Labor force participation continues to crash under Obama

[themuzicman]

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t is just getting sad now. In April the number of people not in the labor force rose by a whopping 522,000 from 87,897,000 to
88,419,000. This is the highest on record. The flip side, and the reason why the unemployment dropped to 8.1% is that the labor force participation rate just dipped to a new 30 year low of 64.3%.

Obamanomics is an abject failure. He came in proclaiming his policies would save us and make jobs, and they've done nothing of the sort.

[thod]

Get used to it, it is going to get worse. We are now so productive that we do not need the labor. All the farming and all the manufacturing account for 10% of the workforce. Increasing employment there will have little effect. The only solution is to share the available work more widely and thus permit all to participate and make an income.

[JTG]

The lion share of the problem is the capitalistic climate we live in. As thod mentions, everything is so streamlined that fewer workers are needed now. If more money was going more places (domestically), we'd be in better shape. As it is, all the money coming in is being used for ad campaigns, greased palms, executive benefits/bonuses, and outsourced labor.

If profits are going up, but wages and employment are stagnant, i see that as a systemic problem in how business is being run, which is not a problem government can fix short of taking control of the means of production.

[themuzicman]

Hmm... seems to me that we've become less capitalistic under the socialist Obama. If you look at the chart, Reaganomics had the opposite effect.

[INTJRyan]

A whole 2% difference over three decades and inherited high unemployment due to disastrous Republican policies! When will 0baMAO's reign of terror end?

[JTG]

Hmm... seems to me that we've become less capitalistic under the socialist Obama. If you look at the chart, Reaganomics had the opposite effect.

I don't see how the chart displays anything representing how capitalistic we are.

The charts also don't link current employment statistics to Obama policy at all either.

Nor is Reagan mentioned anywhere. Plus Reaganomics were/are a joke anyway.

It looks like you just see what you want to see.

Plus Obama's policies are hardly socialistic. Do you know what that word means? We're currently shifting ever more toward corporatism instead of socialism.

Could you be any more wrong? Every premise in your post is flawed.

[zibber]

Hmm... seems to me that we've become less capitalistic under the socialist Obama. If you look at the chart, Reaganomics had the opposite effect.

For you blatantly to call Obama socialist betrays a severe lack of understanding of socialism.

Vilifying socialism and implying socialism harms workers is just.. coo coo cachoo.

Read ONE book. Read Das Kapital. Read the cliff notes of Das Kapital. For realsies.

Hey. I'm happy the word "socialism" is still so present in public discourse, but it's taken on a million colloquial meanings that have zip, nada, shpadoinkle to do with socialism.

[Fishism]

Interesting that the first graph shows the highest labor force participation rates during the Clinton years. Were all of those extra workers interns?

[Polymath20]

The reason that there are so many unfilled jobs is because there aren't enough qualified Americans. Jobs got outsourced and the rate at which people were retrained is simply too slow.

600,000 domestic manufacturing jobs unfilled due to "skills gap" (To view links or images in this forum your post count must be 2 or greater. You currently have 0 posts.)

That's just one sector. There are jobs available, just no one qualified to do them.

Who's fault is that? Obama? Clinton? Bush? If companies are hurting for employees, why are they training them?

more recent article. (To view links or images in this forum your post count must be 2 or greater. You currently have 0 posts.)

[themuzicman]

I don't see how the chart displays anything representing how capitalistic we are.

The charts also don't link current employment statistics to Obama policy at all either.

Nor is Reagan mentioned anywhere. Plus Reaganomics were/are a joke anyway.

It looks like you just see what you want to see.

Plus Obama's policies are hardly socialistic. Do you know what that word means? We're currently shifting ever more toward corporatism instead of socialism.

Could you be any more wrong? Every premise in your post is flawed.

Yeah, Obama care isn't point at socialism at all...

---------- Post added 05-04-2012 at 03:08 PM ----------

The reason that there are so many unfilled jobs is because there aren't enough qualified Americans. Jobs got outsourced and the rate at which people were retrained is simply too slow.

600,000 domestic manufacturing jobs unfilled due to "skills gap" (To view links or images in this forum your post count must be 2 or greater. You currently have 0 posts.)

That's just one sector. There are jobs available, just no one qualified to do them.

Who's fault is that? Obama? Clinton? Bush? If companies are hurting for employees, why are they training them?

more recent article. (To view links or images in this forum your post count must be 2 or greater. You currently have 0 posts.)

