theunitofcaring:

This study has graphics breaking down different categories of out-of-the-labor-force people by demographic category and little descriptions of each. Their aim is (I think) to describe which kinds of work assistance programs each of the groups would benefit from, but reading through it is sort of surreal in some places. One example from one of their categories is a 61-year-old Filipino immigrant: “She used to work as a hotel housekeeper, but stopped nearly 10 years ago as her vision deteriorated.”

That’s not someone who will benefit from ‘job search assistance and counseling’, that’s someone who should get medical care and retirement. I don’t think this is ill-intentioned, but it’s kind of bizarre to read something that takes for granted that what we want is to get sixty-something women with failing eyesight ‘back into the workforce’.

In general I would like something like this to be more focused on the needs of the people it’s discussing? Like, what kind of assistance do they want, what kinds do they sign up for when it’s available (and when you’re not making their benefits conditional on signing up). I know conversations about labor force participation often treat it as an inherently good thing divorced from what it means for the people affected, but it’s more obvious here, where the whole article is about the details of the people affected – everything about them except what they want.

When we do get a sense of what the people in the study want, it’s mostly ‘a job that isn’t horrible’ – one with hours that let them cover childcare, one that doesn’t cheat them on pay, one that doesn’t make them put up with unsafe conditions and limp by with inadequate training. (This confirms a different instinct of mine, which is that all incentives and welfare rules against quitting your job in the world will get you is people who are more scared to quit horrible miserable frequently-illegal jobs.) Some of the job programs described really might help here, but if the thing you’re aiming to increase is just ’labor force participation’ then I think you’re missing a lot of the kind of help that’s actually needed.