Deleveraging jobs and salaries

A recent New York Times article was featuring a 58 year old man who used to be making more than $200,000 a year, and is now furiously looking for a job and finding none. What the article failed to mention was that this is a situation we'll see more of in the coming years. Not because the recovery, when it comes, could be rather flat and anemic, but because we'll find ourselves in the midst of a worldwide salary and job re-adjustment phase. Like an old geezer, I always tell people who want to listen to me that “when a fellow makes $2 an hour assembling a VW Jetta in China and $25 in Germany, something's got to give...”

This is precisely what I'm talking about. This won't translate as fast for the beautician that cut your hair or the car mechanic that works on your auto, but it will impact countless jobs and functions that can be accomplished much more cheaply in developing countries; tasks like accounting, law research, x-ray reading or even animation film development as I've seen recently.

This trend is likely to affect our middle-class, but also that upper middle-crust that used to live so well, come skiing a lot, eat well at good restaurants and drive fine, German cars. No one talks about it in context yet, and somehow it has failed to capture the attention of big media, but I've seen that one coming for quite some time...