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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.

The Consequences of Social Isolation

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

Welcome to day 668 of “15 days to slow the spread.” Lockdowns and other prohibitions on social life related to COVID-19 have been implemented to reduce virus transmission and alleviate strain on our healthcare system. These restrictions and social distancing measures may improve outcomes in physical health, but these precautionary measures have consequences for our mental health and social well-being. My column today examines some of the consequences of social isolation.

Social life was atrophying long before the pandemic. Two decades ago, Robert Putnam characterized Americans as “bowling alone,” highlighting a reduction in all forms of in-person social intercourse. Things have not improved. We have an architecture of isolation. Our McMansions are surrounded by security fences. Many people don’t know their neighbors. Many Americans live alone. People telecommute rather than going into the office. Almost no one works for the same company for a full career. Many opt for contactless food delivery and grocery pickup. We are addicted to our smart phones. We text or email instead of having face-to-face conversations. Social media has replaced social interaction.

So far, so bad. Then, COVID happened.

Americans have dealt with loss, often separated from their support networks. Over 831,000 Americans have died from COVID-19, which means that millions have lost friends, family, and neighbors to the pandemic. There were other kinds of losses. Many lost jobs, holidays, school years, and relationships. Many Americans moved their entire lives to Zoom: work, school, family, friends. We lost our social lives. Some lost them temporarily. Others lost them permanently. These losses have consequences.

There have been major increases in the number of U.S. adults who report symptoms of stress, anxiety, depression, and insomnia compared to before the pandemic, according to the CDC. Younger adults, racial/ethnic minorities, essential workers, and unpaid adult caregivers reported worse mental health outcomes, including elevated rates of substance abuse and suicidal ideation.

According to the CDC, the first year of the pandemic saw a 28.5% increase in overdose deaths compared to the previous year. Over 100,000 Americans died of overdose during the 12-month period ending in April 2021. About three-quarters of these overdose deaths were from opioids. Georgia saw a 36.3% increase in overdose deaths during this period.

There are many societal costs associated with social isolation. Many small businesses closed forever. The nation was plunged into recession. Education was interrupted and shifted to less effective modalities.

Other consequences of social isolation are less obvious. There have been spikes in hate crimes, homicides, and shootings. Extremism is on the rise. Trust in elections and elected officials is atrophying. People are less civil in interactions with others. Smart phones and social media give us the illusion of intimacy, yet we remain insulated from the problems of others. It is hard to disentangle the impact of the pandemic from other changes in our society, but social isolation plays a role in all of these social problems.

Now, Omicron has arrived. New confirmed cases of COVID-19 are once again climbing in a new wave of infections. Public officials make tough choices in the name of public health. Individuals make decisions that impact their personal health. Formal and informal prohibitions on social life and the unintended social dysfunctions associated with social isolation may return once again, especially for the elderly, the immunocompromised, and their caretakers.

According to the World Health Organization, health is “a state of complete physical, mental and social well-being and not merely the absence of disease or infirmity.” As our knowledge and range of tools to combat COVID-19 grow, it is essential that we attend to social well-being as an indispensable dimension of health.

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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Is Economic Development “Good?” – Perspectives on the Rivian Announcement

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

Public policy decisions are not neutral. Rather, they are loaded with bias, assumptions, and tradeoffs. This statement seems obvious; yet, in my public and environmental policy courses, I am often confronted with students who are eager to find the “right” answer when it comes to regulation, law, and economic development decisions. 

The announcement of the new Rivian electric vehicle assembly plant in Rutledge, GA is no exception. As with any public policy decision, Governor Brian Kemp’s announcement that the new plant would be located in the small, rural, farming community of Rutledge has been met with mixed reactions.

Let’s look at the landscape of this decision. Rivian is a publicly-traded, start-up electric vehicle maker with a. stock market capitalization of approximately $100 billion, rivaling the likes of Ford and GM. This is no small operation. They have one plant at present, located in Illinois, and a contract with Amazon to produce electric vans for the company’s delivery service. By all accounts, this is a burgeoning player in the EV market. So, why would they be attracted to Georgia?

