assessing labor market slack is the elevated number of workers who are employed in part - time jobs but would prefer to have full - time work - in other words, those classified as “ part time for economic reasons. ” at around 4 - 1 / 2 percent of employment, the share of such workers is notably larger than has been historically typical in a growing economy. some portion of the greater share of workers who are part time for economic reasons may reflect structural rather than cyclical factors. 3 for example, the ongoing shift in employment away from manufacturing and toward services, a sector which historically relied more heavily on part - time workers, may be boosting the share of part - time jobs. despite these structural trends, which make it difficult to know where the share of those employed part time for economic reasons may settle in the longer run, i continue to think that it probably remains higher than it would be in a full - employment economy. other indicators also generally corroborate the view that while the labor market has improved, it still has not fully recovered. for example, the rate at which employees quit their jobs for other opportunities has tended to go up in a strong economy, since more workers voluntarily leave their jobs when they have greater confidence about their ability to find new ones and when firms are competing more actively for new hires. indeed, the quits rate has picked up as the labor market has improved over the past few years, but it still is not as high as it was through much of the early 2000s. another important indicator is the number of available positions, or job openings, that employers currently have posted. job openings have increased significantly over the past year and a half, and, in another encouraging sign, the pace of hiring has also stepped up in the past year or so, though it too continues to run somewhat below the levels that prevailed through the middle part of the last decade. finally, the pace of wage increases also may help shed some light on the degree of labor market slack, since wage movements historically have tended to respond to the degree of see stephanie aaronson, tomaz cajner, bruce fallick, felix galbis - reig, christopher smith, and william wascher ( 2014 ), “ labor force participation : recent developments and future prospects ( pdf ), ” brookings papers on economic activity, fall, pp. 197 – 275. see tomaz cajner, dennis mawhirter, christopher nekarda, and david ratner ( 2014 )

mr. greenspan considers some of the effects of technological change remarks by the chairman of the board of governors of the us federal reserve system, mr. alan greenspan, at the annual convention of the american bankers association in boston, on 5 / 10 / 97. it is always with mixed feelings of pleasure and trepidation that i accept an invitation to speak at the american bankers association annual convention. i still have a disconcerted remembrance of my acceptance of your first invitation, which had been scheduled for october 20, 1987. that speech had to be scratched at the last minute as the result of a certain adversity in stock price adjustments the day before. experience suggests, however, that history does not repeat with a fixed periodicity and, besides, i have crossed my fingers. the theme of your convention this year is timely. it is exactly when rapid innovation and institutional and technological change are taking place that market participants should take time to contemplate the opportunities and the risks, what to retain and what to change. only then can the banking industry create the most value - added for customers, employees, and society, and as a consequence, for shareholders. as in recent years, the future role of banks and other providers of financial services will surely be significantly affected by the same basic forces that have shaped the real and financial economy world - wide : relentless technological change. this morning, i would like to describe some of the effects of technological change in both the financial and nonfinancial sectors and discuss a few of their more important implications. i will begin with the real economy. technological change and the real economy the most important single characteristic of the changes in u. s. technology in recent years is the ever expanding conceptualization of our gross domestic product. we are witnessing the substitution of ideas for physical matter in the creation of economic value - - a shift from hardware to software, as it were. the roots of increasing conceptualization of output lie deep in human history, but the pace of such substitution probably picked up in the early stages of the industrial revolution, when science and machines created new leverage for human energy and ideas. nonetheless, even as recently as the middle of this century, the symbols of american economic strength were our outputs of such physical products as steel, motor vehicles, and heavy machinery - - items for which sizable proportions of production costs reflected the exploitation of raw materials and the sheer manual labor required to manipulate them. however, today ’ s views of economic leadership focus increasingly on