The New York Times - USA (2020-12-07)

THE NEW YORK TIMES, MONDAY, DECEMBER 7, 2020 N B5

WORKPLACE | TECHNOLOGY

For the past four decades, in-
comes rose for those with college
degrees and fell for those without
one. But a body of recent and new
research suggests that the trend
need not inevitably continue.
As many as 30 million Ameri-
can workers without four-year
college degrees have the skills to
realistically move into new jobs
that pay on average 70 percent
more than their current ones.
That estimate comes from a col-
laboration of academic, nonprofit
and corporate researchers who
mined data on occupations and
skills.
The findings point to the poten-
tial of upward mobility for millions
of Americans, who might be able
to climb from low-wage jobs to
middle-income occupations or
higher.
But the research also shows the
challenge that the workers face:
They currently experience less in-
come mobility than those holding
a college degree, which is rou-
tinely regarded as a measure of
skills. That widely shared as-
sumption, the researchers say, is
deeply flawed.
“We need to rethink who is
skilled, and how skills are meas-
ured and evaluated,” said Peter Q.
Blair, a labor economist at Har-
vard, who was a member of the re-
search team.
In recent years, labor experts
and work force organizations
have argued that hiring should in-
creasingly be based on skills

rather than degrees, as a matter of

fairness and economic efficiency.

The research provides quantified

evidence that such a shift is

achievable.

“The goal is to shine a bright

light on a problem and on what

can be done on the ground to help

this whole group of people who

are struggling in the labor mar-

ket,” said Erica Groshen, an econ-

omist at Cornell, a former head of

the Bureau of Labor Statistics and

one of the researchers.

The researchers published a

broad look at the jobs, wages and

skills of workers who have a high

school diploma but not a four-year

college degree as a National Bu-

reau of Economic Research work-

ing paper this year. They found a

significant overlap between the

skills required in jobs that pay low

wages and many occupations with

higher pay — a sizable landscape

of opportunity.

For skills, the researchers used

Labor Department classifica-

tions. They defined low-wage jobs

as those paying less than the na-

tion’s median annual salary of

$38,000. Middle-wage occupa-

tions were those paying from

$38,000 to $77,000, with the mid-

point of $57,500. High-wage jobs

paid more than $77,000.

The highest-paid workers with-

out college degrees were in com-

puter, technical and management

jobs. The lowest-paid were clus-

tered in personal care and food

preparation jobs.

A report published this week,

involving most of the same re-

searchers, examined the path-

ways to higher-paying jobs for

these workers, their experience

and the obstacles encountered. It

employed proprietary data and in-

terviews, as well as the govern-

ment data used in the first study.

An office administrative assist-

ant is a typical example of a low-

paying job that can be a portal to a

better one. The skills required, ac-

cording to employer surveys by

the Labor Department, include

written and verbal communica-

tion, time management, problem

solving, attention to detail and a

fluency with office technology. In

short, a skill set that is valuable in

many jobs.

Robert B. Johnson Jr. worked as

an administrative assistant at a fi-

nance company in Dallas for a

year and a half. It was his first ex-

perience in an office, picking up

professional skills like working in

teams and business communica-

tions. He was interested in tech-

nology, and while there he heard

of free computing coursework of-

fered by Merit America, a non-

profit, that could be done on nights

and weekends.

Mr. Johnson, 24, finished the

computer programming course in

six months. Soon after, he was

hired by a local software company,

where his annual salary is about

$55,000, compared with $30,000

before. Today, he has savings in

the bank, and he and his girlfriend

moved into a new apartment in

January. They are looking to buy a

house and talk of starting a family.

“It’s the American dream stuff

that didn’t seem feasible for me

until now,” Mr. Johnson said.

Moves to higher-paying jobs

are typically a combination of per-

sonal initiative, foundational

skills and some additional prepa-

ration like an outside course or

company-sponsored training,

said Papia Debroy, vice president

for research at Opportuni-

ty@Work, a nonprofit social ven-

ture that worked on both studies.

