"We are working on that..."
There is a demographic challenge, and one way to solve the dependency ratio would be a population of 150,000. Of course that would mean - as the Minister said - the same problem as immigrants aged would be passed onto the next generation as they got older, and the strain on the Island infrastructure would be at breaking point - it's not viable.
At last a politician who understood that increasing population to deal with dependency ratios is effectively a population Ponzi type scheme.
However, from that point on, matters got fuzzy. A nice visual chart showed current productivity (of course as he later admitted, there is no way to measure this!), and on another line population. As he pulled up the productivity line, the 150,000 line moved down. What fun he must have had with that chart!
So the solution (according to the Minister) is each worker must increase productivity by at least 7.5. A nice figure plucked out of nowhere. Quite how a taxi driver or a brick layer or a waiter is to be more productive is another matter, especially as the Minister made it clear it would not involve increasing working hours.
And then the Minister said the hospitality industry has shown massive increases in productivity in recent years! What planet is he living on? Shops and restaurants are closing or operating at reduced hours or days because of a lack of staff. The area near the Radisson had been described as a "ghost town" as so many businesses have closed. Increased cost of supplies mean that some fish and chip shops are on the brink of closing - what on earth does "increased productivity" mean in that context?
How can hospitality staff be "more productive"? Employing "Billy Whizz" would seem to be the only way, but unfortunately for the Minister, Billy is a fictional character from the Beano.
When I spoke to an acquaintance, he said that statement by the Minister was probably due to the way they were measuring productivity. But it turned out there was as the Minister, when questioned said there was a "a lack of data" in knowing how things are doing.
The model for productivity is clearly an office environment, where tasks can be done in more efficient ways, or better alternatives found (AI anyone?) and yet it is being applied to every worker.
The issue of childcare came up, as it is needed to get more women back (and productive!!!) in the workplace - but the childcare providers can't because of the way their business is coded for immigration, bring in skilled workers - and there are not enough here to go around. What was the Minister going to do about it. Look into it....
The only concrete proposal was to turn grants into loans if students don't return for five years to work in Jersey. I think that's far too long. Someone specialising in medicine will probably need extra training in the UK, especially if having qualified as a doctor, they want to be a surgeon or a vet. A one year stay in Jersey would make more sense. Many students take a year out - a "sabbatical" before starting a degree course. Making this a mandatory year afterwards would not be such a great inconvenience and they may even stay.
In conclusion, a speech by Kirsten Morel which would have made Jim Hacker (of Yes Minister) proud. A lot was said, but there was very little in the way of concrete substance or examples.
No wonder Murray Norton rather brutally said "To be honest, Minister, your talk lacked focus". Brutal, but what most of us were thinking.
Posts
2 comments:
I'm not sure you've been fair here, what they're saying is for an economy to function, someone needs to do the work. If most people are too elderly to do that work the economy will decline (very simplified). This is bad for everyone because as workers decline and elderly people increase, our expenses will exceed our income.
You can import people to pick up the slack or increase productively (the workers generate more 'economic pie' to be shared around, or more simply do now with less).
In terms of productivity, a hotel will be calculated as being more productive if it earns more money through say going up market. The cleaners might do the same amount of work, but the organisation productively is higher because the output in cash terms is higher.
In a similar way its perfectly possible for a bricklayer to be more productive in a number of ways, with better inventory control, if say less bricks, which cost to buy and store, are held in unused stock, or they better manage down days due to bad weather or sickness, or if the company through technology spends less time doing their payroll. Some companies even do modular builds so a bricklayer needs to lay less bricks to build a house.
Now some work needs to be done locally, ie teacher, nurses, bricklayers, but since we import most of our goods, it doesn't matter that much that much of the value add is generated in cash terms rather than something more physical.
Now increasing productivity is hard, I don't know any ironclad way a government has achieved this, but unless we achieve it we're faced with a stark choice, accept declining standards of living, or import more working people.
They're right to raise this as an issue, importing some labour will need to be part of the solution and with a birth rate will below the replacement ratio this can be done in a controlled way without necessarily being a Ponzi scheme.
"increase productively (the workers generate more 'economic pie' to be shared around, or more simply do now with less)."
This is the "widgets" approach to productivity, and while it may seem fine, in practice, it has physical limits.
I return to my question - Quite how a taxi driver or a brick layer or a waiter is to be more productive is another matter, especially as the Minister made it clear it would not involve increasing working hours.
I see you didn't tackle taxi drivers!
"In a similar way its perfectly possible for a bricklayer to be more productive in a number of ways, with better inventory control, if say less bricks, which cost to buy and store, are held in unused stock, or they better manage down days due to bad weather or sickness, or if the company through technology spends less time doing their payroll. Some companies even do modular builds so a bricklayer needs to lay less bricks to build a house."
That's true, but again it comes up again physical limits to how far this can go. Incidentally, as Ben Shenton observed, the States do wages weekly, which is highly inefficient.
"In terms of productivity, a hotel will be calculated as being more productive if it earns more money through say going up market."
That means raising prices and in the current economic climate, there are again restrictions - economic restrictions - on how far that will work. A hotel could price itself out of the market, especially in these days of cheaper flights to sunnier climes.
"Importing some labour will need to be part of the solution and with a birth rate will below the replacement ratio this can be done in a controlled way without necessarily being a Ponzi scheme."
Prior to Covid and Brexit, the rate of imported labour was far in excess of the birth rate being below replacement, which is why the population was growing so rapidly over the last 20 years. In effect, it was a Ponzi scheme. Politicians like Paul Routier even told me that we had to import staff purely to improve dependency ratios, and with no other real restrictions - that was Ponzi pure and simple. The net effect has been catastrophic, as no one seems to have linked an massive increase in population with an increased capacity in infrastructure - hence the issues about housing and sewage networks, as just one example.
Post-Brexit, the labour market has become incredibly difficult especially in areas like hospitality. The high cost of living - and housing - has also made Jersey increasingly unattractive. Unless you are a chief officer at a States Department, recruited over the heads of locals, and with a wonderful salary - again see Ben Shenton for details.
Post a Comment