That might be an answer but it's not THE answer.
Bodies are needed right now. If you put everyone of those
4.8 percent to work right now (you can't. some of the enemployed are unemployable, we'll never have 0% unemploymnet), you still will need more bodies.
Even more bodies, in all sectors, will be needed when the boomers retire.
Our kids ain't having the number of kids like we had kids, and we didn't have the number of kids like out folks had.
300 million crowded ? The entire population of the world can fit in Texas, comfortably.
My construction buddies are shot to doll rags. They've been barrelling for the last 8-10 years. They are worn out.
But it's not stopping. The O'Hare airport expansion is firing up. There aint going to be enough bodies.
They don't have enough bodies in the gulf for hurricane clean-up.
I wish your answer was THE answer, but it aint.
stylin19a - 300 million crowded ? The entire population of the world can fit in Texas, comfortably.
It sounds to me like having 6 billion people living in Texas would make it pretty damn crowded (unless you like living like a sardine).
Texas
Population (U.S. Census, April, 2000): 20,851,820
Total Area: 268,601 square miles
Total Land Area: 261,914 square miles
Population per square mile (Population/Total Land Area): 79.61
Gee, what kind of quality of life are we all gonna have when the entire Third World decides it wants to migrate to Texas. Hate to sound cliche, but in the end money isn't everything. I am conservatve, but definitely not one of those "Grow at any cost" Republicans. People who advocate growth for the sake of growth need to change their paradigm.
First off, the unemployment rate and how it was measured was changed in the 90s, the unemployment rate is more or less the U-6 measure of the BLS. Second, what is more important, the economy of the culture of the US. The US does not need "bodies", especially if they will radiclaly change the socio-political nature of the US. That is a far more dangerous long term threat to the stability of the US than any short term economic hardship. If you want the US to become like California, then go right ahead with your dangerous nonsense.
I think too many so called "conservatives" do not understand that the US is not merely an economy where the "free" markets should reign supreme, but it is a socialety that became wealthy because of stability. Take the stability away because of uncontrolled immigration and globalism, then the US will spiral down the bowl.
Where are you at and what are you paying per hr .
Our kids ain't having the number of kids like we had kids, and we didn't have the number of kids like out folks had.
No and we don't have all those factories and mills that made all our clothes,and household appliances, steel, shipyards etc.and all the thousands of cottage industries that went along with which employed millions of America workers.
You don't need kids if you can't make a decent wage to take care of them and there is not a decent future.
Also don't forget that our grandparents and my parents in my case needed larger families to work on their small farm.
Now one guy with a tractor can produce ten times what a family of ten with a mule could.
All of you who believe in the principles pf free market should tell the government to stay out of it because that what's wrong.
Let the market set the wages and the let the government quit passing laws that encourages and enables companies to invest in Red China and then floods what job market we have left over here with cheap labor.
They couldn't do a better job at attacking the wages of American workers if they tried [which is exactly what they are doing.
You don't really think they care about all those poor underprivileged foreign workers do you?
Hell, you are dealing with businessmen, the most greedy, cold bloodied, hard hearted, con men on the planet when it comes to a dollar.
They don't even care about the future of their fellow countrymen or their own grandchildren much less that of a bunch of foreigners.
They're just justifying selling out their own country and people to themselves but mostly to you and me and we gobble it up.