Clinton wasn't a socialist, and was smart enough not to dabble with what was already working, although having a GOP congress that actually acted responsibly helped.

Bush was a disaster, although he did inherit a minor recession followed by 9/11, and then did some stupid deficit spending along the way.

[Polymath20]

Yeah, Obama care isn't point at socialism at all...

---------- Post added 05-04-2012 at 03:08 PM ----------

Clinton wasn't a socialist, and was smart enough not to dabble with what was already working, although having a GOP congress that actually acted responsibly helped.

Bush was a disaster, although he did inherit a minor recession followed by 9/11, and then did some stupid deficit spending along the way.

But we still have to figure out how to modernize America's work force. That, I think, would be the most appropriate course of action.

[thod]

The dominant feature of the bulk of jobs has always been repetition. This is exactly what computers are good at. The idea of modernizing the workforce assumes that there is a new set of skills which the workers can transition to. Yet if these too are repetitive, they will be automated. The surviving workers are the creatives who are able to do 'one off' tasks which are not worth automating. The problem is that such work does not require huge numbers. Nor can the average man do that kind of work since what work exists will go to those with superior mental skills. No one country has all the geniuses. Thus the future corporates will be international in nature selecting and bringing together genius wherever it can be found.

[Polymath20]

The dominant feature of the bulk of jobs has always been repetition. This is exactly what computers are good at. The idea of modernizing the workforce assumes that there is a new set of skills which the workers can transition to. Yet if these too are repetitive, they will be automated. The surviving workers are the creatives who are able to do 'one off' tasks which are not worth automating. The problem is that such work does not require huge numbers. Nor can the average man do that kind of work since what work exists will go to those with superior mental skills. No one country has all the geniuses. Thus the future corporates will be international in nature selecting and bringing together genius wherever it can be found.

There are plenty of repetitive tasks that computers cannot do (yet). Trust me.

[Traverser]

The reason that there are so many unfilled jobs is because there aren't enough qualified Americans. Jobs got outsourced and the rate at which people were retrained is simply too slow.

600,000 domestic manufacturing jobs unfilled due to "skills gap" (To view links or images in this forum your post count must be 2 or greater. You currently have 0 posts.)

That's just one sector. There are jobs available, just no one qualified to do them.

Qualified...for what price? That's the heart of the issue behind unemployment. The reason why employers outsource to countries like India for low-skilled jobs, including in manufacturing, is precisely because labor costs are too high here for the given responsibilities. The dollar goes further for the Indians and the Chinese than us Americans, and so employers expect more work for less money, and hence more qualifications. Therefor, it's little surprise that there are "unfilled jobs". So long as the government continues to distort its country's price system with money creation and labor controls (like the minimum wage), the flight of capital will continue.

Who's fault is that? Obama? Clinton? Bush? If companies are hurting for employees, why are they training them?

more recent article. (To view links or images in this forum your post count must be 2 or greater. You currently have 0 posts.)

Having the government "invest" your money into the broken education system will do nothing but raise the costs of education. If the politicians really wanted to eliminate the employment problem, they could cut taxes across the board and pull back regulations that only serve to cartelize the marketplace, especially in the financial sector. Hell, the Executive Branch could actually start punishing fraud at the upper tiers of political and financial power. But they won't. Instead, they tout that more taxpayer money is needed to solve a problem they created in the first place.

[Causa Mortis]

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Obamanomics is an abject failure. He came in proclaiming his policies would save us and make jobs, and they've done nothing of the sort.

You radically overstate the importance of government policy and completely ignore the more important factor: Federal Reserve policy.

I agree that Obama's economic platform has been a complete disaster, but you cannot place the decline in labor force participation squarely on Obama; monetary policy has been flatly dumb since the start of the Great Recession, important cultural shifts are occurring (including declining materialism and a decreased implicit labor supply), real natural resource scarcity may be occurring, and policies in China and Europe are also in their own way each negatively impacting growth in America.

[eagleseven]

Having the government "invest" your money into the broken education system will do nothing but raise the costs of education. If the politicians really wanted to eliminate the employment problem, they could cut taxes across the board and pull back regulations that only serve to cartelize the marketplace, especially in the financial sector. Hell, the Executive Branch could actually start punishing fraud at the upper tiers of political and financial power. But they won't. Instead, they tout that more taxpayer money is needed to solve a problem they created in the first place.
I am tickled by the argument that more investment in education will improve the economy, as though they don't notice the massive number of underemployed college grads and unemployed highschool grads.

