Where are the jobs? Perhaps they exist.

[Ivan Seeking]

I thought this was quite interesting. According to this and other reports seen, we should have the employment rate Obama had hoped for. Apparently this informaton came out in the latest jobs report.

[Bill Clinton] For the first time in my lifetime, David, we are coming out of recession with posted job openings. That is, tomorrow, Monday, you could get that job. These jobs have been offered. They're going up twice as fast as job hires in this horrible economy. Why? Because of two things. First, over 10 million of our fellow citizens are living in homes that are worth less than their mortgages, so they can't move or their credit's ruined for life. We still need more efforts to fix that. And second, way the biggest problem, is there's a skills mismatch. The jobs that are being opened don't have qualified people applying for them. We need a system to immediately train them to move into that job. And I hope we'll have some commitments coming out on that. There are five million people who could go to work tomorrow if they were trained to do the jobs that are open, and the unemployment rate in America would immediately drop from 9.6 to about 7 percent or 6.9. That would have a huge impact on America's psyche. That would happen if no bank makes another loan, if none of this other stuff goes on...

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/39235412/ns/meet_the_press-transcripts/

 

[Evo]

I don't know how to clean sewers.

 

[Ivan Seeking]

Somewhat related, Stephen Colbert appeared before a House committee today, to testify about his one day of experience as a farmworker. This was a tongue-in-cheek answer to a challenge by immigrant farmworkers to come and take their jobs. The farm worker's representitive said on the Colbert show that so far, they have had 16 takers.

SAN FRANCISCO — In a tongue-in-cheek call for immigration reform, farm workers are teaming up with comedian Stephen Colbert to challenge unemployed Americans: Come on, take our jobs.

Farm workers are tired of being blamed by politicians and anti-immigrant activists for taking work that should go to Americans and dragging down the economy, said Arturo Rodriguez, the president of the United Farm Workers of America.

So the group is encouraging the unemployed — and any Washington pundits or anti-immigrant activists who want to join them — to apply for the some of thousands of agricultural jobs being posted with state agencies as harvest season begins.

All applicants need to do is fill out an online form under the banner "I want to be a farm worker" at www.takeourjobs.org, and experienced field hands will train them and connect them to farms...

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/37906555/

Colbert stated that he never wants to do that again. Now, just the sight of a salad bar causes him to break out in a cold sweat.

 

[Ivan Seeking]

I don't know how to clean sewers.

We would be in pretty bad shape if no one did.

I assume that you are implying that this is a needed skill with no takers? Is this just wild speculation or is it rooted in fact?

Labor jobs have been some of the hardest hit. People with more advanced skills and more education have done far better.

 

[waht]

It's difficult for older people who lost their jobs to learn new skills.

 

[cronxeh]

I am highly skilled, trained, and experienced. There are jobs in the region and I can get one tomorrow if I chose to. I don't want to. I've had enough with the b.s. and I'm going to finish my BS degree and intern around, let someone else do this blue collar job. I've been kicked around for no good reason by the private companies, and they can suck it.

 

[ThomasT]

I thought this was quite interesting. According to this and other reports seen, we should have the employment rate Obama had hoped for. Apparently this informaton came out in the latest jobs report.


http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/39235412/ns/meet_the_press-transcripts/

What's your point, Ivan?

 

[Hepth]

What's your point, Ivan?

That some of the discrepancy between the predicted unemployment rate post-stimulus and the current rates can be accounted for as an unaccounted mismatch in skill-sets between available positions and viable workers? I thought that was clear?

 

[ThomasT]

That some of the discrepancy between the predicted unemployment rate post-stimulus and the current rates can be accounted for as an unaccounted mismatch in skill-sets between available positions and viable workers? I thought that was clear?

Ok, so some of the discrepancy is going to be accounted for by referring to something that can't be accounted for. I'm sorry, what am I missing here?

 

[russ_watters]

So how many unfilled job openings usually exist? And what kind? This doesn't pass the smell test.

 

[rootX]

That some of the discrepancy between the predicted unemployment rate post-stimulus and the current rates can be accounted for as an unaccounted mismatch in skill-sets between available positions and viable workers? I thought that was clear?

I always thought that all politicians are well aware of structural/frictional unemployment, and that they cannot eliminate them.

 

[turbo]

Most of the open jobs up here are telemarketing positions that require little training, and sales openings that will leave the successful applicants under-employed (or badly under-paid) until consumer demand turns around. The jobs that require specialized training/certification like education and healthcare positions can form a longer-term backlog demand. It takes a while to get someone through nursing school and come out with an LPN or RN certification - longer if specialization is required. Still, there are not many jobs going begging here. In today's paper (Saturday is a good day to post openings), there is less than a column and a half of ads, and several of those ads are quite lengthy, so the total number of openings is quite small.

