Re: Unemployment Rate Falls to 4.9%


"Rumpelstiltskin" <PleaseDoNotReplyByEmail@xxxxxxxxxxx> wrote in message
news:v5o2s11nbgamd4nafo3c4h5cuhpdmbpoq0@xxxxxxxxxx
> On Sun, 08 Jan 2006 02:22:51 -0800, El Castor

>
> The great untold story of the American economy in the 1990s is the
> disguised high rate of unemployment and its direct impact on
> stagnating living standards. Properly calculated, our rate of
> joblessness is well into double digits.

This is possibly true. I'm of the opinion that a better calculation would be
the way businesses calculate their employees, which is the simple number of
people who are employed full time. Statisticians in each country will easily
tell you what percentage of the population don't want full time employment,
making the "problem" statistics the full time employment number minus the
"don't want full time" estimate.

However, using that sort of counting, one shudders at what the actual
joblessness is in a country where the current estimates work out to, or
close to, double digits.

> No wonder workers have no bargaining power to get their share of an
increasingly productive economy.

Well, the sentence is a bit of an oxymoron, and self-explaining. As
productivity increases, less workers are necessary, and so yea, as
businesses become less and less labor intensive, of course workers end up
competing with each other for the same salary pool.

> Among economists, a debate rages on why earnings inequalities began to
> rise rapidly and real median wages started to fall a quarter century
> ago. Some blame a technological shift that cut demand for uneducated
> labor while boosting the demand for those with greater education and
> skills. Others identify global "factor price equalization"--in an open
> global economy overseas workers with comparable skills but lower wages
> are forcing the wages of Americans down.

Both are true, obviously. It's a bit of a perfect storm for bottom third of
the skill spectrum.
>
> What's left out of this lengthy, if inconclusive, debate is the role
> played by the slack economic environment in which these two forces
> have been operating. While each is real, their impacts would have been
> very different if they had operated in an environment of labor
> shortages rather than one of vast labor surplus. The U.S. economy has
> been celebrated for creating tens of millions of jobs during the past
> two decades. But properly counted, our true unemployment rate is no
> better than Europe's. And nothing keeps wages from rising like a large
> pool of idle or underemployed workers.

The second last sentence is simply not true. Matters are obviously quite
worse in Europe, both anecdotally and statistically -- one example we've
seen recently in France, where the riots we've observed are as much
employment riots as they are cultural riots. No such behavior here.

However, the megatrends discussed by the article are correct, and the last
sentence is spot on. But, BE OF GOOD CHEER. The US and EU are moving into a
prolonged period of labor shortages brought on by boomer retirement. (Just
think what a great time it will be to be a handyman, when the boomers, who
have been feeding Lowe's and Home Depot for two decades with their own
nesting projects, can no longer lift and bend.)

Mike


.

Relevant Pages

  • Bush Administration Dithers While Rome Burns
    ... The Labor Department will report employment data for March on Friday. ... damaging the real economy in lasting ways that will take many months, ... In tomorrow's jobs report the key variables to watch are: ...
    (soc.culture.cuba)
  • Re: Americas disappearing middle class
    ... The declining share of low and moderate income workers in the American ... economy, generally lower paid, since fewer of the employee's skills ... countries where labor costs are a small fraction of those in the US. ... Business lobbies want high immigration to reduce the ...
    (sci.research.careers)
  • Re: Americas disappearing middle class
    ... The declining share of low and moderate income workers in the American ... economy, generally lower paid, since fewer of the employee's skills ... countries where labor costs are a small fraction of those in the US. ... Business lobbies want high immigration to reduce the ...
    (sci.research.careers)
  • Americas disappearing middle class
    ... The declining share of low and moderate income workers in the American ... economy, generally lower paid, since fewer of the employee's skills ... countries where labor costs are a small fraction of those in the US. ... Business lobbies want high immigration to reduce the ...
    (sci.research.careers)
  • Re: Unemployment Rate Falls to 4.9%
    ... >>increasingly productive economy. ... > There is a good argument that globalization is the reason US workers ... and capable of generating more jobs. ... Right, the statement assumes a fixed pool of labor and jobs, which is never ...
    (soc.retirement)