It's not an education problem, we've never been more educated. It's a jobs problem.

[Fecal McAngry]

The lion share of the problem is the capitalistic climate we live in. As thod mentions, everything is so streamlined that fewer workers are needed now.

This same incorrect argument has been used for at least 200 years and is the source of one of my favorite words: To view links or images in this forum your post count must be 2 or greater. You currently have 0 posts.

[Autumnleaf]

There are plenty of repetitive tasks that computers cannot do (yet). Trust me.

We pay Mexican and Chinese people a quarter an hour to do those jobs. Modernizing the American work force would involve getting them used to being grateful to work for 25 cents an hour without any benefits.

The reason American companies say they can't find trained American workers is because they'd rather pay a foreigner 1/2 to 1/3 of what an American trained worker would want. I've seen this happen in several areas.

[Ghostwheel]

This same incorrect argument has been used for at least 200 years and is the source of one of my favorite words: To view links or images in this forum your post count must be 2 or greater. You currently have 0 posts.

There's nothing wrong with the argument, depending upon which conclusion you draw from it.

If you conclude people should go back to feudal era technology, then yes, I see why you have a problem with that.

But if you conclude that the benefits of technology are distributed unequally, then in fact that's actually the case.

For example, in the fifties, there were economists who predicted that robots and automation would reduce the workweek for laborers to two-to-three days. Obviously, that never happened, because the benefits of automation have not allowed laborers to work less, they've allowed owners to profit more.

We are now so productive that we do not need the labor. All the farming and all the manufacturing account for 10% of the workforce. Increasing employment there will have little effect. The only solution is to share the available work more widely and thus permit all to participate and make an income.

Exactly. Which means either some kind of Works Project Administration to hire laborers en masse (and there's plenty of need given the state of the country's decaying infrastructure), or socializing certain industries, or some measure of both.

In fact, Dennis Kucinich once suggested you could have a WPA for highly educated professionals, such as having the government hire scientists and technicians to conduct needed medical research. Any resulting discoveries could be released into public domain as generic drugs, allowing independent drug manufacturers to produce and sell them competitively at the lowest market cost.

[Daoist]

Qualified...for what price? That's the heart of the issue behind unemployment. The reason why employers outsource to countries like India for low-skilled jobs, including in manufacturing, is precisely because labor costs are too high here for the given responsibilities. The dollar goes further for the Indians and the Chinese than us Americans, and so employers expect more work for less money, and hence more qualifications. Therefor, it's little surprise that there are "unfilled jobs". So long as the government continues to distort its country's price system with money creation and labor controls (like the minimum wage), the flight of capital will continue.
You're saying the dollar is too high, therefore the Fed should print more?

There's nothing wrong with the argument, depending upon which conclusion you draw from it.

If you conclude people should go back to feudal era technology, then yes, I see why you have a problem with that.

But if you conclude that the benefits of technology are distributed unequally, then in fact that's actually the case.

For example, in the fifties, there were economists who predicted that robots and automation would reduce the workweek for laborers to two-to-three days. Obviously, that never happened, because the benefits of automation have not allowed laborers to work less, they've allowed owners to profit more.

Part of the problem, I imagine, is that labor is not divisible. If technology eliminates half of our work, you're not going to see people work half as much. You're going to see half as many people working.

[Fecal McAngry]

There's nothing wrong with the argument, depending upon which conclusion you draw from it.

If you conclude people should go back to feudal era technology, then yes, I see why you have a problem with that.

But if you conclude that the benefits of technology are distributed unequally, then in fact that's actually the case.

For example, in the fifties, there were economists who predicted that robots and automation would reduce the workweek for laborers to two-to-three days. Obviously, that never happened, because the benefits of automation have not allowed laborers to work less, they've allowed owners to profit more.


As technology replaces one task people are employed to do, people find other tasks to do. Productivity rises, and standards of living rise.

The fact that "the benefits of technology are distributed unequally" is beside the point, whether true or untrue.

I don't know about you, but if some economic deity approached me and offered to improve my standard of living by 100% while improving the standard of living of "the top 1%" by 10000%, I'd jump at the offer...

[eagleseven]

In fact, Dennis Kucinich once suggested you could have a WPA for highly educated professionals, such as having the government hire scientists and technicians to conduct needed medical research.
1. Dennis Kucinich, my former US representative, also suggests that we should contact the UFOs he keeps seeing.