While the Atlanta Journal & Constitution reported that the details of the deal struck with Rivian are still unknown, they uncovered some clues as to what might have been at play. For instance, the City of Fort Worth, TX was a contender for the Rivian project and they approved a $440 million tax incentive package. Meanwhile, in 2018 when the state of GA acquired the SK Battery America plant, “state and local officials offered the South Korean company about $300 million in tax breaks, grants, free land and worker training” according to the AJC. The state investment via incentives in this project is likely to be staggering. In addition to tax incentives, Governor Kemp noted that the state offers an advanced manufacturing workforce, advanced transportation networks, and a state-provided workforce training center as enticements.

That’s a lot of investment on the state’s part. What are the gains and who gets what? First and foremost are jobs. The plant is expected to employ around 7500 to 10,000 workers making it the largest single economic development project in the state’s history. Along with these jobs will be a major influx of people and tax revenue to the Morgan county area.

Politically, this is a major feather in Governor Kemp’s hat as he heads into a contested primary season against former Senator David Purdue as well. Democrats like that this is green industry, and Republicans like the jobs creation.

Environmentally, a number of stakeholders have noted that Rivian is not only a green industry, but their business practices are underscored by a commitment to sustainability. Regardless, trading off farmland for an assembly plant simply has a disproportionate environmental impact. Watershed runoff, soil, light, noise, and traffic pollution will have an impact locally, never mind the additional strain on local infrastructure.

Socially, this is going to fundamentally change the Rutledge community. Presently, they have two-lane streets, plenty of golf carts and tractors on the road, and no traffic lights. With 10,000 more people in the area, this will be a big shift. And while Rivian will benefit from tax breaks, the farmers in the area may face increased land prices and taxes which could ultimately price them out of the area. Displacement is major concern for families who have lived and farmed in the area for generations.

Will this new mega-site create jobs, put the state of Georgia on the green industrialization map, possibly displace generations-old farms, and fundamentally change the small town of Rutledge forever? Yes and yes. So, is this a good economic development choice, or possibly a detrimental one? Yes. This is the way economic development operates. It is not neutral. It is not inherently all bad or all good. The only thing we can confidently say, is that it will spur huge change.

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.

The Burnout Blues

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

I need a break. I try not to wish my life away, but for a few months now, I have been looking forward to these December holidays. I am tired. I am tired in a way I have never experienced before.

Not much has changed about the things I do every day. I have an amazing job, and I truly love coming to work. I have an amazing family, and I truly love going home to them.

But, the world has changed. The environment in which we all operate now is unsettled and uncertain, and most of us have found ourselves hurt, fearful, sad, and/or angry at some point over the last year.

I think the intense tired that I feel is a result of the intensity of emotion I have been stuck in for too long.

I am burned out.

Data suggest you probably are, too.

Results of a Gallup poll published in March 2020, just before the pandemic really started to hit the U.S., showed 76% of employees experience burnout on the job at least sometimes. 28% reported feeling burned out very often or always.

Not surprisingly, in a survey by Indeed a year later, 52% of respondents reported currently feeling burned out, and 67% felt that burnout had worsened during the pandemic as a result of several factors including anxiety about finances or healthcare, increases in work hours, or a struggle to establish healthy boundaries between work and home life while working from home.

Last month, Gallup found that burnout is decreasing again among most categories of worker but that it is still increasing among managers – both people managers and project managers.

The literature is pretty clear about the fact that burnout has a significant negative effect on the workforce and, by extension, on the economy as a whole. Harvard Business Review reported in 2019 that about 8% of Americans’ spending on healthcare and 120,000 deaths annually were attributable to workplace stress. Additionally, the Review cited an APA study estimating that workplace stress costs the US economy over $500 billion per year through increased turnover and decreased productivity.