In the pandemic economy, labor

experts have called for increased

government funding for skills

training programs, especially to

expand ones that have proved to

help lift workers into middle-class

careers. It is lower-wage workers,

disproportionately Black and La-

tino, who have been hardest hit by

the current slump. And there is

concern that the economic recov-

ery, when it comes, may only wid-

en income gaps among workers.

Government must play a role,

the researchers said. But they

point out that the private sector

must alter its perceptions, hiring

habits and career development

programs to increase opportunity

for workers without college de-

grees.

“Companies have to see this tal-

ent pool and mainstream it,” said

Byron Auguste, chief executive of

Opportunity@Work. “Systems

change in the labor market has as

much to do with employers prac-

tices as public policy.”

There are signs of progress in

the business community. For ex-

ample, the Rework America Busi-

ness Network, an initiative of the

Markle Foundation, is a group of

major companies that has pledged

to adopt skills-based hiring for

many jobs, often dropping a col-

lege degree requirement. The

companies include AT&T, Kaiser

Permanente, McKinsey & Com-

pany, Microsoft and Walmart.

But they are the exception. For

74 percent of new jobs in America,

employers frequently require

four-year college degrees, accord-

ing to a recent study. Screening by

college degree excludes roughly

two-thirds of American workers.

But the impact is most pro-

nounced on minorities, eliminat-

ing 76 percent of Black workers

and 83 percent of Latinos.

The college-degree filter, Mr.

Auguste said, is “self-harm for the

economy, and racially and ethi-

cally.”

Microsoft is one company that has pledged to adopt skills-based hiring.

STUART ISETT FOR THE NEW YORK TIMES

Up to 30 Million Workers in U.S.

Have Abilities to Earn 70% More

By STEVE LOHR

Rethinking who is

skilled and how those

skills are measured.

to the police on the scene, who
soon caught the man and took him
into custody. Later, they retrieved
the gun and the heroin. And after
another press of the button, the
drone returned, on its own, to the
roof.
Each day, the Chula Vista police
respond to as many as 15 emer-
gency calls with a drone, launch-
ing more than 4,100 flights since
the program began two years ago.
Chula Vista, a Southern California
city with a population of 270,000,
is the first in the country to adopt
such a program, called Drone as
First Responder.
Over the last several months,
three other cities — two in Califor-
nia and one in Georgia — have fol-
lowed suit. Police agencies from
Hawaii to New York have used
drones for years, but mostly in
simple, manually flown ways. Of-
ficers would carry a drone in the
trunk of a car on patrol or drive it
to a crime scene before launching
it over a park or flying it inside a
building.
But the latest drone technology
— mirroring technology that pow-
ers self-driving cars — has the
power to transform everyday po-
licing, just as it can transform
package delivery, building inspec-
tions and military reconnais-
sance. Rather than spending tens
of millions of dollars on large heli-
copters and pilots, even small po-
lice forces could operate tiny au-
tonomous drones for a relative pit-
tance.
That newfound automation,
however, raises civil liberties con-
cerns, especially as drones gain
the power to track vehicles and
people automatically. As the po-
lice use more drones, they could
collect and store more video of life
in the city, which could remove
any expectation of privacy once
you leave the home.
“Communities should ask hard
questions about these programs.
As the power and scope of this
technology expands, so does the
need for privacy protection,” said
Jay Stanley, a senior policy ana-
lyst with the American Civil Liber-
ties Union’s Project on Speech,
Privacy and Technology. “Drones
can be used to investigate known
crimes. But they are also sensors
that can generate offenses.”
With the pandemic still wors-
ening, drones are a way of policing
at a distance, said Rahul Sidhu, an
officer in Redondo Beach, near
Los Angeles, which started a pro-
gram similar to the one in Chula
Vista just after the virus reached
the United States.
“We’re just trying to limit our
exposure to other people,” he said.
“Sometimes, you can send a drone
without sending an officer.”
But down the road, he said, as
these small unmanned helicop-
ters become cheaper and more
powerful, they will provide more
efficient ways of policing urban
areas. That could aid police de-
partments at a time when the
number of recruits is on the wane
across the country and many
voices are calling for funding cuts
after months of protests against
police violence.
In Chula Vista, drones are al-
ready an integral part of the way
the police respond to emergen-
cies. After an emergency call
comes in, officers give the drone a

location, and it flies to that point

on its own — before returning on

its own, too.