2. We have this already, and it's called the National Institute of Health and the National Science Foundation. Kucinich is a bit too thick to notice this, despite driving past the massive Bethesda facilities regularly.

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[Aronnax]

The reason that there are so many unfilled jobs is because there aren't enough qualified Americans. Jobs got outsourced and the rate at which people were retrained is simply too slow.

600,000 domestic manufacturing jobs unfilled due to "skills gap" (To view links or images in this forum your post count must be 2 or greater. You currently have 0 posts.)

That's just one sector. There are jobs available, just no one qualified to do them.

Who's fault is that? Obama? Clinton? Bush? If companies are hurting for employees, why are they training them?

more recent article. (To view links or images in this forum your post count must be 2 or greater. You currently have 0 posts.)

These stories are commonly promoted by industry to externalize training costs and/or generate an excuse to bring in lower cost labor on H1B's (depending on the skill level of the labor).

[Daoist]

2. We have this already, and it's called the National Institute of Health and the National Science Foundation. Kucinich is a bit too thick to notice this, despite driving past the massive Bethesda facilities regularly.

This comes nowhere close to storing all the trillions USD in capital foreign countries invest in us, because they can't find any such opportunities in their own countries.

[eagleseven]

This comes nowhere close to storing all the trillions USD in capital foreign countries invest in us, because they can't find any such opportunities in their own countries.
Pulling a quick number, the US has roughly $131 trillion in assets ($106 trillion in liabilities). What percentage of that $131 trillion should the US Government control?

[Ghostwheel]

As technology replaces one task people are employed to do, people find other tasks to do.

Textbook theory ... and a prime example of magical thinking. The "magic" is in the assumption that there are always other tasks available to do, and that the same quality of living can be had in the doing of them.

But there aren't always other tasks to do when the things that people need and want can be supplied by dramatically less producers than there are consumers. You can't have an economy of people who merely do each other's laundry, and not everyone can be an entrepreneur. A productive economy requires people be engaged in productive tasks, and automation and outsourcing mean a lot of us are unneeded and superfluous to that end.

For example, there's the case of Wal-Mart. They come into town and blow out all the small businesses, proving that less and less of us are needed as producers these days:

“Studies from all across the country show that Wal-Mart's arrival does not bring the increase in jobs and retail spending that the company promises,” said Brian Paul, Center Fellow and Masters of Urban Planning Candidate at Hunter College. “Instead, Wal-Mart captures spending from existing stores, driving them out of business and replacing existing retail jobs with lower-paying Wal-Mart jobs.

Link: NEW STUDY: WAL-MART MEANS FEWER JOBS, LESS SMALL BUSINESSES, MORE BURDEN ON TAXPAYERS (To view links or images in this forum your post count must be 2 or greater. You currently have 0 posts.)

Productivity rises, and standards of living rise. The fact that "the benefits of technology are distributed unequally" is beside the point, whether true or untrue.

Another maxim from the guys that, until twenty years ago, didn't know that human beings were not, in fact, "rational self-interest maximizers."

No, as productivity rises, peoples standard of living does not always rise. The standard thinking is that improvements in productivity leads to a rise in living standards because employers can then afford to pay their employees more. Except that when you have a "race to the bottom" as far as employees go, it ain't necessarily so:

1.

By contrast, most manufactured goods these days are the product of global supply chains, which may include multiple countries and border crossings. Your smartphone, for example, is assembled from components that were manufactured all over the world. On a less high-tech note, the cedar hangers that organically keep your suits and dresses free of pests may be made of wood grown in the U.S., shipped to China for manufacture, and then shipped back to the U.S. again.

Given the dominance of global supply chains, manufacturers and distributers both have two very different strategies available to them for cutting costs. On the one hand, they can invest in raising productivity in their domestic operations. A midwestern auto factory can rearrange its assembly line to produce more cars with fewer workers; a retailer can shift more sales to its online division; a real estate agency can invest in contact-management software to help fewer brokers manage more potential buyers and sellers.

Alternatively, companies can cut costs by seeking out cheaper suppliers around the world—to use the business school term, they can engage in global supply chain management. A U.S.-based computer company can lower its costs by moving its customer call center from South Dakota to India, Walmart can shift its clothing purchases from a Chinese shirt manufacturer to a cheaper supplier in Vietnam. Apple can find a cheaper offshore supplier for its iPhone display screen.

