Spring in the Air, (manufacturing index: employment component rose to a 16-year high)

Smartmoney.com ^ | 1 March 2004 | Igor Greenwald

[Grampa Dave]

Spring in the Air

By WALL STREET STARTED March with an uphill jog on Monday, paced by the increasingly confident industrial leviathans and hopes for a job market thaw.

At 10:22 a.m. ET, the Dow was up 55 points to 10639, while the Nasdaq rose 12 to 2042. The S&P 500 moved up 6 to 1151.

Home builders and the commodity complex stayed red-hot, Alcoa's (AA1) 3% gain pacing the blue chips. Hospital stocks required emergency care.

Investors liked the ISM index of purchasing managers, which stayed in boom territory with a reading of 61.4 as the recovery continues to lift the manufacturing sector's fortunes. That was down slightly from the prior month's 20-year high of 63.4. But the survey noted that the sector now boasts "sustainable momentum."

The employment component rose to a 16-year high, a good omen ahead of Friday's all-important monthly jobs report. Demand for workers has so far not grown as fast as hoped by market-watchers or the 8.3 million unemployed.

Low interest rates and tax cuts have eased the wait, propping up consumer spending in the process. Americans earned less the economists expected but spent more than forecast in January, the 0.2% rise in personal income not quite keeping pace with the 0.4% increase in outlays.

Economic optimism has spread to Japan, with Tokyo's Nikkei stock index surging 2% to a 20-month high Monday on upbeat data and the recently weaker yen. Major European markets also closed in on 2002 peaks.

If all else fails, news that a "secret" U.S. task force has launched a new hunt for Osama bin Laden in remote Pakistan prepared the ground for the next "he's been captured" rumor.

Traders need all the excitement they can get after suffering through a six-week consolidation period that has modestly discounted stocks from January's multi-year highs.

[Grampa Dave]

This appears to be one of the best manufacturing index reports in close to two decades.

[Grampa Dave]

FYI.

[TLI]

I will reserve judgement on the overall condition untill I see SOME, prehaps just a FEW job opportunities return in my field, net admin. That only seems to happen when companies are actually filling new jobs. Right now, it is as if the "IT" section has been removed from the job opportunities portion of hte newspaper, there has been zero for a l-o-n-g time.

[Kieri]

My B-I-L works as a technician for computer-driven milling machines. He's a pro with lots of experience who's certified to repair the Morisiki (sp?) line, as well as service other machines.

This poor guy has been working so much overtime he's exhausted. When I spoke with him on Saturday, he'd worked 48 hours over the past THREE DAYS alone.

A lot of OEM suppliers and industrial service companies are overworking their existing employees, and the employees are getting really sick of it. They're expecting that there will be a hiring boom VERY SOON, and a lot of these guys will be in such demand they'll be able to name their price. There's that much work that needs to be done, and customer service is suffering.

That's when my B-I-L should be getting calls on his resume!

[Southack]

"This appears to be one of the best manufacturing index reports in close to two decades."

Even Democrats are having trouble hiding this economic boom.

It's already getting big, and next year will only be better!

[Grampa Dave]

What if everything but the IT section recovers?

[Southack]

Software technology is gradually automating away the need for humans to be tasked with manually maintaining networks, so being a network admin is a bit of an old school job.

We'll need fewer of them for the same number of networks in the future.

[Grampa Dave]

Many companies are doing what you are pointing out.

They are rehiring or hiring new employees. Two younger relatives in N. California, have been quietly hiring new employees and rehiring some that were laid off. They are in the computer and major construction industries.

[Grampa Dave]

I fully expect the Rats to start worrying about the Bush induced inflation one of these days.

They will drop the unemployment and worse recesssion since Herbert Hoover BS and go right into the dangers of a hot economy with terrible inflation.