I spent a night in the hospital last month with a stress-related illness. Thankfully, it was a Friday night, and I was fine by Monday, so my employer did not miss me.

The tough thing about burnout is that it has never been easy to cure, and the pandemic has made it harder. I did a quick Internet search, and I found countless articles published before the pandemic pointing to causes of burnout—unhealthy work environments, lack of self-care, etc. And, for the most part, these causes are things employers and employees could work on improving.

Now, though, for many of us, the causes of burnout are nobody’s fault. There may be some things here and there that we could do better, but as I stated in the beginning of this essay, the primary catalysts for my stress are shifting world dynamics, not anything my employer or I have done.

And our burnout is worse than workplace burnout. It’s life burnout. Going home is not less stressful than going to work.

Last week for this column, Dr. Don Mathews wrote about the large number of workers who are not returning to work post-pandemic. I think there are a handful of reasons why, and burnout likely is among them. When you left work burned out and when life outside work is as topsy-turvy as it is right now, going back to work seems like a really big ask.

I don’t know the answer to the problem of pandemic burnout, but I am praying these holidays bring light and joy to a weary workforce. Y’all take care.

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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.

The Workers Are Still Missing

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

The U.S. labor force is having a rough time recovering from the pandemic.

So we’re square with terms, the labor force is defined as the number of people employed plus the number of people unemployed – the unemployed being people who are not working but are looking for work. People who are neither working nor looking for work are classified as not in the labor force.

Another good term is the labor force participation rate, defined as the percentage of the population age 16 years and older that is in the labor force.

In February 2020, the U.S. labor force totaled 164.4 million and the labor force participation rate was 63.3 percent. The pandemic hit in March. By April, the labor force had fallen to 156.5 million and the labor force participation rate had slipped to 60.2 percent.

Both then began to increase. By August 2020, the labor force had risen to 160.8 million, the participation rate to 61.7 percent.

Neither has changed much since. Only last month did the labor force claw its way to 162 million. The participation rate is all but the same at 61.8 percent.

Labor force changes since February 2020 have been more severe for women than for men, but not dramatically so.

From February 2020 to April 2020, the male labor force fell by 4.4 percent, from 86.9 million to 83.1 million, while the male labor force participation rate fell from 69.2 percent to 66.2 percent. By October 2020, the male labor force had risen to 85.5 million and the participation rate had risen to 67.7 percent. Since then, little change: the male labor force now stands at 86 million, 1.0 percent less than its February 2020 level; the male labor force participation rate stands at 67.8 percent, 1.4 percentage points less than its February 2020 level.

The female labor force fell by 5.4 percent from February 2020 to April 2020, from 77.5 million to 73.3 million, while the female labor force participation rate fell from 57.8 percent to 54.6 percent. By July 2020, the female labor force had risen to 75.6 million, while the participation rate had risen to 56.2 percent. And again, since then, little change: the female labor force now stands at 76 million, 1.9 percent less than its February 2020 level; the female labor force participation rate stands at 56.2 percent, 1.6 percentage points less than its February 2020 level.

The puny increases in the labor force and labor force participation rates over the past 15 or so months are a bit of a shock. It was widely anticipated that workers who dropped out of the labor force in the first months of the pandemic would return as the economy recovered. It was also widely anticipated that working moms who dropped out of the labor force when schools and day cares closed would return once they reopened.

The aggregate numbers suggest that workers who had not returned to the labor force by October 2020 are not returning at all.

It was also widely anticipated that gobs of unemployed workers would go job hunting full bore and join the ranks of the employed once the extra pandemic unemployment benefits expired.  The aggregate numbers show no evidence of that.

The number of unemployed people who found jobs in January of this year was 2.6 million. According to expectations about expiring unemployment benefits, that figure should have jumped in June and remained high through at least November.

It didn’t. It has fallen almost every month since January. November’s figure was 2.1 million.

Perhaps the missing workers aren’t coming back.