 

[russ_watters]

That is the complaint I've typically heard; that new jobs aren't as good as lost jobs. Clinton is claiming the opposite.

 

[Ivan Seeking]

Time and time again we have been told that many of the jobs lost are never coming back. This has been a part of Obama's message all along. We have to build a new industrial base. It's makes perfect sense that there would be a skills mismatch if the old jobs have to be replaced with entirely new ones. This in turn is driven by globalization, our corporate tax policies, and the cost of energy, not Obamanomics. [Note that high energy prices help to spur domestic manufacturing as some imports become less competitive]

I don't know how significant the mobility issue is, but it does make sense that many people are not in a position to sell their house and move to where the jobs are found. This is not normally a contraint during an economic recovery.

So the implication is that this is not a jobless recovery, it is a workerless recovery. This in turn may also be putting downward pressure on the GDP and sales. Five million jobs not filled are five million salaries not spent.

 

[mugaliens]

That is the complaint I've typically heard; that new jobs aren't as good as lost jobs. Clinton is claiming the opposite.

Clinton has a job.

 

[airborne18]

Well the unemployment rate is not an accurate metric for measuing the total number of people out of work.

There are many things that will reduce the unemployment rate without creating any jobs.

The real challenge in our economy is that most of the jobs are service based, and until the general economic conditions improve we will not see job growth. Or eventually we will adjust to the changes in the demand curves.

The population distribution has created a permenent contraction in several sectors of the economy.

The real issue is not job skills. And there are jobs, but how many software engineers or people with advanced degrees want to work at Home Depot, or work on a trash truck.
It is the middle class and white collar jobs that have been decimated and they are the driving force of the economy.

 

[talk2glenn]

This is complete nonsense, and easily verifiable using the BLS JOLTS report.

http://www.bls.gov/news.release/pdf/jolts.pdf

As of July, 2010 there were 3 million "open" jobs in the United States. The unemployment rate is approximately 14 million people (not including the marginal unemployed, underemployed, and part-time employed for economic reasons).

Thats approximately 5 job seekers per open job, and 3 million, not 5, who could "go to work tomorrow" if they could be matched with a suitable open position.

Bill seems to be implying that the only reason these positions are "open" is because no trained unemployed person can be found to fill it. This too is nonsense. Approximately 1/3 of the open positions are in technically non-skilled (non-professional) sectors, construction, manufacturing, retail, and lesiure & hospitality. Theoretically, anybody could do these jobs, with minimal training. The other 2/3 are technically skilled (professional) sectors, healthcare, business, professional services, education. This analysis excludes the public sector.

So Bill Clinton is seriously suggesting we cannot find 2 million qualified candidates in the 14 million directly unemployed?

Nonsense. It isn't a question of "skill set"; due to labor market inefficiencies there are always job openings as recruiters and job seekers try to find their respective best matches. The problem is that the number of job creations (opened and filled) is often below the rate of replacement (more jobs eliminated than created) and always below the rate of population growth. The only reason the unemployment rate isn't growing is that discouraged workers are leaving the labor force. In 2006, there were 4.8 million discouraged workers in the United States. This year, the average is around 6 million. Thats a growth of 25% in 4 years. Over the prior 6 years, the same figure grew by just 11%.

Note that population growth rate in the United States is about 1%/year, so real growth rates in the number of job-seekers not in the labor force is nominal minus 1. That gives us less than 1% growth rate between 2000-2006, versus a greater than 5% growth rate for 2006-2010.

These discouraged workers are the technical class most likely to meet Bill's hypothesis - efficiently task-trained workers unwilling to learn new skill sets but unable to find work in old positions due to the permanent removal of production capacity from the economy. This metric is therefore quite useful for measuring long-term economic harm done by a recession. The 2001 tech bubble probably didn't permanently remove much production capacity, because the number of discouraged workers stopped falling but didn't grow, either. On the other hand, this most recession cause a return to peak levels last observed in 1994, before the tech boom restructured a large chunk of the US domestic ecoonmy, probably reflecting a permanent loss of jobs in the financial services sector.

 

[Astronuc]

Clinton has a job.

Clinton and Bush have decent pensions.
http://www.ipl.org/div/farq/pensionFARQ.html

The retirement benefits received by former Presidents include a pension, Secret Service protection, and reimbursements for staff, travel, mail, and office expenses. The Presidential pension is not a fixed amount, rather it matches the current salary of Cabinet members (or Executive Level I personnel), which is $191,300/year as of March, 2008 (but see "Salary Info" section above for advice on how to track increases in this figure).

They can get huge speaking fees too.

 

[turbo]

Not to mention book advances.