But here’s the rub: both of these corporate strategies— domestic productivity improvements and global supply chain management—show up as productivity gains in U.S. economic records. When federal statisticians calculate the nation’s economic output, what they are actually measuring is domestic “value added”—the dollar value of all sales minus the dollar value of all imports. “Productivity” is then calculated by dividing the quantity of value added by the number of American workers. American workers, however, often have little to do with the gains in productivity attributed to them. For instance, if Company A saves $250,000 simply by switching from a Japanese sprocket supplier to a much cheaper Chinese sprocket supplier, that change shows up as an increase in American productivity—just as if the company had saved $250,000 by making its warehouse operation in Chicago more efficient.

[....]
Link: The Myth of American Productivity (To view links or images in this forum your post count must be 2 or greater. You currently have 0 posts.)

That $250,000 is pure profit for owners, as the workforce has absolutely nothing to do with the apparent gain in productivity.


2.

[T]he question [is] whether increases in produtivity result in wage increases for workers, as most economists believe. I have taken the position that this is not necessarily the case --- that in most instances productivity increases lower wages. We were discussing this issue as it applies to machinests:

[....]

Machinists used to be a skilled job whereby the machinist had to know some geometry in order to cut the parts out to proper tolerances. These days machines are computer-driven, so a "machinist" is just a guy who picks up a slab of metal and locks it down into the machine. No skill at all.

That is a perfect example of the reason why produtivity improvements do not increase wages. The computer-driven capital equipment in use by machine shops has replaced a factory that used to have 300 machinists making $20 an hour, with benefits and pensions, with 50 Mexican peons making $7 an hour and no benefits. The profit of the company has increased, while the wages have been reduced by 80%....

Link: To view links or images in this forum your post count must be 2 or greater. You currently have 0 posts.

What do you imagine those out-of-work machinists will do? They can't all become lawyers, entrepreneurs and software prodigies. Ergo, as quoted in the OP, you have this:

In April the number of people not in the labor force rose by a whopping 522,000 from 87,897,000 to 88,419,000. This is the highest on record. The flip side, and the reason why the unemployment dropped to 8.1% is that the labor force participation rate just dipped to a new 30 year low of 64.3%.

But wait! There are "other tasks" for those 88.4 million people to do. At Wal-Mart!


• Wal-Mart’s average annual pay of $20,774 is below the Federal Poverty Level for a family of four.

• A Wal-Mart spokesperson publicly acknowledged in 2004 that, "More than two thirds of our people... are not trying to support a family. That’s who our jobs are designed for.”

• Wal-Mart’s 2010 health care offerings have a high annual deductible of $4,400 which means a family would have to spend $5,102 of their own money on health care before Wal-Mart’s insurance pays anything. Based on the average salary of a Wal-Mart employee this payment represents almost 25% of their annual income.


I don't know about you, but if some economic deity approached me and offered to improve my standard of living by 100% while improving the standard of living of "the top 1%" by 10000%, I'd jump at the offer...

I would decline the bargain. With that 10,000% the oligarchs would continue solidifying their hold on government, the media, and everything else. Money is power and influence. The super-rich won't just buy more cars and houses; they'll buy more government. Then they'll cut your wages, take away your freedoms, freely engage in fraud in banking and financial services on a massive scale, start wars to secure markets overseas and huge defense contracts, and do whatever else they like.

Oops! They do that already! :embarrassed:

I mean, they'll do even more of it!

Concentration of immense wealth are concentrations of immense power.

[larkin]

Yeah, Obama care isn't point at socialism at all...

That's your response to being that wrong? What, no more articles from gold standard sites to link to?

Here's a snapshot of the actual number of jobs created under Obama, by the way.

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And a primary reason the employment rate isn't higher than it is? Public sector job losses (To view links or images in this forum your post count must be 2 or greater. You currently have 0 posts.), mostly at the state level. And in case that just seems like the "liberal media," from your friends at Newsmax (To view links or images in this forum your post count must be 2 or greater. You currently have 0 posts.). Of course, they think those job losses are all a good thing - because, like you, unemployment is such an important issue to them, undoubtedly.

I am tickled by the argument that more investment in education will improve the economy, as though they don't notice the massive number of underemployed college grads and unemployed highschool grads. [...] It's not an education problem, we've never been more educated. It's a jobs problem.

