One of the most striking things about Denmark and Sweden: Almost everyone is overqualified for his job. The guy who sells train tickets doesn’t just punch buttons and collect cash; he knows his regional transit network like the back of his hand, and eagerly helps you plan your trip.
I’m sure that most American tourists find this a welcome change of pace. Imagine a country where you never have to ask, “Could I talk to your supervisor?” But it’s highly inefficient. In the U.S., the Dane who mans the ticket window would run the whole office. In Denmark, he spends 59 minutes out of 60 doing mindless, menial work.
When I explained my observation to some Swedes, there was an interesting misunderstanding. One told me: “Unskilled workers? We don’t have unskilled workers.” I replied, “I’ve seen guys picking up garbage. Isn’t that unskilled?” And the Swede answered, “We have unskilled work, but not unskilled workers.” My point exactly.
What’s going on? Americans tend to credit Europe’s better schools, but I doubt that’s a major part of the story. The main reason why European workers seem so good, as many Scandinavians admitted, is that they keep semi-competent workers permanently on welfare.
It’s tempting to see this approach as “more efficient” or “kinder-hearted” than ours, but it’s neither. Using high-skilled workers to sell train tickets when low-skilled workers are almost as good violates the principle of comparative advantage. And it’s hardly kind to create a system where workers feel unchallenged, and non-workers feel useless. The European approach may be good for flustered tourists. But for the Europeans themselves, it’s a tragic waste.
READER COMMENTS
david
Aug 21 2009 at 11:22am
To cheer you up from the tragic wastage, perhaps you might like to know that European socialist parties have campaigned for free inter-EU labor mobility. If Sweden cannot find the heart to push unskilled Swedish labor to the market, maybe they’ll relent to allowing Polish people to enslave themselves…
PeterW
Aug 21 2009 at 11:24am
All the more reason to visit and reap the consumer surplus while we can!
Jon Lien
Aug 21 2009 at 11:28am
It is interesting that you say it violates the principle of comparative advantage, as that is excactly what it doesn’t. The workers who would have had the low-skilled ticket selling job may simply be better at doing something else like public sanitation.
The most interesting difference between the US and Europe, especially the nordics, is the effiency of low-skill professions like electricians, plumbers and carpenters. In the nordics these have vocational high shcool educations and are better at their profession than their American counterparts.
The ticket-seller is also an interesting point for another reason, as many public transport companies have downsized substantially, letting the former middle managers do the work their team did before.
Dave
Aug 21 2009 at 11:31am
Their system isn’t all bad. Variety is the spice of life. A misguided drive towards a completely pure division of labor system would be a tragic waste on a whole different level.
Finja
Aug 21 2009 at 11:36am
Don’t you think Danish and Swedish travellers who live there use these seemingly overqualified workers to plan their trips?
And, by the way, someone working at a train station is considered to be an unskilled worker, even if he knows the train schedule by heart… or does “skilled labor” start with the ability to read and write?
Floccina
Aug 21 2009 at 11:41am
We have the same problem here. Government jobs are so highly prised that many over qualified people take them. They are sometimes like really really early retirement.
Scott Wentland
Aug 21 2009 at 2:27pm
One of my favorite barometers for the economy is how well the folks at McDonald’s and Burger King could process my order. When they areconsistently fast, accurate, and efficient…the economy must be in bad shape. Overqualified people take jobs at McDonald’s and so forth in worse times.
I think this is the same sort of deal in Europe, though a normal European unemployment level is INCREDIBLY HIGH FOR THE US! Therefore, I think, if Europe moved closer to full employment levels (around 5 or 6%), those over qualified folks may move up and find better jobs that properly suit their skills. Until then, expect relatively better workers doing unskilled work in Europe.
BT
Aug 21 2009 at 2:33pm
If the Swedes don’t mind, and they have an excellent standard of living a slightly longer life span and are among the happiest people on the planet, maybe it is we who are wrong.
Publius
Aug 21 2009 at 4:14pm
Americans are overqualified, too. The guy who bags your groceries in San Diego is in the prime of his life, while the same guy in Tijuana is a 10 year old boy or an old man of 70.
Johannes
Aug 21 2009 at 4:45pm
The person who bags your groceries in Sweden is you. The cost exceeds the benefit of having someone do it.
olivier
Aug 21 2009 at 5:13pm
As per Johannes, maybe the Americans *like* having a serving class, and their economic system allows them to revel in it. /sarcasm
Scott Wenland hasn’t checked the latest unemployment figures from Denmark. They are not ‘incredibly high’. I believe they’re lower, actually. Sweden is another story altogether, but that brings me to another problem: Sweden and Denmark differ quite a lot in this and other respects, so I’m afraid there’s a bit of generalizing going on here. Not that I’m claiming Europeans can’t be guilty of doing the same when talking about America, but still.
Finally, I would like to know the context of the conversation when you talked to Swedes about your definition of skilled workers. Was that in the context of talking about their education system? Because, believe it or not, some Europeans are know to brag about their less costly education system and tend to exaggerate the educational level of the population. As a Western-European, I have yet to meet over-qualified garbage men or train ticket sellers. Working class people can be just as smart or smarter (in the sense of savvy, not naive, and full of know-how and make-do) than academically trained people, but I think that also occurs in the U.S., and is a different story altogether.
Niko
Aug 21 2009 at 8:17pm
I noticed the same thing in a great deal of European countries that I visited. Many were very intelligent and shouldn’t have been doing the jobs they were in. Unskilled jobs pay so low because the workers are supposed to be the relatively low-qualified people in the hierarchy of human kind.
The existence of a welfare state has thrown a huge monkey wrench into the evolutionary process. The warm-heartedness is nice on the compassion scale in the short-term, but the fact is we’re not doing the human race any favors. We’ve effectively stopped our genetic progress in Europe.
Walt French
Aug 22 2009 at 1:03pm
In contrast to this post with American assumptions presumed as superior, most readers could conjure up the result of a Dane’s visit — a “my way must be right” Dane, at that:
Sauce for the gander.
mike shupp
Aug 22 2009 at 2:57pm
How does this “over qualified” European worker differ from the “well educated” American worker (high school degree, maybe some college) that we all want to see manning the shelves at WalMart, MacDonalds, Starbucks, etc, in lieu of the present crop of drones and dropouts?
Skovgaard
Aug 25 2009 at 2:08pm
@Oliver
Come on. Those unemployment figures are phony. The government is good at those things. And don’t trust their inflation figures either. We have 900.000 or so who is not working although they are in their prime work years.
Thomas
Sep 5 2009 at 7:33am
To further comment on Shovgaard’s numbers… Those 900.000 are out of a population of about 5 million.
Bringing that number up in debates here in Denmark is quite interesting, since people respond with endless excuses and bad explantions, if not with outright disbelief. It was a godsend when one of the red newspapers finally gave the numbers in their editorial, since I could then add that their own propaganade sources acknowledged them.
A problem here in Denmark is the very high government subsidies and excessive taxation on work, which quite frankly, reduces the actual profit of going to work. It is thus no wonder that many simply opt out.
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