You just know this kid got his ass kicked multiple times in school. And bigger boys stole his lunch money.
Posted on 07/16/2011 9:03:57 PM PDT by Kaslin
Why aren’t employers hiring more workers? Why are so many people seeking work unable to find anything other than part-time positions or temporary employment? And that’s when they can find a job at all.
In short, what’s causing the continuing stagnation of the U.S. economy?
Former Sen. Phil Gramm observed in the Wall Street Journal the other day that we’ve had recessions before. But at this point in the cycle we should be roaring back. Had we followed the pattern of the previous 10 recessions, almost 12 million more people would be employed right now, producing additional goods and services worth more than $8,000 for every household in America.
So what gives?
Job Creators Alliance (JCA) is an alliance of business leaders who are focused on this very issue. These are employers who are in the trenches, facing the economy’s woes day in and day out. Two of them told Fox Morning News last week that the reasons for slow job growth boil down to basic common sense. (Fair disclosure: my wife Jeanette is the director of the organization.)
Think of it this way. When an employer hires a full-time worker, the employer thinks of the relationship as long term. During an initial training and learning period, the employer probably pays out more in wages and benefits than the company gets back in production. But over a longer period, the hope is to turn that around and make a profit.
When employers hire new employees, then, they are making a gamble. They are betting that over time, the economics of the relationship will pan out.
The problem in the current economy is that hiring new workers and committing to new production has become extremely risky. As the JCA folks explain, an employer who hires workers today has no idea what the company’s future labor costs will be. Or its building and facility costs. Or its cost of capital. Or its taxes.
What’s causing all this uncertainty? You guessed it. Nobody knows what is going to happen in Washington, D.C.
Take the cost of labor. The Affordable Care Act (what some people call ObamaCare) is designed to force employers to provide full-time employees with comprehensive health insurance in less than three years. While the goal may be admirable, the consequences are not. Although no one knows how much this extra burden will cost, estimates are that the required family coverage will reach $15,000 a year or more — the equivalent of an additional $6 an hour minimum wage.
Employers could decide to drop their health insurance altogether; and if they do so they must pay a fine of $2,000 per employee per year. Yet if a lot of employers do this (and apparently a lot of them are thinking about it), don’t you think the federal government will respond by making the fine a lot higher?
Then there is the National Labor Relations Board (NLRB). After the aircraft maker Boeing spent $1 billion building a new plant and hiring 1,000 workers in South Carolina, the agency brought a halt to the whole thing, calling it an unfair labor practice. Boeing’s sin? South Carolina is a right-to-work state. The company should have built the plant in Seattle, where it would be required to use union labor.
There is more bad news. The NLRB is considering rule changes that would make it much easier to unionize workers. Would you like to see employers across the country facing the same kind of turmoil state governments are now facing in dealing with public sector unions? Most employers don’t relish that idea either.
Under the Obama presidency, the NLRB has made a radical change of direction. Some would say it is much more pro-labor, but this is a misnomer. What the agency is dedicated to is not labor, but making labor more costly.
As for capital investments such as new buildings and new equipment, here again there is considerable regulatory uncertainty. It should come as no surprise that the Obama administration is overly friendly to environmental groups who see carbon dioxide emissions as pollution. Yet every act of production emits carbon dioxide. You even emit it when you exhale.
As for the cost of financial capital, what is going to happen is anybody’s guess. When the Bush tax cuts finally do expire, the tax on capital gains will increase by a third and the tax on dividends will more than double. The administration has made no secret that it would like to accelerate these tax increases and make them even higher.
Bottom line: even if there were no Republican opposition in Washington, we would be in trouble. The Obama administration is profoundly anti-labor. It thinks it is pro-labor, of course. But that is because it is so naïve about economics that it doesn’t understand that when you make hiring more costly there will be less hiring.
But there are Republicans in Washington, and (ironically) their presence in some ways adds to uncertainty. While the two parties are battling, who knows what the outcome will be? No one can.
So the best strategy from a business perspective is to sit on cash, delay the employment of labor and capital and wait to see what happens next.
