The Real Employment Problem

[Wehrwolfen]

By Frank Ryan
November 16, 2013

Supposedly the economy is rebounding. Years of stimulus spending by the administration and over $3 trillion in quantitative easing by the Fed are allegedly working. Or are they?

The Bureau of Labor Statistics reported in October that the unemployment rate, U3, declined very slightly to 7.2%.

Concurrently, the BLS noted that the unemployment rate to include those marginally attached to the workforce, or U6, was 13.6%.

These statistics, however, hide a painful and tragic reality. While unemployment rates have dropped, the labor force participation rate has also declined significantly in recent years. The labor force participation rate in September 2013 was 63.2%, the lowest since 1978.

The implications of the declining rate are profound. While unemployment appears to be lower, the lower labor force participation rate sharply mitigates the "alleged" improvement in the economy -- and implies that a growing number of Americans are either voluntarily or involuntarily dropping out of the workforce.


Read more:
Articles: The Real Employment Problem

IMHO, our government and progressive educators place too much emphasis on college and not vocational areas. Where are the schools offering those who prefer vocational skills other than Liberal Arts?

 

[iamwhatiseem]

Not to hijack the thread, but the underemployment numbers are staggering. And to me is greater of an issue than unemployment. Graduating students with degrees...working at Burger King, laid off skilled laborers formally making $25+ an hour working at a small plastic injection company making $10 an hour.
We currently have the highest part-time to full-time in recent history. So high, that the government is rewriting what constitutes "full-time" to make the number seem better.
Underemployment is more permanent in nature than unemployment.

 

[Mr. H.]

Smoke, mirrors, and funny money. It will all catch up to us soon enough.

 

[editec]

IMHO, our government and progressive educators place too much emphasis on college and not vocational areas. Where are the schools offering those who prefer vocational skills other than Liberal Arts?

First of all STATES, (not the FEDs) decide what education will look like, mate.

STATES run their education.

Did you NOT know that?!

Then seriously, how do you expect us to take you POV seriously?

Secondly, there are PLENTY of vocational programs available for kids.

No school system in AMERICA does not offer VO-TECH.

 

[Darkwind]

IMHO, our government and progressive educators place too much emphasis on college and not vocational areas. Where are the schools offering those who prefer vocational skills other than Liberal Arts?

First of all STATES, (not the FEDs) decide what education will look like, mate.

STATES run their education.

Did you NOT know that?!

Then seriously, how do you expect us to take you POV seriously?

Secondly, there are PLENTY of vocational programs available for kids.

No school system in AMERICA does not offer VO-TECH.

Oh, good. We can then divest ourselves of the Department of Education. It has been a black hole waste of money to begin with and has not improved.

No school system in America? None of them you say?

 

[blastoff]

States make education decisions but lots of funding comes from the feds and with it various rules and regulations they require enforcement of or the spigot gets turned off or the flow rate reduced accordingly.

Playing ball with federal bureaucracies is lots of fun, really.

 

[Trajan]

IMHO, our government and progressive educators place too much emphasis on college and not vocational areas. Where are the schools offering those who prefer vocational skills other than Liberal Arts?

First of all STATES, (not the FEDs) decide what education will look like, mate.

STATES run their education.

Did you NOT know that?!

Then seriously, how do you expect us to take you POV seriously?

Secondly, there are PLENTY of vocational programs available for kids.

No school system in AMERICA does not offer VO-TECH.

uhm, the dept. of education exerts enormous pressure by granting or threatening to withhold funds....

 

[Darkwind]

IMHO, our government and progressive educators place too much emphasis on college and not vocational areas. Where are the schools offering those who prefer vocational skills other than Liberal Arts?

First of all STATES, (not the FEDs) decide what education will look like, mate.

STATES run their education.

Did you NOT know that?!

Then seriously, how do you expect us to take you POV seriously?

Secondly, there are PLENTY of vocational programs available for kids.

No school system in AMERICA does not offer VO-TECH.

uhm, the dept. of education exerts enormous pressure by granting or threatening to withhold funds....

Something that would be considered a crime if a private citizen acted in this manner.

 

[Contumacious]

By Frank Ryan
November 16, 2013

Supposedly the economy is rebounding. Years of stimulus spending by the administration and over $3 trillion in quantitative easing by the Fed are allegedly working. Or are they?

The Bureau of Labor Statistics reported in October that the unemployment rate, U3, declined very slightly to 7.2%.

