Daily Archives: 06/08/2014

(Community Matters) Congrats to Andrew Roman who graduated from high school on Friday with highest honors and heaps of recognitions for acting, academics and service. Below with his brothers, sisters and nephew. Andrew is the youngest brother of our godson, Will Roman – all this tribe dear to us.

Will, Michelle, Roman, Andrew, Angela & Josh

(Community Matters) Brett was an undergraduate who I met in 2004 while teaching at UT’s McCombs School of Business. At his request I became the faculty advisor for his Alpha Kappa Psi Business Fraternity. We’ve been close ever since – during which time he graduated from UT, enlisted in the US Marines, deployed to Japan, returned, met Maria Redford in Dallas, and then answered a special call for reenlistment in a stealth, one year deployment. Maria, with a masters in religious studies, is chaplain at Dallas’ Ursuline Academy. Faith (specifically Roman Catholicism) is very important to both friends. Not sure I’ve ever attended a wedding officiated by five priests (each important in their livers) and attended by at least several others. What a wonderful launch for the life of two wonderful young friends.

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(Community Matters) The increasing polarization of jobs being created in the market – Dallas Federal Reserve newsletter – is due to automation of routine jobs and to a lesser extent offshoring, resulting in the loss of middle-skills jobs. Higher education and a willingness to upgrade skills accounts for better performance of women in the jobs market over last 25 years. Men who lose these middle-skills jobs are remanded to lower-skills, lower paying jobs. 

The number of jobs requiring medium levels of skills has shrunk while the number at both ends of the distribution – those requiring high and low skills level – has expanded. . . . polarization began about 25 years ago, in the early 1990s and intensified in the last decade. . . . Middle skills jobs were not recovered [after the recessions of this period, especially the recession of 2008-09].

Routine jobs always rebounded during the economic expansions that followed the recessions of the 1970s and 1980s. The pattern changed dramatically in the three recessions since 1990. None of the routine jobs lost in these downturns came back in the following expansions.

Middle skills jobs those in blue below (manual & cognitive routine).

While women were hit much harder than men by the disappearance of middle-skills jobs, the majority of women managed to upgrade their skills and find better paying jobs.

Middle-skill, routine jobs still account for almost half of all existing jobs.