Useful terms and expressions

• labour force participation rate – доля экономически активного населения

• prime working years – годы активной трудоспособности

• prime-age man – мужчина в активном трудоспособном возрасте

• disability insurance – страховка по нетрудоспособности/инвалидности

• ripple effect – цепная реакция, эффект домино, мультипликационный эффект

• to pass up – отвергать, отказаться

• to mitigate – смягчать, уменьшить, ослабить, успокоить

Exercise № 4

Do the following statements agree with the information given in the article?

TRUE

FALSE

NOT GIVEN

1. The US unemployment rate has fallen by more than half since the Great Depression.

2. The number of long-term unemployed people was lower seven years ago than at present.

3. The nation’s labour force participation rate continues to tumble.

4. The share of the population that has a job or is looking for one has soared more than 3 percentage points since the start of the recession.

5. The US now has the highest participation rate for men between the age of 25 and 54 among the developed countries.

6. More women worked in the early 2000s than in the 1970s.

7. Their percentage in the workforce has surged since the downturn.

8. The number of unemployed prime-age men who have a working wife has shrunk over the past 50 years.

9. The main cause of the drop in the male workforce is the increase in the number of disability insurance recipients.

10. CEA sees the problem in increasing globalization and automation.

11. The lower the wage, the fewer prime-age men are inclined to return to the labour force after being laid off.

12. The US number of imprisoned men is far above that of any other developed country.

Exercise № 5

What context are the following figures mentioned in?

0,16; 2, 3, 6, 7, 25, 54, 60, 88, 90

Exercise № 6

Suggest the Russian for the following word combinations.

to be out of a job; long-term unemployed people, percentage of the population; prime-age men; downturn; to top 50 percent; to account for the drop in the male workforce; erosion of demand for low-skilled workers; increasingly globalized economy; blue-collar jobs; labour market statistics; to outsource; state-level data

Exercise № 7

Give English equivalents to the following word combinations.

выйти из экономического кризиса; годы активной трудоспособности; доля экономически активного населения; страховка по нетрудоспособности; завод-изготовитель; увеличение годового дохода; цепная реакция; повышение уровня минимальной заработной платы; пособие по безработицы

READING AND SPEAKING II

Read the article and do the assignments that follow.

United workers of the world

Unbalanced skill levels could make the world more unequal

The working world was much cosier in 1980. Just 1.7 billion people were picking up a pay packet a generation ago, nearly half on farms. Globalisation has since upended labour markets. In 2010 the world counted 2.9 billion workers, with the emerging world responsible for most of the increase: it added 900m new non-farm workers, of which 400m live in China and India alone. The meaning of these striking numbers is the subject of a new study by the McKinsey Global Institute, the consultancy's research arm.

The integration of China's and India's masses into the world's labour market lifted legions out of poverty. The transition from soil-scratching powered rapid growth. China's non-farm workers are seven times more productive than peasants. India's performance lagged behind China's because it struggled to move workers away from agriculture. Non-farm employment merely kept pace with the overall growth of India's labour force.

In rich countries, competition from millions of new, low-skilled workers has acted as a drag on wages for less-skilled ones in advanced economies. At the same time, rich-world firms have invested heavily in new technology, raising demand for skilled workers faster than schools could increase supply. In combination, these two trends raised inequality in developed countries and strengthened the hand of capital relative to labour. Workers' share of overall income fell 7 percentage points between 1980 and 2010.

These dynamics will continue, but also change, reckon the authors of the study. Despite great efforts to improve schools and universities, workers in the emerging world are less educated than those elsewhere. Some 35% in China and a stunning 70% in India have no more than a primary education. Yet this will change: China and India, McKinsey predicts, will be the world's main source for skilled workers over the next two decades. The two countries alone will add 184m college graduates to the global labour market. As a result, the centre of gravity of human capital and innovation is likely to shift towards Asia.

The main story in advanced economies will be the rapidly ageing workforce. Retirements will take 12m college-educated workers out of the labour force by 2030. In many countries the labour force will even shrink. Rapid productivity improvements will be necessary to maintain income growth, particularly in the parts of southern Europe that produce and procreate the least. At current labour-force participation rates, Spain, Italy, Greece and Portugal will need productivity growth of 1.4% a year—more than twice what they managed between 1990 and 2010—simply to keep up recent growth rates in output per head.

Taken together, these developments will lead to big skills imbalances. McKinsey estimates that over the next decade rich countries and China will need 40m more college-educated workers than they will be able to produce. At the same time, employers across the world may find themselves with 90m more low-skilled workers than they need. This glut will drag down wages, worsening inequality.

Governments can mitigate the worst effects, McKinsey argues. Innovation in higher education, such as online teaching, would help raise the supply of skilled workers. Labour-market reforms would increase demand for less-skilled workers, particularly in service industries such as health care. Tax incentives would encourage households to “outsource” household chores to paid workers. Yet in a global labour-market that will be 3.5 billion strong in 2030, competition is bound to be intense and often uncomfortable, for workers and governments alike.

The Economist, June 16^th, 2012