[looscnnn]

Points out the common sense of what is going on with jobs being sent overseas.

[RLK]

There has been no recovery. There has been nothing but spin. It will get worse.

[lainde]

bttt

[reed_inthe_wind]

Another factor of production is entrepreneurial spirit.

[RockyMtnMan]

But jobs are a "lagging" indicator. </sarcasm>

I would love to hear when the "lag" time should be over and hiring of these new "high skill" jobs is to occure. If it takes 10 years to create these new high end jobs then we should expect a severe economic depression until then.

[RiflemanSharpe]

I have not seen the job market improve one bit. I have been looking at want ads on line and in the paper the number and quality of ads has not gone up in the past 7-8 months, the lentgh of time I have looked.

[ctonious]

No worries mates, we will abandon the low-tech horse-and-buggy-whip industries of manufacturing, electronics assembly, software programming and IT - and with our hyper-educated youth leading the way, leapfrog into Martian habitat fabrication, nano-burger-technology and quantum nursing homery.

[easytree]

Your discussion is interesting but not complete. BLS reports that total employment is up from Jan 1, 2001 to Dec 31, 2003 by 2.5 million. Unemployment is also up by about 2.4 million during the same time frame. So about 5 million joined the job market and during the recession and 2.5 million got jobs, and unemployment rate is now going down.
We are losing job in manufacturing as much from productivity gains as foreign competition, because manufacturing output as a % of GDP is about 5% and has been since the 1950s. It takes fewer people to produce the same output over the last 50 years. Manufacturing tends to go where customers are located, not solely based on labor costs.

[null and void]

Obviously, U.S. job growth is far from enough to absorb the monthly inflow of immigrants

And yet we're going to grant another amnesty?

I'm going to have a very hard time voting next November.

[MissAmericanPie]

Get ready for another unexpected and unexplainable economic suprise. Hyper inflation.

[mo]

Two issues NO ONE in the US will address-relative to the rest of the world-the extent of how we regulate and tax BOTH business and employees compounds the problem tremendously. When all is said and done the cost of an American worker is so far greater than that of an employee anywhere else in the world that we may be in a terminal job decline.

[Alberta's Child]

I always take note of quotes such as, "the economy has continued to lose jobs," "the economy isn't creating enough well-paying jobs," etc., because they illustrate a fundamental flaw in this country's thinking when it comes to issues related to jobs and employment.

"The economy" doesn't create any jobs -- it never has, and it never will. Companies and individuals create jobs. If there is a "lack of jobs" in this country, then the best way the address the situation is to sit down with a bunch of potential employers and ask them what keeps them from hiring additional employees right here in the U.S. From my experience, the answers in most cases will have nothing to do with "cheap Third World labor" or anything of that sort -- India and China simply serve as convenient targets for people who don't want to address the real impediments to job growth:

Consider these answers that I would provide to such a question -- and I serve as an excellent case in point because I have never been in a position where "outsourcing labor" was an option:

1. Infrastructure costs. For one of our offices, we are operating at nearly 100% capacity and could easily add several additional employees. But the incremental cost of acquiring additional space for that office is enormous; we would either have to pay very high rent on the larger space (the high rent makes me wonder just how much of the "lost jobs" story is true to begin with -- one would think that office rents would decline as more space becomes available due to layoffs, etc.), or we would have to give up our location in close proximity to a number of our best clients (in which case the need for additional employees might disappear anyway).

2. The cost of training new employees is very high. The basic problem I face is that hiring a new employee is pretty much an adventure, because the credentials they have acquired don't really tell me anything about what they know. The system of higher education in this country has reached a point where my best employee is a high school graduate, and the ones with the most credentials (graduate degrees, etc.) are often the least productive and least flexible.

3. Let's face it -- Hiring employees is a major pain in the @ss. Payroll taxes, insurance paperwork, administrative nonsense, etc. add an enormous cost to the company above and beyond their direct salaries. I read somewhere that payroll taxes and administrative overhead costs in France add $40,000 per year to a typical $40,000/year employee's salary. We aren't there yet, but there's no doubt in my mind that we draw closer to that figure by the day.

[Diddle E. Squat]

It is 5 am and still completely dark outside. It has been dark for 11 hours now, and is not getting any brighter. Clearly this is going to be a jobless sunless recovery morning.

[EGPWS]

The Jobs Problem

Working too many hours because of a lack of available people to keep up with demand.

For some strange reason however we have been able to pick up a few out of work union workers.

I wonder why?

Must be corporate greed induced. /sarcasm