is a temporary treatment that should be paired with medical intervention.

It is essential to expand access to a range of addiction treatment programs, including inpatient rehab, outpatient rehab, and medication-assisted treatment. Due to cost or a lack of insurance coverage, these programs are out of reach for many folks living with addiction. It is necessary to engineer a reality where treatment for opioid addiction is easier to access than illicit drugs. Expanding Medicaid coverage provides one avenue for ensuring that more Americans have access to addiction treatment programs.

Roscoe Scarborough, Ph.D. is an assistant professor of sociology at College of Coastal Georgia and an associate scholar at the Reg Murphy Center. He can be reached by email at rscarborough@ccga.edu.

The First Amendment and Academic Freedom

Written by Heather Farley on . Posted in Heather Farley, Reg Murphy.

Free speech. It is a cornerstone of our Constitution and one of the most important founding values in our country. As with any right in our Constitution, however, it is not absolute.

Interpretation of free speech continues to be debated and interpreted both in society and in the courts. That remains true today. Just in the last two weeks, public school book bans, protests against Spotify content, anti-critical race theory legislation, Congressional hearings around social media responsibility and a defamation case against the New York Times have all made headlines and they all center on the issue of free speech.

How are these free speech struggles viewed by college students whose job it is to be curious and inquisitive about the world around them? Recent results from a longitudinal Knight Foundation study suggest that confidence in free speech on campuses is waning among college students. While 84% of students feel that free speech rights are extremely or very important in our democracy, less than half (47%) feel that speech rights are secure, and only half of students feel comfortable voicing disagreement with their instructor (49%) or peers (52%) in class.

If free speech ought to be encouraged anywhere, a place of academic inquiry seems the most obvious. Yet, colleges and universities must balance this quest for curiosity and critical thinking with the need to create an environment of civility and respect. So, where are the lines drawn? What have the courts had to say on this issue?

There are a few areas on a campus where free speech pops up: exercise of academic freedom, campus speakers, school-sanctioned student activities, through campus speech codes and in social media speech. It is in the area of academic freedom that a lot of present debate is taking place.

Individual academic freedom began as a professional norm and has since been interpreted as a constitutional right through case law. It broadly refers to the right of a professor to teach their curriculum without undue interference from university officials. The American Association of University Professors defined academic freedom as “full freedom in research” and “freedom in the classroom in discussing their subject.” Likewise in the landmark 1957 Sweezy v. New Hampshire case, the U.S. Supreme Court directly recognized the connection between freedom of expression and academic freedom. In the decision, Chief Justice Warren stated that, “the essentiality of freedom in the community of American universities is almost self-evident. … Scholarship cannot flourish in an atmosphere of suspicion and distrust.” This broad endorsement of academic freedom has been refined in its scope in more recent years.

The most recent case law that is being used to understand the boundaries of academic freedom is Garcetti v. Ceballos (2006), in which the speech rights of public employees are defined. Prior to Garcetti, if a public employee was speaking on a matter of public concern as opposed to a private grievance, the employee’s rights to free speech were protected. In other words, if I speak out against something my employer does that is of public concern, my right to speak out is protected. This was referred to as the Pickering-Connick test.

Later, in the Garcetti case, that idea was changed. Instead, argued the Supreme Court, if a public employee speaks pursuant to their official duties, that speech is government speech and not the speech of the employee. Therefore, First Amendment rights of the employee do not apply if the speech is ordinarily in the scope of the employee’s duties.

Here is where the academic freedom question comes in. As a professor, teaching, researching and writing are all ordinary duties of my position, so is everything I say officially government speech and therefore not protected? Probably not. The Ninth (via Demers v. Austin) and Fourth (via Adams v. Trustees of the University of North Carolina-Wilmingon) circuit courts of appeals have ruled that there is an academic freedom exception in which faculty remain free to exercise free speech without fear of retaliation. Other circuits have disagreed, however, so until this exception is officially evaluated by the Supreme Court, guidance for professors in higher education remains somewhat unclear.

What is clear under academic freedom is that an institution has a constitutional right to be free from state interference with its core academic functions (ex. Grutter v. Bollinger, Fisher v. Univ. of Tex. at Austin) and faculty members are entitled to speak on subjects within the scope of their expertise without fear of institutional discipline (ex. Sweezy v. New Hampshire and Keyishian v. Board of Regents of University of State of New York).

Provided that we are teaching topics germane to our courses and expertise, we remain in line with existing court interpretations of academic freedom. In the current political and academic climate, it would not be surprising to see these lines more clearly refined and interpreted in the courts in the near future.

Dr. Heather Farley is Chair of the Department of Criminal Justice, Public Policy & Management and a professor of Public Management in the School of Business and Public Management at College of Coastal Georgia. She is an associate of the College’s Reg Murphy Center for Economic and Policy Studies.

Passion and Productivity

Written by Melissa Trussell on . Posted in Melissa Trussell, Reg Murphy.

The other day, a student sat in my office trying to decide on a concentration within her business degree. Essentially, what she told me was that she thought she should do Finance for the job opportunities but she really did not like math and she was currently struggling in Accounting and Economics. I pressed her a little more, and she finally admitted she really didn’t have much interest in Finance at all.

If I had quietly assigned the student to a Finance concentration, I believe I would have been setting her up for a career in which she would quickly burn out.

The advice I gave her echoed what my graduate school advisor told me that has been, for me, what keeps me going even when I’m worn thin.

Your career can be your opportunity to multiply your passion.

