Slate’s Daniel Gross takes on the telemarketing industry’s claims that the Do Not Call Registry will mean the loss of 2 million jobs. Such claims are inflated, Gross insists, though he does concede that the channeling of money into other advertising and marketing avenues will likely not generate as many jobs as the labor-intensive telemarketing industry does. What I find astonishing in all of this is the claim from the American Teleservices Association that currently 4.1 million people are employed nationally in outgoing telephone calling. Given that the Department of Labor estimates the active work force to be about 146 million, this would mean that 2.8% of our work force - 3% of those actually working - are telemarketers. Am I being too Galbraithian in thinking this doesn’t speak well of us as a society?
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