The department’s drones can

cover about one-third of the city

from two launch sites, responding

to roughly 70 percent of all emer-

gency calls. After asking the Fed-

eral Aviation Administration to

approve a third launch site, the lo-

cal police hope to cover the entire

city, about 52 square miles be-

tween San Diego and the Mexican

border.

Government regulations re-

quire that a certified pilot remain

on the roof of the Police Depart-

ment, overseeing the launch and,

together with a police officer at a

command station, handling most

of the flying once the drone

reaches its destination.

F.A.A. regulations aimed at pro-

tecting the flights of commercial

planes and other aircraft prevent

drones from being flown beyond

the line of sight of their operators.

But Chula Vista obtained a waiver

from the F.A.A., so the pilot and of-

ficer can fly the drone as much as

three miles from its launch site.

Each drone — including long-

distance cameras, other sensors

and software — costs the depart-

ment about $35,000. But the over-

riding cost of the program lies in

the many officers needed to oper-

ate the drones.

On another recent afternoon,

when the Chula Vista police were

alerted to a car turned upside

down in an empty riverbed, they

sent a new kind of drone into the

ravine. Built by Skydio, a Silicon

Valley company, it could avoid ob-

stacles on its own thanks to many

of the same technologies used by

self-driving cars.

“An ordinary drone would have

crashed by now, guaranteed,” Sgt.

James Horst said as he watched a

video of the drone swooping down

into the riverbed and inspecting

the inside of the car.

Later, in the courtyard outside

the Police Department, he showed

how, with another press of the but-

ton, he could instruct an auto-

mated drone to follow a particular

person or vehicle on its own. Sky-

dio has long offered a consumer

drone that can follow you from

place to place, even as you weave

between obstacles, like trees in a

forest. Now the company, which

recently hired Fritz Reber, the for-

mer head of the Chula Vista police

drone program, is selling to the

police and other businesses.

Shield AI, a start-up in San

Diego that has worked with police

departments, has developed a

drone that can fly into a building

and inspect the length and

breadth of the premises on its

own, with no pilot, in the dark as

well as in daylight. Others, includ-

ing Skydio and DJI, a company in

China that makes the drones

launched from the roof of the

Chula Vista Police Department,

are building similar technology.

The Chula Vista department

treats drone video much as it does

video from police body cams, stor-

ing footage as evidence and pub-

licly releasing it only with approv-

al, Capt. Don Redmond said. The

department does not use drones

for routine patrols.

For privacy advocates like Mr.

Stanley of the A.C.L.U., the con-

cern is that increasingly powerful

technology will be used to target

parts of the community — or

strictly enforce laws that are out

of step with social norms.

“It could allow law enforcement

to enforce any area of the law

against anyone they want,” Mr.

Stanley said.

Drones, for instance, could easi-

ly be used to identify people and

restrict activity during protests

like those that have been so preva-

lent across the country in recent

months. Captain Redmond said

the Chula Vista department did

not deploy drones over Black

Lives Matter protests because its

policies forbade it.

The Chula Vista police do not re-

quire the approval of city officials

to expand drone use, but, accord-

ing to Captain Redmond, they

have publicly notified the commu-

nity about the continued progress

of the program.

Drone as First Responder pro-

grams in Redondo Beach and Clo-

vis, Calif., are seeking waivers

that would allow them to fly be-

yond the operators’ line of sight.

In Clovis, near the middle of the

state, the Police Department has

found that its drones tend to over-

heat at the height of summer. “We

were flying them four days a week

until it got too hot,” Lt. James

Munro said. “Then we had to

ground them.”

But he thinks these and other

technical obstacles will soon be

overcome. “Drones are like

iPhones,” he said. “As soon as you

get one, a new one arrives with

new technology.”

One California City Uses Drones With Artificial Intelligence to Aid Police

Capt. Don Redmond, above left, and Officer Evan Linney monitoring a police drone operation from the Chula Vista Police Department’s command center.

PHOTOGRAPHS BY JOHN FRANCIS PETERS FOR THE NEW YORK TIMES

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