I tell my students that their purpose lies at the intersection of their passion and their productivity.

This is advice that I believe has been under-preached or under-heard in generations past and is a big part of why the pandemic has caused so much labor market upheaval. When a job gets tough, someone who does not find purpose in the work is not likely to stick around.

Most of us have been taught that our passions need the market– that if we want to be able to pursue the things we love, we first must find a job that will help to fund that pursuit.

What I hope for my students and for those reading this column is that we also grasp the truth that the market needs our passions.

When we teach trade, we teach that markets are most efficient when individuals specialize in production of a good or service in which they have a comparative advantage. Comparative advantage occurs when someone can produce something at a lower cost than anyone else. Costs are not always physical, dollars and cents costs. Often a cost of production is a cost in worker satisfaction. It stands to reason, then, that if two workers are alike in all physical abilities but one is more passionate about their work, the passionate employee would possess a comparative advantage and produce with the most efficiency.

The literature bears this out.

A 2018 publication in Journal of Management and Organization found that, all else held constant, an individual with an intrinsic passion for their work reports feeling more positive about their work and is less likely to be planning to quit.

And, University of Oxford published research in 2019 showing that happy workers are 13% more productive.

An interesting thing about the 2018 article is that the authors find a marked difference between harmonious passion- autonomous, internal motivation to engage in an activity- and obsessive passion- feeling internal pressure to engage. Both are internal motivations, but the employee with harmonious passion is the employee who is working with purpose (passion + productivity), and the latter is the employee who is just working (productivity without passion). And the study found that harmonious passion decreases likelihood of turnover, while obsessive passion increases it.

Employers, employees, and students alike, please re-read that last paragraph.

Employers, hire folks who are passionate about the vision you have for your firm, and give them the freedom to pursue their passions in the workplace. Your team will be productive and profitable, and you’ll have a ton of fun doing it.

Employees and students, don’t choose your path based only on where you think the “good” jobs are. A job is only good when you are satisfied in it, and you will be most satisfied when you are working squarely within the intersection of your passion and your productivity.

Your passion needs the market, and the market needs your passion.

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Dr. Melissa Trussell is a professor in the School of Business and Public Management at College of Coastal Georgia who works with the college’s Reg Murphy Center for Economic and Policy Studies. Contact her at mtrussell@ccga.edu.

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Worker Shortage? This is Just the Beginning

Written by Don Mathews on . Posted in Don Mathews, Reg Murphy.

Angst over the scarcity of workers is spreading and growing more intense by the day. Employers in all sorts of industries all over the country are having trouble finding workers, even after raising wages.  

The leading explanation of the scarcity of workers remains the decrease in the labor force caused by the pandemic combined with the federal government’s aggressive fiscal stimulus in response to the pandemic.

That explanation certainly describes the labor force shock in the first year of the pandemic. Shuttered day care facilities, schools going online, supplemental unemployment benefits and people opting for early retirement are part of the pandemic labor market story.

But that story is over. The leading explanation no longer applies. The pandemic-induced decrease in the labor force has been largely erased.

After shrinking by 5 percent in the first two months of the pandemic, the U.S. labor force has recovered to within one percent of its pre-pandemic level.

By the way, the labor forces of Georgia and Glynn also shrunk by five percent in the first two months of the pandemic. Georgia’s labor force has recovered to within one-half of one percent of its pre-pandemic level. Glynn’s labor force recovered to its pre-pandemic level back in February 2021, almost a year ago.    

Something far more formidable than the pandemic is driving the current scarcity of workers. We don’t have to look far to see it. 

In 2006, Glynn had a population of 74,870 and a labor force of a tad more than 39,000. Today, Glynn has a population of almost 86,000 and a labor force of a tad more than 39,000. Sixteen years, 15 percent population growth, zero labor force growth.

How did that happen? We have good demographic data for 2010-2019, so let’s use that. From 2010 to 2019, Glynn’s population increased by 6.9 percent. Our population of people 65 years and older increased by 44.7 percent. Our population of 55 to 64 year olds increased by 10.0 percent. Our population of prime age workers – 25 to 54 year olds – decreased by 0.2 percent. Our population of 20 to 24 year olds increased by 2.9 percent. Our population of people under age 20 decreased by 5.4 percent.

It’s clear what has been at work here. While our retirement age population has been growing like weeds, our working age population hasn’t budged.

It’s also clear where this is headed. Our population of future workers is shrinking.

The demographic trend in Glynn is not atypical. Take Georgia. From 2010 to 2019, Georgia’s population increased by 9.3 percent. Its 65 years and older population increased by 47.3 percent. Its 55 to 64 years population increased by 19.8 percent. Its prime age worker population increased by 3.4 percent. Its population of future workers, those under age 16 years, increased by 0.4 percent.

The U.S. looks more like Glynn than Georgia. From 2010 to 2019, the population of the U.S. increased by 6.1 percent. The nation’s 65 years and older population increased by 33.7 percent. Its population of 55 to 64 year olds increased by 15.5 percent. Its prime age worker population increased by 1.0 percent. Its population of 20 to 24 years olds decreased by 0.9 percent, its population of 16 to 19 year olds decreased by 3.6 percent, and its population under 16 years decreased by 1.3 percent.

The U.S. is headed into an era it has never experienced: an era in which the labor force shrinks while the population continues to grow.

I have a strong aversion to contrived drama and prediction, but the consequences of these demographics are unlikely to be minor. More in future columns.