"Massive number?" Outside of the fabulous anecdotal evidence provided, the actual unemployment rate for college grads is around 4% (To view links or images in this forum your post count must be 2 or greater. You currently have 0 posts.), and on the decline. Meanwhile, the unemployment rate for those without a high school diploma is around 15%. As the article says - the number one determinant in unemployment is education level.

And Polymath is right - there are jobs, but the workforce isn't always appropriately trained for them. "Education" doesn't necessarily refer to only primary or even secondary education.

These stories are commonly promoted by industry to externalize training costs and/or generate an excuse to bring in lower cost labor on H1B's (depending on the skill level of the labor).

Sure, but that doesn't make them any less true. There's demand for skilled labor.

[thod]

Unemployment amongst college grads at 4%? You can't seriously believe that.

Education provides employment in the education industry. It simultaneously removes workers from the numbers as they are reclassified as students. The country is the most educated it has ever been. Which must indicate unemployment is the lowest it has ever been, right? It should be quite clear that there is no correlation between national education level and unemployment. What those college kids are finding is that when everyone has a degree, it doesn't count for much. It never was about education, it was about ranking. The good openings are still there but now they go to those with top marks from elite universities. What the employers are interested in is employing the top 1%. Education only ever served an indication of this.

[themuzicman]

But we still have to figure out how to modernize America's work force. That, I think, would be the most appropriate course of action.

What we need to figure out is that we need to lower the cost to hire an employee.

[larkin]

Unemployment amongst college grads at 4%? You can't seriously believe that. [...] Education provides employment in the education industry. It simultaneously removes workers from the numbers as they are reclassified as students. The country is the most educated it has ever been. Which must indicate unemployment is the lowest it has ever been, right? It should be quite clear that there is no correlation between national education level and unemployment.

Sure, why believe the Bureau of Labor Statistics when we have your false correlation? The country is the most educated its ever been in no way means unemployment should be the lowest its ever been, especially since, as you posted upthread, the jobs we're hemorrhaging are lower-skill or unskilled labor, and unemployment is unevenly distributed to reflect that. To say nothing of the other factors that are influencing unemployment - you know, 2008 and all that jazz.

What we need to figure out is that we need to lower the cost to hire an employee.

I wonder if one way to do that would be to try to find a way to remove the expensive, burdensome and inefficient requirement on private industry to provide health care?

Nah. Just give them tax cuts. They'll trickle down, just like giving all that TARP money to the banks immediately resulted in more available capital, or domestic oil drilling has lowered our gas prices.

[thod]

why believe the Bureau of Labor Statistics

"So you say you can't find a job?"
"That's right"
"Well let me see, do you speak French?"
"Oui"
"Do you have a wooden leg?"
"Tap, tap, tap"
"Ok how about a pierced left nipple?"
"Ah sorry, nope"
"Well then, you are not unemployed. The criteria are quite clear. If simply wanting a job were enough, lots of people would be unemployed."

[CrudeHypothesis]

Sucks to be in your country hey

[Daoist]

Pulling a quick number, the US has roughly $131 trillion in assets ($106 trillion in liabilities). What percentage of that $131 trillion should the US Government control?

However big the global savings glut (To view links or images in this forum your post count must be 2 or greater. You currently have 0 posts.) is. My guesstimate is less than 3-4% of that $131 trillion - perhaps less than that because some of that money isn't necessarily intended for the government (though some of it clearly is.)

[Aronnax]

Sure, but that doesn't make them any less true. There's demand for skilled labor.

There is, but at what salary? You can find skilled machinists, but you're not going to find many machinists willing to relocate thousands of miles to make $15.00/hr with a mediocre benefits package and poor job security to work in a new non-union auto plant. It's a transferable skill set, I know a lot of guys who'd rather deal with the feast/famine cycle of piecework as a welder rather than move for steady pay at a lower rate. It's anecdotal evidence but I keep running into this sentiment in a lot of places and across multiple trades.

For local youth, who don't face relocation problems, does the pay justify training for a few years? This is possibly something that could be resolved at a high school level but right now the salary doesn't seem to justify supplemental training beyond that. It's a sticky question: where exactly is the breakdown in promoting "skill" between the public and private spheres? Is there an absence of "skill" or is there insufficient incentive to bring "skill" to the doorstep of a new factory? My guess is it's a combination of the two.


