Posted on 12/08/2017 6:28:05 AM PST by GonzoII
Record low unemployment rate for manufacturing workers. First time under 3% (2.6%):
(Excerpt) Read more at scoopnest.com ...
Where can I go to get MY career back?
Plus those that can’t pass the drug test.
I don’t know about 3% but it’s definitely picked up. I live in a region that is dominated by manufacturing despite over two decades of effort to diversify with some success. Housing starts of entry level houses really took off after twenty years in the doldrums about three months after the inauguration and has continued to build, there are three new affordable subdivisions within a couple of miles of me headed out into the country. For the entirety of the Obama administration, housing construction was way off with the only building being higher end, larger houses above a half million, which is a fairly expensive house here. New entry level 3/2 houses are upper hundreds to lower two hundreds.
Was cleaning out my garage last month and ran across my old colecoVision.
Looked underneath and found a “Made in Pennsylvania” sticker there.
When was the last time anything with a transistor in it was made in PA?
1983?
When the unemployment number gets down to -20%, we’ll have some idea of how much the govt has been understating the real rate for decades.
I keep getting calls from recruiters and head hunters for machinist jobs. The company’s still haven’t figured out if they need a machinist at this point, they’re going to have to offer more than pay and all the overtime you can handle.
That I can buy. Here, north of SF Bay, I have a customer complaining he can’t find anyone for his security business. He pays $15 an hour where average rents are $2-4K a month. I can also understand your second assertion.
Here is my point, the number of permanently unemployed, as far as I know, hasn’t changed since the election (I believe that it was around 92 million). During Obama’s last months, they were claiming unemployment around 4%, which most of us knew was nonsense, as most people had simply given up looking, hence the 92 mil out of the work force. The unemployment rate is still being counted in the manner in which it was counted under Obama. This is favorable to Trump too. WHile things are better under Trump, I still don’t buy that unemployment is all that low. I do believe it will improve. I also don’t buy what they were saying on the news that with the already low unemployment rate, that a tax cut, if it has an expansion effect on the economy, will cause serious problems as there isn’t enough labor to go around. Letting people keep what they earn is never a bad thing.
1. Many of the people who are now out of the work force are more unemployable than unemployed. They either don't have the skills employers need (this is more likely the case among older workers), or they don't even have minimal standards of behavior to show up on time, look presentable, and pass a drug test (more likely the case with younger workers).
2. A lot of the long-term unemployed are unwilling or unable -- perhaps for perfectly legitimate reasons like family obligations -- to relocate to another part of the country to take a job that fits their skills.
3. Many of these people who "stopped looking for a job" are simply retired. The total U.S. labor force in the U.S. includes everyone over the age of 16 who is not in school, in the military, or institutionalized, and with Baby Boomers reaching retirement age the U.S. labor force number actually includes a lot of people who have no interest in finding a job right now.
http://www.shadowstats.com/alternate_data/unemployment-charts
His chart shows a slight improvement in the numbers in 2017...but of course way too early to judge.
Obama benefited more than any other President by these shoddy measuring practices. I think how the author of these stats explains it, there is actually a perversity in the way the stats are calculated that as the number (the real number) gets into the 20s, it actually goes lower on the official stats.
I don't live in the US, but I think a lot if not most people knew in their heart these numbers were bogus.
Number 3 is the most important. Tell me if I am wrong, but I think someone noted that once you have been looking for six months, they just drop you out of the measurements (NOT counted as unemployed).
re”Number 3 is the most important. Tell me if I am wrong, but I think someone noted that once you have been looking for six months, they just drop you out of the measurements (NOT counted as unemployed).”
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“Up until the Clinton administration, a discouraged worker was one who was willing, able and ready to work but had given up looking because there were no jobs to be had.
The Clinton administration dismissed to the non-reporting netherworld about five million discouraged workers who had been so categorized for more than a year.
As of July 2004, the less-than-a-year discouraged workers total 504,000. Adding in the netherworld takes the unemployment rate up to about 12.5%. “
http://www.freerepublic.com/perl/post?id=3611828%2C33
“When economic conditions deteriorate, greater attention is paid to persons who are without work and seeking jobs—the unemployed.
At such times, there is also greater interest in a group of persons who do not meet the official definition of unemployment but who have shown interest in labor force participation.
These individuals—referred to as “marginally attached to the labor force”—wanted and were available for work and had looked for a job sometime in the prior 12 months.
They were not counted as unemployed because they had not actively searched for work in the past 4 weeks. “
https://www.bls.gov/opub/ils/ils74abs.htm
Near bottom of page numbers for Nov 2016, Sept 2017. Oct 2017 and Nov 2017:
Persons not in the labor force (not seasonally adjusted)
Marginally attached to the labor force
1,932 1,569 1,535 1,481 -
Discouraged workers
591 421 524 469
https://www.bls.gov/news.release/empsit.a.htm
There will always be workers if the wage is set correctly. The laws of supply and demand works for labor also.
I guess they are not offering enough money.
re”Throws dish water at those who decry manufacturing as “old economy”. Peter Schiff has chortled about this for awhile, that service jobs are NOT a replacement for manufacturing.”
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Yup ... IIRC manufacturing has the biggest jobs multiplier of any type of business.
re “I guess they are not offering enough money.”
Funny how people forget that supply and demand works for labor also.
They also forget that illegals and most ‘guest workers’ do not pay a full load of US taxes, if they pay any.
The flood of LEGAL immigration over the last 30 years is just a wage suppression scheme.
Correct. But there are some who won’t work for any price.
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