Better job sites:
Indeed
http://www.indeed.com
Nation Job
http://www.nationjob.com
50 State (plus territories) Job Banks
http://www.ajb.dni.us
Stop being negative; they are in Beijing, Manila, and Mumbai.
“There are plenty of new jobs. Not in this country, though.”
Well said; Anglos built the “information superhighway” that made them all trailer-park people.
I receive automatic notifications from several sites: I would lose a lot of money if I ever had to take the jobs that are out there (in my field or not). Anyone I know that lost their jobs and found other ones is earning a LOT less money (and dealing with out “non-existent” inflation as well) - even if they are doing the same thing.
long time passing!
where have all the jobs gone?
long time ago!
where have all the jobs gone?
scared of Obama, every one!
when will we ever learn?
when will we ever learn?
— with semi apologies to some hippies
Maybe all shovels and no dirt.
You just know this kid got his ass kicked multiple times in school. And bigger boys stole his lunch money.
Good find! I always wondered about this weasel ...
0bamageddon
People are not hiring because other people are not spending.
Obama promises to bankrupt Coal industry. Electricity will skyrocket,winter is coming. We need cheap fuel to get to jobs, Obama will not allow drilling. No cheap fuel no work.
Our economy is based on cheap energy. Obama has raised the cost of that energy and promises to raise it more. Industry needs to know what energy will cost tham. At present they have no idea.So they hold off on building.
A good ebergy policy would relieve many of the problems.
Obama’s energy policy is to drive the energy companies out of business. Obama wants to build a new energy source out of parts and pieces of energy sources that so far havent shown they can do the job. We do not need dreams of renewable energy, we need something we can depend on and Obama is taking that source from us.
Obama promises to bankrupt Coal industry. Electricity will skyrocket,winter is coming. We need cheap fuel to get to jobs, Obama will not allow drilling. No cheap fuel no work.
Our economy is based on cheap energy. Obama has raised the cost of that energy and promises to raise it more. Industry needs to know what energy will cost them. At present they have no idea.So they hold off on building.
A good energy policy would relieve many of the problems.
Obama’s energy policy is to drive the energy companies out of business. Obama wants to build a new energy source out of parts and pieces of energy sources that so far haven't shown they can do the job. We do not need dreams of renewable energy, we need something we can depend on and Obama is taking that source from us.
“Where are all the new jobs?”
In Texas.
I can tell you why. As an owner of a small manufacturing company I had to let employees go as the post Obama “Shock and Awe” attack against private American businesses decimated our sales in the first year of his “presidency.”
One of the things never talked about is the cost of unemployment insurance rates(both state and federal) based strictly upon gross payroll. The calculation is very simple...the greater your payroll, the greater the amount you pay. The more you lay off...the higher your rate.
The rate increases are INSTANT while the rate reductions (based on a long “experience” period) are reduced very slowly only if you don’t have to lay more off during that period. But if you do...the rate continues to climb and reset at the instant you fire or lay someone else off.
The cost is substantial. That is why when a business has to lay off to reduce costs to stay alive, they do not hire as a surge in business occurs. They simply work the current employees longer hours rather than employ new employees that would inflate both their bottom line payroll costs and the payments they make to the unemployment compensation funds. In Texas that would be 941, 940, and TWC costs.
I, along with many others, are simply waiting to see if: (1) we can bring the whole economy back (if possible) and (2)to outlast our current exorbitant unemployment rates.
There are other factors too but you will never hear one of the real reasons employers refrain from hiring during this depression.
And I never noticed even a small bump in shovel production to prepare for all them jobs...
We have some work to do:
We need to put the Liberals on the unemployment line.
#1 ZERO
Many, Many others to follow. . . . . .
I don't believe it either. This has to be the MSM trying to prop up their BOY.
12% would be max. There are that many stupid people around. . . .
--------------------------
Great line!
| The only thing transparent in this administration is that he hates this country. Lets hope his economic stupidity will send him back to Chicago in January of 2013.
Eff'n commie. Countdown until Obama leaves Office: 552 days as of July 17, 2011. |
Based on recent conversations with friends who own small businesses I suspect there will be a lot of “broken glass” voters in 2012. They dispise what Obama and the Democrats have been doing.
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