On the white collar side of the fence, the "engineer shortage" follows a similar trend. 57% of people with an engineering degree (To view links or images in this forum your post count must be 2 or greater. You currently have 0 posts.) are actually employed in the engineering field. Is there actually a shortage of engineers or does the profession lack the incentives to retain skilled engineers? This is one of the more interesting skill gaps, because most of the labor shortage is at mid to high levels of work experience (so it can't be addressed by increasing the number of people enrolled in universities). Meanwhile, new engineering graduates are getting funneled into other fields because engineering firms don't seem particularly interested in hiring and training new graduates. It's not terribly hard on the graduates, they can find other work due to the broad skill base an engineering degree provides. The problem is, it only contributes to the "skill gap" that the county is seeing at higher levels of experience. So the question becomes, are we educating enough engineers or is the private sector failing to provide the incentives and supplemental training needed to turn engineering graduates into experienced engineers?


We've gone a bit off base from the original post but eh, this is a more interesting topic.

[INTelliJent]

Arronnax makes a good point. If you go to job listing sites, there are tons of listings. For any [reasonably] paying job though you are going to inevitably see something like "5+ Years experience" in the requirements line.

More degrees won't fix that.

---------- Post added 05-05-2012 at 08:29 AM ----------

Conversely, people with no experience don't want to take lower pay and "work their way up". Students have been sold a bill of goods that all that college debt is going to immediately and assuredly translate into an excellent salary immediately out of school.

[JTG]

Yeah, Obama care isn't point at socialism at all...Social programs don't equate to socialist government. Socialism entails the fair distribution of profits among those who created the profits (i.e. not fucking over workers).

So strictly speaking, no. Governmental efforts to increase healthcare availability is not actually socialism. Plus i'm not sure why Repubs want to fight the idea tooth and nail. It's not like we're currently saving money with the alternative.

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This same incorrect argument has been used for at least 200 years and is the source of one of my favorite words: To view links or images in this forum your post count must be 2 or greater. You currently have 0 posts. for my lack of clarity. My mental image of streamlining includes anything which makes a process cheaper and more efficient. The goal of streamlining is to increase profits at the top levels of a company, in spite of many people's belief that the goal is to make products more affordable. Affordability is a side-effect of streamlining plus competition, since execs are willing to let go of some profits if it means more significant market share.

The impact of automation isn't immediately apparent because we still need people to create the machines, computers, and software that run automated systems. However, this has caused a shift away from production jobs, which make for generally more stable economies if i'm not mistaken. Service economies (toward which we lean, in the US) take a beating in hard times. Also keep in mind that many tech-type production jobs are and have long been based in Japan, Korea, Thailand, etc.

Outsourcing is a big concern, too. In streamlining for maximum profitability, companies are shipping jobs out of the US en masse. They're even having conferences (To view links or images in this forum your post count must be 2 or greater. You currently have 0 posts.) on how to most efficiently profit from countries which do not yet have the same worker protections in place as the US.

According to a Wall Street Journal article (To view links or images in this forum your post count must be 2 or greater. You currently have 0 posts.) last year on corporate outsourcing, "The companies cut their work forces in the U.S. by 2.9 million during the 2000s while increasing employment overseas by 2.4 million, new data from the U.S. Commerce Department show."

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Included in this figure are many monolithic multinationals such as "General Electric, Caterpillar, Microsoft, Wal-Mart, Chevron, Cisco, Intel, Stanley Works, Merck, United Technologies, and Oracle."

From the video about the article: "the one thing that's worrisome is that unless these firms invest in hiring in the United states, we are not going to have enough good jobs to put people back to work and sustain the middle class."

It also bears noting that companies, when deciding whether to hire in the US, consider our slipping education standards and aging infrastructure, along with financial incentives. The GOP would have you believe that cutting taxes (and infrastructure) to zero is the solution, but taxes are lower now than they were for a very long time, including US ascendancy. Improving support for many public (omg socialist) programs will go a long way toward making us competitive again.

Unrelated to the above reasons: there are also the public sector jobs vanishing under GOP axes, as larkin said above. As far as i can understand, this isn't a product of anything but Republican hatred for all products and services that are readily available even to those without wads of cash. "If it's not on a private, for-profit basis, then fuck it. We should be able to turn away those who can't pay large sums for safety, security, health, etc."

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What we need to figure out is that we need to lower the cost to hire an employee.Autumnleaf already has proposed an idea i'm sure any fine upstanding Republican would like:Modernizing the American work force would involve getting them used to being grateful to work for 25 cents an hour without any benefits.