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One thing we're seeing is an increasing consolidation of well-paying jobs in what seems to be increasingly fewer metros. I'm 30, and growing up here in a small town in east Tennessee, there was a decent amount of white collar work in the "Tri-Cities" area when I was a kid. Many of those positions were in manufacturing, and many of these facilities were offshored, closed down completely, or some of the better jobs that were previously done here are now done in other areas. We had a glass manufacturing company that previously had its corporate HQ here. All the senior roles have moved to the Atlanta suburbs and there is only a skeleton crew of low level staff at this office. The adjacent plant is now shuttered.
I would say most of the people around my age who wanted to get a good job have had to move to other areas. Some remained there, others like myself were able to get experience and move back.
If you're in Tennessee and in a white collar occupation other than health care, Nashville is about your only option. Small towns and rural areas outside of that, while never having much sophisticated work, have largely been hollowed out of what they did have.
Most small towns and rural areas have been hollowed out, with largely a lot of medical jobs (often low end) caring for an aging population, and a lot of other low end stuff like call centers.
I see it in Oregon first-hand. The job engines are all in the Portland area.
The rest of the state is struggling to hold on through services - mostly medical services related to retirement as you say, or tourism. The state used to be highly dependent on extractive industry and agriculture. Those still exist and are still churning a lot of the state's gdp...
...but they need workers about as much as I need a travel agent to book a flight. It's amazing what the farmers and ranchers can do with machinery now and what the wood products industry can do with 1/4 of the people they once used. We had that occupation of the wildlife refuge last winter... that was part right-wing lunacy. However, it was also partly a desperate cry for help from the former low end workers, or their descendents, of a once-proud sector that now can't make a living unless their job is government subsidized.
Luckily we have an excellent landscape for tourism, but only the fortunate business owners actually make a good living off of that.
Some key indicators include employment rates, saving account interest rates and housing prices.
So for instance, Michigan had an unemployment rate around 15% back in 2012, one of the worst in the country at the time. Now it's around 5%, so things are getting better. I do not, however think we will experience the prosperity of the 90's ever again.
It depends on where you live in the USA, as to a good or bad economy. Some areas are in terrible shape, and in others things are booming. Some areas have high unemployment, and others have low unemployment. Some areas wages adjusted for cost of living, leaves the area with a very high poverty rate. Example the state with the highest poverty rate at almost 24% of the people living in poverty is California, with Florida the next highest at about 19%. The ironic thing is, that California median income in well above median for the whole country, but after adjusting for cost of living in the state it falls to below median income for the nation as a whole with a poverty rate of over 23% of all Californians.
It simply depends on where you live, as to it being either a robust economy, or a poor economy with high poverty rates.
I can not write about the entire economy but one section that I know well is that many retirees are about to have significant cuts to their pensions.
From an article in USA Today, March 28, 2015:
About a quarter of the roughly 40 million workers who participate in a traditional "defined benefit" plan—those that pay retirees a guaranteed check every month—are covered by these multi-employer plans, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics. In the last four years, the Labor Department has notified workers in more than 600 of these plans that their plans are in "critical or endangered status."
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I will see a 60% cut in the amount I receive, starting in July, 2017 and the cuts are permanent no matter how well the overall stock market does and the pension funds do as a result. When I retired a dozen years ago the choices I made were based on the belief that my income would not ever be cut, based on the ERISA laws of that time. There is a strong possibility that I will not be able to afford to stay in my current home and will be drastically downsizing and moving when I am in my 70s.
In the past I have been able to donate many thousands of dollars a year to several local, all volunteer organizations - rescue squad, fire dept, humane society and the community food bank but I will no longer have ANY discretionary income to share. Most likely I will not be paying much, if any, income taxes and for all I know I may be eligible for some assistance programs.
It is my understanding that there will be about 10 million retirees and their families who will be facing the same conditions as I. How many middle aged people will now need to try and provide varying levels of help to aging parents, how many grandkids will no longer have any funds contributed to college funds, etc.?
Special mention to the K St. lobbyists who persuaded congress to deregulate the financial industry, the Wall St. Bankstas who engaged in extremely risky behavior as they gambled with other peoples money in order to make personal fortunes and to the congress that then bailed them out because they were Too Big To Fail.
I always get mixed views when this topic comes up in a discussion since some people will say the economy is fine right now and some will say the economy is bad. I'm not too knowledgeable myself when it comes to economics, but what exactly are the key indicators that a person looks out for when measuring economic conditions? Or what are the physical signs that a person should look out for? I live in New York City so maybe it isn't as apparent here as in other states. I walked around midtown the other day and a lot of commercial space and retail stores in the street I usually shop at have closed down and become vacant space open for rentals. Again, not sure if that had anything to do with anything, but it's something I've observed. I read a lot of posters who say the job market is bad, and some who say there are plenty of jobs out there. I'm still in school at the moment so I'm not exposed to the job market yet. So what do you guys and girls think? What are the signs?
I know this will sound dopey, but I was watching PBS a few years ago and they were talking about the one product that best predicts the economy- cardboard. It is used in so much shipping that cardboard demand is a mirror of what the economy will soon do. It was an interesting piece.
I know this will sound dopey, but I was watching PBS a few years ago and they were talking about the one product that best predicts the economy- cardboard. It is used in so much shipping that cardboard demand is a mirror of what the economy will soon do. It was an interesting piece.
There are a lot of proxy variables that one could use to gauge the direction of economic activity. Toll receipts on the NJ Turnpike, for instance.
Thank you for posting this article. Spiegel is very prominent news source in Germany.
This part is so true;
Quote:
Self-delusion
The extent of this self-delusion can be read in the balance sheets of the banks: Almost no one is saving money in the United States today. The US foreign debt grows by about $1.5 billion every weekday and has now reached about $3 trillion. Private household debt, both at home and abroad, has reached $9 trillion -- and 40 percent of these debts has been incurred since 2001. The Americans are enjoying the present at the cost of selling off ever larger chunks of their future. Arguably, the imminent economic crisis is the most thoroughly predicted one in recent history. Rather than refuting the crisis, the current US economic boom merely heralds it.
Biologists have observed similar phenomena in plants contaminated by toxins. Before they wither, they produce one last batch of healthy shoots -- to the point that they can hardly be distinguished from healthy plants.
That we can be so CRAZY and DELUSIONAL is quite astonishing. We are destroying our kids and grandkids future to protect the present for a few extra years. The Fed has fabricated this entire so called recovery and growth with DEBT, future earnings stolen from our kids and grandkids.
Depressions and deflations ARE NECESSARY to cure our problems of BOOM IMBALANCE. Yes, such corrective actions are or can be painful. But avoiding them with intellectual monetary gimmicks (see Herr Greenspan, Herr Bernanke, and Frau Yellen) have led us to the brink of...yes, depression and deflation.
People as a whole simply don't understand the Fed. They don't get the so-called bailouts or any of the Maiden Lane facilities. They don't get the stress tests, or balance sheet expansions, or quantitative easing either.
You'd think such folks would take extra care not to be bamboozled by political hacks, charlatans, and demagogues, but that's not the way it works out.
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