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I think the unemployed are here to stay, that is those that are unskilled and dropped out of school. There was a time when one could drop out of school and secure a factory job, not anymore. With the rapidly changing economies and globalization we have lost our edge and must re-structure our educational system or go into free fall.
Asians have gotten the message and send their kids to school almost 10 hours a day, 6 days a week. American kids would rise up in rebellion with support of their parents. kids just think about entertainment and becoming a celebrity, not hitting the books.
We are only about two million short of the record. Graph: Total nonfarm payroll employment (seasonally adjusted)
If we can keep employment growing steadily we will reach it. Of course the quality of the jobs may not be where it was. We have too many college graduates working fast food, architects working security, lawyers at Walmart, for example.
Not too many factory jobs anymore, but the problem is more we no longer have the jobs to match the skills our young college graduates have. Apparently in Asia that is not the problem.
Last edited by pvande55; 09-15-2013 at 06:32 PM..
Reason: Add paragraph
You hit the books then what exactly? What's the ultimate point of hitting the books? So you could please the people and entities holding your meal tickets in their hands and hopefully secure employment and get fed. Here comes problem #1 (unsolvable with more education) - minority deciding whether or not majority (and you) will get fed (employed). Ruling minority owes nothing to eager to please majority while controlling virtually all the resources etc. required for survival of that majority. Minority insists on you hitting the books - you do, minority insists on you developing cheery positive attitude - you do, they insist on painting your butt red - you do. The assumption that majority of people has no right to exist unless they make their wage slaving arses attractive to the arbitrary whims of minority is truly insane (and it's not solvable with more education and rat race).
Why do you think that we should mimic Asians abusing their kids with "education" 24/7? Read something about pandemic of deep depression and suicides among Asian young. It's abuse, pure and simple, and it doesn't give any advantage in the rat race. At some point USSR had as many engineers as the rest of the world combined and look at where they are now. It's not about quantity, it's about quality of the selected few.
Second issue with "hitting books", a simple question is - what for? I understand that employers require peons to hit the book, get proper labels, to get a job (and forget all the crap they've learned), but what's added value of hitting the books? Where all that mass of properly educated peons would apply its energy? What silly products, what wasteful garbage, what superfluous services we'll be marketed to death to consume in order to employ all those people? Any ideas?
Last edited by RememberMee; 09-15-2013 at 06:51 PM..
I think the unemployment rate will return to previous levels, but that a large percentage of the population will simply fall by the wayside and not participate in society. Basically, I think it will go something like this.
1) High school dropouts and people with criminal histories will become a permanent underclass dependent on government assistance to survive. With as many qualified, able job seekers as there are who have no criminal record, convicts will be passed over - the same goes for high school dropouts. If and when the government benefits stop, these people will be completely cut off. Social unrest is likely. The dropout rate is approximately 25% in the county I grew up in. I have no idea how we'll support these folks. That's not even mentioning the epidemic of drug abuse that makes many unemployable.
2) Young people who have economically "come of age" during this recession are likely stunted permanently. I graduated in 2010 and had to take a job. Fortunately, I was able to find one, but now more than three years after graduation, I am in the same line of work, and my current pay is actually less than what is in 2010. My working environment and commute have improved, but by and large, I've had no professional growth. People like myself will be the working poor to the working class that have enough to get by meagerly, sometimes on our own, sometimes with government assistance, but are unlikely to have enough to afford a home or have children. We will be impeding growth going forward. Of my generation, I'd say 15%-25% are in this situation.
3) A few people will still reside in the middle class. These will likely be health care workers, teachers, some business owners, and anyone working for or with government entities. These are the jobs of the future. These new "middle class" workers may only be able to afford one child and a smaller or less desirable home than their parents. Their standard of living will likely decline relative to the middle class as we have known it.
4) Probably 10%-20% of the population will be relatively comfortable with some sense of financial security - decent retirement plan, good medical insurance, good income, etc. These people will have the trappings of middle class security today, but can easily overextend themselves and go backwards.
5) A small percentage of wealthy who control ever greater shares of wealth.
Not to level it was under the easy credit days. I also think with rising cost of labor with ACA alone its going to mean moe automation;computerization to compensate.With average employer cost at 13 k in 2012 according to government figures for healthcare; wages and numbers are no going far from what they are now;IMO. Only think going up is the labor market becoming more competive.For it to grow much another cost has to go down to stay competitive. Only energy is likely to do that that I see now.
