June 25, 2017
The NYT had a piece on how many smaller cities that have already lost factory jobs are no seeing a loss of jobs in retail due to the growth of online shopping.The article provides an interesting picture of some of the cities in industrial Midwest and Northeast that have already lost many of their manufacturing jobs and are now seeing major retailers shut their doors.
What is striking is that the piece doesn’t present any economists saying how this is good news, as is usually the case on pieces with trade, since the fact that people can buy items online for less money means that they will have more money left in their pockets to buy other things. In fact, there is a better case for this story with retail than with trade since the on-line retailers generally are still in the United States, which means that the money will largely be re-spent here. By contrast, much of the money spent on imports is not spent in the United States.
It is also worth noting that the rate of job displacement due to technology has actually been extremely slow (as in the opposite of fast) over the last decade as productivity growth has fallen to its slowest pace on record. This doesn’t mean that people are not losing jobs due to technology, but the rate is slower than normal, not faster than normal.
There could be a problem of inadequate aggregate demand, but in that case, the Federal Reserve Board should not be raising interest rates. The purpose of higher interest rates is to slow the economy and reduce the rate of job creation. The Fed raises interest rates because it considers aggregate demand to be too high, not too low.
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