I began homebrewing in 1993. That Christmas, my wife bought me a homebrewing kit that contained all the essentials that I needed to brew my own beer. I brewed my first batch soon thereafter. I made a pale ale from a pre-assembled kit, and was hooked on the hobby.
18 years later, I have gotten pretty good at my hobby. I haven't won any awards (I've never entered a homebrewing contest), but I've gotten the best compliment a homebrewer could ever get numerous times: "May I have another?"
Recently, President Obama made news on the homebrew front when he served a homebrewed beer at the White House. More recently, however, Obama remarked on how technological innovations have led to a weak labor market. In particular, he blamed the loss of bank teller jobs on the creation of the ATM machine. In making his argument, Obama probably was simply making a political talking point to play to his union base.
But assume that he truly believes what he said: when all is said and done, the economy would have more jobs if there were no such thing as an ATM. If so, he fell victim to the old "seen and unseen" fallacy. Yes, the creation of the ATM machine has resulted in a loss of demand for bank tellers and, thus, the number of bank teller jobs. That is the obvious effect: what we see. What's unseen are the jobs that are created in other industries. The most-obvious jobs are those in the ATM industry.
But other jobs are created in other industries not necessarily connected to the ATM industries. ATM's are more convenient to use, which means they in effect create time that bank customers can use in other activities. Perhaps people can spend just a bit more time, and money, at the grocery store or going to movies. This creates jobs in those industries. Or perhaps they take the time as leisure, maybe playing softball. To do this they'll need more softballs, bats, gloves, beer (of course), etc. This creates jobs in those industries. But all these are essentially unseen effects. It's hard to put our fingers on them,. But just because they aren't obvious to us does not make them any less real.
But technological innovations are not the only activities where we have these seen and unseen effects. Because they brew at home, homebrewers don't buy as much beer from breweries and retail liquor stores. This means a reduction in brewery and liquor store jobs. That's the seen effect.
But we brewers have to obtain ingredients with which to brew. We need our brewing grains, our adjuncts, our hops, our yeast, etc. We also have to have a few pieces of equipment that most people do not have sitting around the house. We need carboys and 5 gallon food-grade plastic buckets. We need bottle cappers, kegging equipment, CO2 canisters for force-carbonating our beer, and many other pieces of equipment. Homebrewers' demand for these products creates jobs in the industries where this stuff is made and sold. That's the unseen effect.
You can say similar things about other do-it-yourselfers. Home cooks, woodworkers, and do-it-yourself handymen simultaneously destroy jobs in one industry and create them in another industry. Calling Dr. Schumpeter!
So it is silly to say that homebrewing decreases the number of net jobs. It is just as silly as to say that ATM's have led to a lower number of jobs.
It isn't technological innovation that makes today's jobs market so weak. It's something else, most likely the uncertainty of the future's business climate. Nobody knows what health care will cost under ObamaCare or even whether it is going to be fully implemented. Nobody knows what it's going to cost to comply with new EPA regulations meant to encourage more green energy usage. Nobody knows how vigorous the NLRB is going to pursue pro-union policies, policies that increase the cost of hiring workers.
Criminy, there's even talk about the feds spying on family doctors. What the hell is that all about? If they are going to spy on doctors, they may spy on other private citizens to see if they are still using 100 watt incandescents (the sales of which are effectively slated to be banned at the end of the year, pending a last-minute change in federal law).
There is a lot of uncertainty about what it's going to cost to do business in the future and until that uncertainty is resolved one way or the other, businesses are going to be slow invest and hire.
It all makes me want to have a drink.