how long have you been unemployed/will 2012 be a better job market (work, state)

[captnemo]

How long have you been unemployed or taken a job with a large paycut(like 20,000). Also do you think 2012 will be better job market. what do you think of the job the president or congressis doing with the unemployment situation

[peebola]

Will 2012 be a better job market? Judging by what has happened since the dot com bust in 2000-2001, (outsourcing, boomers hanging on to jobs and not retiring, industries being offshored, bubble busts, etc) I highly doubt 2012 will be better for job seekers than the previous 10 years.

There are just not enough decent paying jobs available for the amount of Americans seeking them. Think about it...when a country offshores entire industries (manufacturing for one), over the past 30 years and nothing replaces those industries except for bubbles (dot com, real estate), you are going to have millions of jobs lost that are not being replaced.

Not everyone in America who needs a job can go into nursing or the health field (which I believe is the next bubble to burst, along with the college scam bubble). For the millions of manufacturing jobs that have left America, did we really replace them with millions of nursing jobs? When I look in my local area I see the same three hospitals (no new hospitals have been built in over 40 years). Where are the new health jobs in my local area?

Of course one will say what about the home health care field, etc. Sure there are jobs in home health care, most paying a little more than minimum wage with no health benefits (ironic). A wage that one cannot live off of in my area.

What I find strange is the prevailing attitude that unemployed people today need to "suck it up" and take any job they can get, even if that job pays a wage that barely pays the weekly gas to go to and from the job.

Why was it OK for the boomers to have relatively cheap college tuition and make a decent salary with jobs that existed in many industries (such as manufacturing), have health benefits and a pension (egads!) in their lifetimes, but now post-boomer generations must stop whining and work three minimum wage jobs, with no health benefits and pensions, and/or go to college and spends ten of thousands of dollars for a degree with no guarantee of any decent paying job?

I guess I will just "suck it up" and start my own business someday. If I am going to fail looking for a job that doesn't exist, I might as well fail at my own business. Now I just need to find out what business to start and come up with a quarter of a million dollars of start-up capital.

[pvande55]

It may be in the cards. Economic growth increasing. Business confidence rising. More Boomers eligible to retire. Wait and see.

[Wartrace]

The reason I do not see our economy improving is the level of debt Americans are saddled with and declining wages. We just went through a HUGE credit bubble that has to de-leverage before any hope of REAL economic growth can return.

As far as the economy "growing" give me a break. Sure, GDP is up slightly HOWEVER let us not forget that government deficit spending has been up 1.6trillion dollars for the past three years. (i.e. borrowing future tax revenues for current expenditures).

This spending is a component of GDP. This increase accounts for 11% of GDP; in other words if government was not replacing private demand with borrowed tax revenue we would be seeing at least a 20 to 25% decline in GDP if you consider the multiplier effect of this circulating through the economy. EVENTUALLY the governments ability to run these kinds of deficits will end.

The bottom line is this cold hard fact; since 1980 our economy has grown on average 4% per year while total debt has been growing at 7% per year. You can not sustain this forever, the math doesn't work. Our economy has only grown by ever increasing debt levels.

Our politicians have been pushing productive industry that creates surplus value off shore and encouraging non-productive financial engineering that has produces nothing but debt.