Concurrently, the BLS noted that the unemployment rate to include those marginally attached to the workforce, or U6, was 13.6%.

These statistics, however, hide a painful and tragic reality. While unemployment rates have dropped, the labor force participation rate has also declined significantly in recent years. The labor force participation rate in September 2013 was 63.2%, the lowest since 1978.

The implications of the declining rate are profound. While unemployment appears to be lower, the lower labor force participation rate sharply mitigates the "alleged" improvement in the economy -- and implies that a growing number of Americans are either voluntarily or involuntarily dropping out of the workforce.


Read more:
Articles: The Real Employment Problem

IMHO, our government and progressive educators place too much emphasis on college and not vocational areas. Where are the schools offering those who prefer vocational skills other than Liberal Arts?

John Williams: The Real Unemployment Rate: 22% – Not 8.1%
The coming fiscal cliff: hyperinflation on track for 2014

.

 

[Trajan]

First of all STATES, (not the FEDs) decide what education will look like, mate.

STATES run their education.

Did you NOT know that?!

Then seriously, how do you expect us to take you POV seriously?

Secondly, there are PLENTY of vocational programs available for kids.

No school system in AMERICA does not offer VO-TECH.

uhm, the dept. of education exerts enormous pressure by granting or threatening to withhold funds....

Something that would be considered a crime if a private citizen acted in this manner.

its been a subtle way for the Fed. gov. to operate for , well since 1916 at least

 

[georgephillip]

By Frank Ryan
November 16, 2013

Supposedly the economy is rebounding. Years of stimulus spending by the administration and over $3 trillion in quantitative easing by the Fed are allegedly working. Or are they?

The Bureau of Labor Statistics reported in October that the unemployment rate, U3, declined very slightly to 7.2%.

Concurrently, the BLS noted that the unemployment rate to include those marginally attached to the workforce, or U6, was 13.6%.

These statistics, however, hide a painful and tragic reality. While unemployment rates have dropped, the labor force participation rate has also declined significantly in recent years. The labor force participation rate in September 2013 was 63.2%, the lowest since 1978.

The implications of the declining rate are profound. While unemployment appears to be lower, the lower labor force participation rate sharply mitigates the "alleged" improvement in the economy -- and implies that a growing number of Americans are either voluntarily or involuntarily dropping out of the workforce.


Read more:
Articles: The Real Employment Problem

IMHO, our government and progressive educators place too much emphasis on college and not vocational areas. Where are the schools offering those who prefer vocational skills other than Liberal Arts?

Perhaps it's worth asking "what is the purpose of an economy?"
Here are three possible choices provided by CH Douglas:

"1. The first of these is that it (the purpose of an economy) is a disguised Government, of which the primary, though admittedly not the only, object is to impose upon the world a system of thought and action.

"2. The second alternative has a certain similarity to the first, but is simpler. It assumes that the primary objective of the industrial system is the provision of employment.

"3. And the third, which is essentially simpler still, in fact, so simple that it appears entirely unintelligible to the majority, is that the object of the industrial system is merely to provide goods and services."

If the third alternative is in fact the object of an economic system, then it's possible that unemployment and underemployment are just logical consequences of the machine freeing a sizable segment of humanity from the need to "work."

Social credit - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

 

[eagle1462010]

Why the shift in topic to education.........................

Which part of College Students can't find a decent job with a College degree don't you get....................

The Fed and Helicopter Berneke is slinging money out of the sky to promote the economy. After 3.5 Trillion and rising he may have achieved a miserable .25% increase in the GDP. Wow. Talk about a failure.....................Same as Japan that has been stuck in this same trap for decades, including bond market failures of recent news.....................

His strategy doesn't work. Attacking business with new laws and taxes DOESN'T PROMOTE GROWTH. Never has and never will. Those with the Fed Money simply continue to create the bubble in the Markets with it. To a point that they have to borrow more to pay the Margins. Same thing happened in all the Recessions and crashes...............

All the Fed has done is buy time with FIAT CURRENCY..................

The Gov't needs to promote growth by getting out of the way. They are the problem and not the solution. They caused the crash with their idiotic policies, and now suddenly think this same strategy will work THIS TIME.

The velocity of money has been going down, down, down the tubes since 2000. As our jobs head overseas and our Trade Deficits increase. That brings me to the Free Trade versus Fair Trade argument which should possibly be in another thread................