 

[Ivan Seeking]

This is complete nonsense, and easily verifiable using the BLS JOLTS report.

http://www.bls.gov/news.release/pdf/jolts.pdf

As of July, 2010 there were 3 million "open" jobs in the United States. The unemployment rate is approximately 14 million people (not including the marginal unemployed, underemployed, and part-time employed for economic reasons).

You are citing a jobs report from July. Clinton was resonding to the one that came out last week. All that you have shown is that we have added 2 million unfilled jobs to the market since July.

Big surprise, we need skilled and unskilled labor, as well as college grads. If we have people to fill these 5 million jobs, and we must if we have 9.6% unemployment, then clearly we have a problem with the people trying to fill these jobs.

Many people in the trades make as much or more more than most scientists. If the objection is that industry is outsourcing good jobs, you can hardly blame Obama. Welcome to a global economy. Obama has longed to increase taxes on companies that outsource our jobs. Do we have any supporters? No doubt the Republicans would do their best to block any such effort.

 

[turbo]

There are people in Maine that have been unemployed or underemployed for years. With the collapse of the housing industry, the lumber industry disappeared practically overnight, along with the equipment operators, wood harvesters, skidder operators, truck drivers, etc, etc, that are necessary for getting trees from the forest to the mill, processed, and delivered for sale. These are hard-working people who often work sun-to-sun (at least in the harvesting operations) and they live all over this state. Can they sell their house, uproot their family, and move 200 miles to chase a job bagging groceries?

Numbers don't tell the story.

 

[Ivan Seeking]

Turbo, the question is not whether people are having a hard time. That's a given. Remember, I work in the manufacturing sector. I see the demise of our manufacturing base first hand [of course Russ keeps telling me that I don't]. I've had one large customer go bankrupt, another all but fell off the face of the earth, and another just moved operations to Mexico.

The point is that we aren't filling the jobs that are open.

 

[Ivan Seeking]

Once again, many of the jobs lost will never come back. Is this a surprise to anyone here? If so, then you really shouldn't have an opinion on this matter.

 

[turbo]

Turbo, the question is not whether people are having a hard time. That's a given. Remember, I work in the manufacturing sector. I see the demise of our manufacturing base first hand [of course Russ keeps telling me that I don't]. I've had one large customer go bankrupt, another all but fell off the face of the earth, and another just moved operations to Mexico.

The point is that we aren't filling the jobs that are open.

I know that. Maine feels weaknesses in the base sectors of our economy early, suffers deeply, and recovers late. The elites who claim to be able to predict the onset and the end of recessions ought to park their butts here for a few decades to see how stupid their pronouncements are to real people.

Our state relies on natural resources (decline in production when demand falls), fishing (decline when people in other parts of the country feel they have less expendable income), and tourism (tricky, because we might get some increase in short-term tourism from NE when things get bad and people defer long trips, but we can lose the bucks spent by trust-fund babies that defer their Maine vacations when things get tight.)

 

[hamster143]

You are citing a jobs report from July. Clinton was resonding to the one that came out last week.

The report he's citing clearly shows "September 8" as the release date. It takes time to gather and release data. Newer numbers probably do not exist yet and I have no idea where Clinton got his 5 million.

Big surprise, we need skilled and unskilled labor, as well as college grads. If we have people to fill these 5 million jobs, and we must if we have 9.6% unemployment, then clearly we have a problem with the people trying to fill these jobs. ... The point is that we aren't filling the jobs that are open.

First of all, the keyword is "turnover". Having 5 million job openings does not mean that there are no people to fill them. Every day some job openings are filled and some are created. In any typical non-recession month, 5 million people lose their jobs / quit / retire, and 5 million people get new jobs. The number of job openings simply reflects the time it takes to fill positions that were left open when someone quit or retired.

Secondly, there's this peculiarity of our economy that it's easier to get jobs for intelligent & educated people. Partly because the manufacturing sector has been decimated by welfare expansion and repeated minimum wage hikes, and therefore employment opportunities for high school dropouts are very limited. We probably have a large number of openings for people with IQ over 110 (in fact, those existed all the way through the recession, and they are rising at a faster level than all others), but that does not mean that people currently out of work can be trained to do those jobs.

 

[Ivan Seeking]

No doubt, the technical measure of a recession not representitive of entire state of the economy. We see it here in Oregon as well. We had and still have one of the highest unemployment rates in the country. Same with unemployment vs underemployment. In fact the underemployment problem was already present before the economy collapsed, but people were working two or even three part-time jobs because they couldn't get full-time positions.

Part of this underemployment business is a result of the loss of unions. Of course, historically, unions are in part responsible for the outsourcing and loss of industry.

