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自己的事麻烦别人

这是一个一切都缩水的时代，房地产价格，股票市场，GDP，公司利润，就业率：这些通通都变成了曾经的一小部分。令人惊奇的是，在这场大衰退中，有一项东西继续在增长，那就是熟练工人的薪水。公司缩减了工资名单：自从经济衰退开始，已经有360万人失业，其中一半人是在刚刚过去的三个月里丢掉了工作。然而，平均每小时的工资在去年增长了差不多4%。找工作变得越来越难，但是如果你已经有一份工作的话，你可能比十二个月以前挣得更多。 This is the Age of the Incredible Shrinking Everything. Home prices, the stock market, ., corporate profits, employment: they’re all a fraction of what they once were. Yet amid this carnage there is one thing that, surprisingly, has continued to grow: the paycheck of the average worker. Companies are slashing payrolls: million people have lost their jobs since the recession started, with half of those getting laid off in just the past three months. Yet average hourly wages jumped almost four per cent in the past year. It’s harder and harder to find and keep a job, but if you’ve got one you may well be making more than you did twelve months ago. 这种高失业率和高工资的组合看起来有些不可思议，但是，这是被历史所证明的事实。即使在上世纪的大萧条时期，产业工人的工资也是在上涨的，在衰退时减薪是罕见的。石油和小麦的价格会随着供求关系的变化而变化，但是工资是“刚性的”：即使当经济形势不好的时候，想要让降薪也是很困难的。 This combination of rising unemployment and higher wages seems improbable. But, as it turns out, it’s what history would lead us to expect. Even during the early years of the Great Depression, manufacturing workers actually saw their real wages rise, and wage cuts have been scarce in every recession since. Oil and wheat prices may rise and fall instantaneously to reflect supply and demand, but wages are “sticky”: even when the economy goes bad, it takes a lot to make them fall. 工资的“刚性”并不是因为商人慷慨，这是因为雇主担心被经济学家称为的“逆向选择”：一旦降薪，越平庸的工人越可能留下，而越是出色的工人越可能跳槽。（即使是在经济形势不好的时候，商业的竞争就是人才的竞争。）在1997年的一项研究中，经济学家Carl Campbell 和Kunal Kamlani 发现老板不去降薪最大的原因就是怕失去他们最好的员工。 It’s not because businesses are generous that wages are sticky; it’s because employers are worried. In part, bosses are afraid of what economists call “adverse selection”: if they cut wages, it’s the least productive workers who would be the most likely to stay, while the best workers would start looking elsewhere. (Even in a weak economy, businesses still compete for talent.) In a 1997 study of almost two hundred employers, the economists Carl Campbell and Kunal Kamlani found that the threat of losing their best employees was a major reason that bosses didn’t cut wages. 更重要的是降薪会影响士气。经历1990到1991年的衰退之后，经济学家Truman Bewley 和超过200家公司的经理和人事主管面谈之后发现大多数人认为降薪会有损士气并最终影响生产。老板们认为降薪省下来的开支会被降薪所引发的工作效率和信任的减损所抵消。并不是每个老板都相信这一套，上个月Hewlett-Packard 和 FedEx 两家公司就宣布降薪。但是，一般来说当销售和利润下降的时候，即使去裁员也不能降薪。当然，裁员对士气也没好处，但是正如一个老板Bewley在采访中所说的那样“裁员的苦恼在公司外，降薪的苦恼在公司内部。” Even more important is the impact of wage cuts on morale. After the 1990-91 recession, the economist Truman Bewley interviewed managers and labor officials at more than two hundred companies and found that most believed that wage cuts wreck employee morale and eat away at productivity. Whatever money they’d save by cutting wages, bosses assume, would be cancelled out by the decline in effort and the breakdown of trust that wage cuts would create. Not everyone believes this: in the past month, both Hewlett-Packard and FedEx have announced plans for pay cuts. But generally, when sales and profits drop, wages aren’t cut, even in firms undergoing layoffs. Of course, layoffs don’t exactly help morale, but, as one of the bosses that Bewley interviewed coldly put it, they “get the misery out the door.” Cutting wages keeps the misery around.