 

[Jackson]

By Frank Ryan
November 16, 2013

Supposedly the economy is rebounding. Years of stimulus spending by the administration and over $3 trillion in quantitative easing by the Fed are allegedly working. Or are they?

The Bureau of Labor Statistics reported in October that the unemployment rate, U3, declined very slightly to 7.2%.

Concurrently, the BLS noted that the unemployment rate to include those marginally attached to the workforce, or U6, was 13.6%.

These statistics, however, hide a painful and tragic reality. While unemployment rates have dropped, the labor force participation rate has also declined significantly in recent years. The labor force participation rate in September 2013 was 63.2%, the lowest since 1978.

The implications of the declining rate are profound. While unemployment appears to be lower, the lower labor force participation rate sharply mitigates the "alleged" improvement in the economy -- and implies that a growing number of Americans are either voluntarily or involuntarily dropping out of the workforce.


Read more:
Articles: The Real Employment Problem

IMHO, our government and progressive educators place too much emphasis on college and not vocational areas. Where are the schools offering those who prefer vocational skills other than Liberal Arts?

John Williams: The Real Unemployment Rate: 22% – Not 8.1%
The coming fiscal cliff: hyperinflation on track for 2014

.

If it is verified that out real unemployment numbers is 22% and hyperinflation happens,

the doom and gloom of Obamacare is actually going t be secondary...which I didn't think that could take a back seat to anything.

 

[FJO]

Not to hijack the thread, but the underemployment numbers are staggering. And to me is greater of an issue than unemployment. Graduating students with degrees...working at Burger King, laid off skilled laborers formally making $25+ an hour working at a small plastic injection company making $10 an hour.
We currently have the highest part-time to full-time in recent history. So high, that the government is rewriting what constitutes "full-time" to make the number seem better.
Underemployment is more permanent in nature than unemployment.

With your logic you would consider my story as "OVER" employment.

1957 - I arrived as an eighteen-year-old who could not speak English.
1963 - graduated from high school as an adult student.
1965 - up from the factory floor, applied for job as computer programmer.
1970 - taught myself COBOL, you know the now extinct computer language.
1997 - still a programmer.
1999 - invited to work in company`s head office regarding the Y2K implications.
2003 - retired after having to report to a jackass university graduate who could not program his way out of a wet paper bag.

Yes, I was OVER employed.

Thanks to good luck, but even more so, thanks to employers who who saw merit and effort desire to succeed rather than meaningless and unearned titles.

 

[OnePercenter]

The answer is: Corporate America is sitting on 100T in cash.

 

[kiwiman127]

The private sector is not doing their job.
We know that the private sector are the job creators and in fact the private sector hasn't been creating jobs to keep up with the population growth since the early 2000s. They have created about as many jobs offshore as they have domestically. No one can say they aren't profitable enough to create jobs, just look at the Dow and record profits.
Of course one wouldn't expect The American Thinker to offer up a realistic balanced point of view based on it's more so far right and pro-business philosophy.
I will never argue that the stimulus was a success, because it wasn't. The per job created just doesn't look like a good investment.
It's is going to take the private sector to really lower unemployment.

 

[georgephillip]

The private sector is not doing their job.
We know that the private sector are the job creators and in fact the private sector hasn't been creating jobs to keep up with the population growth since the early 2000s. They have created about as many jobs offshore as they have domestically. No one can say they aren't profitable enough to create jobs, just look at the Dow and record profits.
Of course one wouldn't expect The American Thinker to offer up a realistic balanced point of view based on it's more so far right and pro-business philosophy.
I will never argue that the stimulus was a success, because it wasn't. The per job created just doesn't look like a good investment.
It's is going to take the private sector to really lower unemployment.

Why not a new New Deal, financed in part by the 100T US corporations are sitting on?

 

[Jackson]

The answer is: Corporate America is sitting on 100T in cash.

So why isn't corporate America investing and hiring?

 

[georgephillip]

The answer is: Corporate America is sitting on 100T in cash.

So why isn't corporate America investing and hiring?

Possibly, their returns are better in Brazil, India, and China, or perhaps they have a premonition of impending economic doom?

Transcript: Thom Hartmann: The coming economic crash... - Dr. Ravi Batra 19 March '13 | Thom Hartmann - News & info from the #1 progressive radio show

 

[OnePercenter]

The answer is: Corporate America is sitting on 100T in cash.

So why isn't corporate America investing and hiring?

Direct subsidies dried up in 2007-2008 when Bush/Republicans/wall street crashed the economy.