Under current conditions, employment will not return to what it used to be.
1) People refer to statistical figures, but that is only part of the picture. What really changed is the quality of jobs, the security of these jobs and the relations between employers and employees. When someone is employed by the hour in a seasonable job (like a hotel in a summer resort) it is counted as a job, yet is far from a permanent job with benefits in industry.
2) Most things mentioned by other posters are correct, but one big obstacle to job creation is the present mind set. People talk all day long gloom and doom, the collapse of the economy, the end of America, end of western civilization, etc. etc. Investors are not going to invest massively in such atmosphere. Not taxes are the problem, but the mood that drives the economy. Huge Investments went to Asia in the last years and we need to steer them back, but that's not going to happen as we are today.
The major source of jobs was in the production sector. With outsourcing the US lost most of those jobs. Currently we are moving into an automated age with robots and other automated tools and devices doing the work. Unfortunately, good factory jobs are a thing of the past. For the vast majority of people the only jobs will be low level minimum wage jobs with no benefits. What will be available is high tech jobs but not enough to fill the demand. The only thing left is service jobs but with more people working more menial jobs even bottom level jobs will grow scarce.
I worked for a fortune 500 company. When we were promised a world class production facility the production workers were joyous. One production line employee who had a nasty job said to me, "I'll be glad when a robot does my job." I replied, "and what do you think you'll be doing when that happens?" It took a moment and he realized what I was saying. Through automation, robots and such, that plant went from 3000 employees to 300. The company still not satisfied with the massive profits then moved the plant overseas.
Sadly the job situation in the US will only get worse.
It's not the quantity of jobs; it's the quality of the jobs available. So long as the United States dominated the markets for most high-tech and capital goods in the decades following World War II, unionized shops could provide relatively "soft" jobs as support staff for mostly-older employees who couldn't or didn't want to go into the supervisory pyramid. These sort of jobs were the first to go when globalization stepped up the pace. Things like health care and services took up some of the slack, and will continue growing, but not everybody is a "people person".
First computers, now robots. We're losing many jobs through automation. Our educational system is not producing the workers needed, and it's slow to adapt. Some people just don't want to learn skills or get an education, so they'll always be at the bottom and let the rest of us support them. Many are stuck in homes they can't sell or refinance. Lots of reason why this country is not doing well, now.
I would like to hope that we will bounce back, but I'm seeing too many other countries become equal with or surpass us. I think the other countries are succeeding where we're failing because we spend too much on the military, wars, and subsidizing other countries. They spend money on education, child care, medical care, infrastructure. Wish we would do more of that.
First computers, now robots. We're losing many jobs through automation. Our educational system is not producing the workers needed, and it's slow to adapt. Some people just don't want to learn skills or get an education, so they'll always be at the bottom and let the rest of us support them.
The regrettable fact is that cybernetic progress more often tends to eliminate "good" jobs rather than unattractive ones.
I'll cite an example from the railroad industry. Until 1930, rail traffic was managed by a network of "operators" in trackside offices and signal towers, who backed up a system of published schedules and written rules which, in theory, could handle any situation that might develop. Above them were dispatchers who monitored larger territories and issued written orders, according to a strictly-defined syntax, when necessary. There was even a nationwide reference book, editied by a series of experienced dispatchers who were viewed as a "court of last resort".
At its height, this system probably employed nearly 100,000 men, and it was ideally suited for an older individual, or one who might have, for example, lost a limb while working in a more dangerous capacity. Women took up some of the slack during World War II, but only a handful managed to stick around, and they had to fight hard. In many (but not all) locations the work, while very safety-conscious, was not overwhelmingly fast-paced or demanding.
All this began to change when the capacity to remote-control switch-and-signal complexes began to develop in the late Twenties. Today, i doubt that more than 5000 people are engaged in this "lost art" nationwide, (usually in "dispatch centers", which can control operations hundreds of miles away and compel greater conformity among a concentrated work force) and the number of manned "interlocking plants" -- nearly 7000 in North America at the post-World war I peak, is now probably less than thirty.
I recognize, and fully understand, that technology is the driving force behind all human progress, and that having more capital to invest benefits more of those on the fringes of the economy, or with special needs, much more than is generally realized. But when uncommon skills are concentrated in a single location, the toadying and power games intensify, and woe to the individual with well-developed skills, but a strong sense of individuality.
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