 

[Ivan Seeking]

The report he's citing clearly shows "September 8" as the release date. It takes time to gather and release data. Newer numbers probably do not exist yet and I have no idea where Clinton got his 5 million.

Yes but the data was from July.

First of all, the keyword is "turnover". Having 5 million job openings does not mean that there are no people to fill them. Every day some job openings are filled and some are created. In any typical non-recession month, 5 million people lose their jobs / quit / retire, and 5 million people get new jobs. The number of job openings simply reflects the time it takes to fill positions that were left open when someone quit or retired.

His statement was that job postings are rising twice as fast as job hires. This is not a problem of turnover.

Secondly, there's this peculiarity of our economy that it's easier to get jobs for intelligent & educated people. Partly because the manufacturing sector has been decimated by welfare expansion and repeated minimum wage hikes, and therefore employment opportunities for high school dropouts are very limited. We probably have a large number of openings for people with IQ over 110 (in fact, those existed all the way through the recession, and they are rising at a faster level than all others), but that does not mean that people currently out of work can be trained to do those jobs.

Yes, as I said, people with a higher education or an advanced skill set are doing relatively well compared to labor and manufacturing. We need labor jobs, but the complaints posted were that we are getting labor jobs, and not good jobs.

 

[Ivan Seeking]

I love the complaint about minimum wage hikes. Have you ever tried to live on minimum wage? Have you seen all of the old people working at fast food joints, Wal Mart, and the like. These aren't high school kids.

If you can't make a living wage, then a job is no use. You'd probably do better by panhandling.

 

[hamster143]

... the complaints posted were that we are getting labor jobs, and not good jobs.

Yes, I'm pretty sure that it's the exact opposite. The overall unemployment rate among college educated people never got above 5%. Posting a software engineer resume on Dice tends to yield ten calls from recruiters on the first day. (Although some of them might expect you to work for as little as (gasp) $80k/year.) But try to find a job as an administrative assistant, or a cashier ...

I love the complaint about minimum wage hikes. Have you ever tried to live on minimum wage? Have you seen all of the old people working at fast food joints, Wal Mart, and the like. These aren't high school kids.

Well, there are about 100 million Chinese who work in manufacturing, and they survive just fine making less then the current U.S. minimum wage. Obviously, they don't have cars or iPhones, but it's doable. Prices for many commodities are set based on what people can afford to pay. for example, without a $8/hour minimum wage and the government that is always happy to step in with TANF, section 8 and whatnot, low-end housing would be much cheaper everywhere.

Personally, I lived on $50..$100/month for a few years, not in this country, but with essentially the same prices for necessities such as food and clothing.

 

[russ_watters]

I don't recall ever saying anything about our manufacturing base, Ivan. All I'm saying us that democrats are contradicting themselves/each other, which makes this unsourced claim smell like BS.

How so you not see that your minimum wage lament (which is the typical view of liberals here) contradicts the thesis of the thread?

...er, wait - are you claiming that skilled people are taking minimum wage jobs which has resulted in high skill jobs being unfilled...? REALLY?

What this sounds like is Clinton trying to make excuses for the failure of Obama's jobs view/plan. In fact, he's saying Obama did the right thing and if you're still unemployed its you're fault (so vote democrat!).

 

[russ_watters]

Once again, many of the jobs lost will never come back. Is this a surprise to anyone here? If so, then you really shouldn't have an opinion on this matter.

Um, you claimed in the OP that the jobs HAVE come back - but Americans are not qualified to fill them. Are you now retracting that and claiming the opposite?

 

[rcgldr]

Well, there are about 100 million Chinese who work in manufacturing, and they survive just fine making less then the current U.S. minimum wage.

So the plan here is to lower the income for mainstream (blue collar) type workers to that of third world countries where many jobs are being outsourced, but while living in the USA where the cost of living is higher? If enough companies reduces wages to survival level in the USA, which is a 70% consumer based economy, the economy goes downhill, because a huge chunk of the income that was used to buy those consumer products goes away.

 

[Gokul43201]

Um, you claimed in the OP that the jobs HAVE come back - but Americans are not qualified to fill them. Are you now retracting that and claiming the opposite?

How exactly is 'some of the jobs have returned' contradictory to 'many of the jobs will never return'?

 

[Ivan Seeking]

How exactly is 'some of the jobs have returned' contradictory to 'many of the jobs will never return'?

Yes, and I never said that all new jobs were once old jobs. The point was that the creation of entirely new jobs [eg buidling wind turbines, or building electric cars] would explain why we don't have qualified applicants for them.

 

[Ivan Seeking]

Note that I don't know the source of Clinton's information. I saw his interview and heard a few other reports of the same. Presumably the source of his comments will emerge soon enough.

I don't conclude that something is fishy just because I didn't expect it.