Posted on 09/27/2009 10:39:33 AM PDT by Steelfish
Great Recession Transforms The Workplace
Most enduring change may be the permanent loss of millions of jobs
Rusty Meador, Development Manager for Plantation Building Corp., arrives on a job site and begins making calls to check on the status of several tasks Thursday in Wilmington, N.C.
Going to work may never be the same again.
The Great Recession has reshaped the American workplace and work force in ways that will last years, if not longer.
The work force is graying as college graduates can't find jobs, young workers get laid off and older workers delay retirement. People in white-collar jobs are feeling increasingly vulnerable to economic downturns, an insecurity that blue-collar workers have known for years.
Perhaps the most enduring change is the permanent loss of millions of jobs across the manufacturing, services and retail sectors.
For textile factories and service sector employers like customer service call centers, the next wave of significant job creation will occur abroad, where labor is cheaper. That trend was under way before the recession and will accelerate, according to labor economists. Americans who would have held these jobs will have to retrain themselves for other jobs, such as assembling microchips and medical devices.
For retailers, growth will be limited by more cautious consumer spending, in part because the days of easy credit are over. That means fewer retail clerks milling about stores around the holidays, and fewer merchandise buyers and other staff jobs at headquarters.
"We're in a very deep jobs crisis, and we're not coming out of it," says William George, professor of management at Harvard Business School. "It's too glib to say that jobs are a lagging indicator" and that hiring will return to normal once the economy does, he says.
(Excerpt) Read more at msnbc.msn.com ...
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Fixed it. The jobs sailed away on the deficit trade winds. Sending Treasuries to provide ballast on the ships return trip is a lose-lose.
We have to produce more of what we consume.
Ha. Oddly I am an academic, but I am an economist. I would think most economist would recognize that Obama has adopted a number of policies that are not economic growth friendly.
I guess if one were of a different view, one would argue that cap and trade would partly be offset by “green jobs” in the long run, a healthier work force would help increase GDP in the long run, a more unionized work force with long term employment contracts would give businesses more cost certainty in the long run. I can not think of an economic argument for raising marginal tax rates on income nor increased regulation.
So as you can see even for economists this really comes down to your point of view. But ultimately if you do things that harm economic growth, you have to pay a price in terms of economic growth.
I will definitley agree with machinists skill. The new equipment is very complex. An understanding of all measures takes years of work.
Your heart is in the right place, but you’re not taking the problem of unemployment on directly with your solutions.
First we have to get rid of the “cheap labor” policy in the US. That means eliminating H1B visas and illegal aliens from the workforce, which will open up jobs for US citizens.
Next, we simply must get the financial sector working properly again. Your point #2 is necessary, but not sufficient. We need to reduce the allowable leverage used by banks, and we need to re-institute real accounting for all banks and financial companies; ie, no more “mark to model.” We need to re-regulate the bond market and come down like a ton of bricks on the ratings agencies as well. Until people and businesses trust the financial sector again, they will be very slow to expand and banks will be slow to lend.
To add to your budget balancing, I’d suggest we withdraw our troops from the EU, UK, Japan, and Korea. These defense emplacements are nothing but a subsidy to other nations’ budgets. While we’re at it, we should tell the UN that we’re no longer paying 25% of the dues for the organization; we’ll pay only what other nations pay, no more.
With all of that, you won’t balance the budget without attacking entitlements, which are about to consume the entire US budget. The only way out of the entitlement swamp now is to means-test benefits.
At what point will the economists at the NBER and BEA with their revisions of revised quarterly figures start calling it a Depression? It took them a year before they told us this "Great Recession" had already started even though the technical definition didn't quite fit. The current figures look like there will be no growth and even more contraction of GDP in Q4 and at least the first half of 2010.
If it takes until 2012 or 2013 to start seeing recovery of GDP to mid 2008 levels it would seem to me that's more than a double dip or L shaped recession. With continued unemployment and under-employment in the 10% range and investment dollars looking outside our uncertain economy due to unfriendly government policies I don't see much Hope and Change until we throw Congress and the current administration out.
Those sound like excellent solutions. I’m in favor of the Fair Tax, although I doubt that it has much chance of ever happening, if only because the IRS will lose so much of the power that makes it handy to the government as a whole for enforcing policy.
I think radically cutting the agencies would also be excellent, although sadly, I think we’re going to move in exactly the opposite direction (unless Obama gets carried off by space aliens very soon). Once unemployment reaches riot-level numbers, government employment plans will be created that will mean that most Americans actually end up working for one of those agencies, in one form or another.
It’s heartening to see some solutions though.
Selling worthless mortgage securities to Europe comes to mind. The fed should have stayed out of it. Instead they jumped right in with Fannie and Freddy and bankrupted the nation. The greed was born in Washington by all.
Yes, fixing the Treasury certainly might help. We tend to skip right on by that one.
The first step is to realize that we only got here because the system has been manipulated for generations. Obama did not cause these problems, but he certainly is using them as cover for his plans to fundamentally change what we know works.
Obama is not going to be carried off by a spaceship, nor is there suddenly going to be a smoking gun to disprove his American birthright. In general, we need to stop looking for a political savior or a scandal to save us. We are stuck with him for at least 3+ years.
Our best hope to fight the leftist policies and plans our federal government has for us is to do exactly what the Declaration says we have the right to do - institute new Government. The easiest way to do this is at the ballot box. We cannot allow the Left to maintain a majority in Congress. We cannot allow the Left to define to us what is an acceptable Republican candidate, and we no longer have the luxury to tolerate politicians who are easily corrupted and eager to help Leftists achieve their goals.
We need to work, take care of our families, teach our children to value honesty, principles, and the truth. We need to relearn our real history - not the watered down, desensitized, whitewashed version that has been taught for decades. We need to take control of our schools and demand that educators are held accountable for the lessons they teach.
We cannot afford to sit quietly and choose our battles any longer.
Things are not going to change over night. It has taken decades of leftist pushing to get us this far. It will take decades more to right the ship.
A good start to restoring America would be to reclaim the power that belongs to us (the American people) by repealing the 16th and 17th Amendments to the Constitution.
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