[cspackler]

Networks are being more and more stable all of the time, and take much less administration, thus fewrer people to manage them. Especially with more Linux severs in the mix... Job markets change all of the time, you need to be flexible and learn new skills in your area of expertise to continue success. I was a Cobol programmer years ago, then PowerBuilder, then VB, now Java and looking into what's up the pipe... the point is, you cannnot ever stop learning what's new, or you will be left behind. Every new kid fresh out of college that I meet, I make sure that they understand that what they know now will be obsolete in 6 months, and they will have to learn more now than they ever did in college.

New jobs don't come back in old fields... nobody's hiring blacksmiths right now

[WVNan]

Excellent point, and is true in every field. One must keep learning and keeping up with changes throughout life. I'm 70 and still learning.

[KevinDavis]

You speak the truth. You keep on learning, you survive. You don't you die.

[oceanview]

IT has been recovering for a while, but all the job growth is offshore. its that simple. why does anyone expect that a company like Oracle who has been offshoring programmers like mad over the last 3 years or so, all of a sudden starts hiring americans when business picks up? if they need more technical staff, they just expand in India.

[oceanview]

tell you BIL to work as much as he can and get as much as he can while it lasts, there a a few million chinese learning how to use that milling machine as we speak, and when they get good at it, watch out.

[SierraWasp]

2:52 Market Snapshot: U.S. stocks in broad rally on strong manufacturing data
2:50 Dow runs up triple digits

[TLI]

Then we are gonna have a brain dead recovery?

[TLI]

So, what you are saying is people have become much smarter, employees are no longer coming in hung over and unable to remember passwords, new logins and email accounts create themselves, users are no longer trashing their workstations, users are no longer bringing disks from home spreading virus and the guys working weekend hours aren’t hitting the porn sites. I am amazed.

< /silly >

BTW, I went through the entire Linux thing focusing on VPN server activities and there aint no move in the industry for that either. Employers are just as dumb as ever; they will buy off on an "all MS network" line of BS dang near every time. And even after SEEING a network that formerly ran great on Novell servers turn into utter trash on NT servers they STILL come and tell me "We need a unified MS network..." blah blah blah. I try to explain, it's no use. I saw the same thing happen to near perfect Novell networks as I see right now with attempts to move to Linux servers. The management’s level of understanding of the issue is along the lines of pointing a fire hose at a teacup.

Having been at this since `87, what I have observed is the best networks I have worked with were during periods that the employer was in a drop dead panic to get admin folks on board. It may not be trendy to call it Admin but that is what it is and it hasen't gone away, it just seems to be saturated with Windows weenies.

[Grampa Dave]

WhOracle ='s one of the biggest left wing corporations in America.

The CEO off shores and donates massives sums of money to rat politiciana at the national level and to herr Davis and Lockliar.

Then GW gets blamed for off shoring the jobs. How many other companies fall into the WhOracle category of being a big rat company and off shoring.

[oceanview]

most of the large ones.

this is another myth of the media, that "big business" is controlled by the Republicans.

I am glad to at least see them stopping the Oracle takeover of PeopleSoft, why allow Oracle to buy PeopleSoft, so they can offshore TWO companies to India.

[cspackler]

So, what you are saying is people have become much smarter, employees are no longer coming in hung over and unable to remember passwords, new logins and email accounts create themselves, users are no longer trashing their workstations, users are no longer bringing disks from home spreading virus and the guys working weekend hours aren’t hitting the porn sites.

No, what I am saying is that the effort required to do all of these things can now be done by one or two people as opposed to 5. My company has one admin, and he handles it all himself. All of our production servers are Linux, and the only Windows stuff are the desktops and the Exchange server, and he would get rid of that if he could. A good admin gets rid of all of the prolems mentioned above by good planning. We don't have virus problems because he runs a good antivirus tool that keeps itself updated and cleans house, both on the desktop and exchange side. I'm not saying that this is the way it is everywhere, but do it in enough companies and the trickle up has an effect. Remember tho old IBM commercial where the guy comes in and thinks all of his servers have been stolen, then the admin guy walks by and points to the one new Linux server? Yeah, if you have one good admin, it does kinda work that way. Some people just like to try and make their own problems to justify their existence.