Posted on 04/24/2003 7:02:42 AM PDT by Starwind
Reuters
U.S. jobless claims rose in latest week
Thursday April 24, 8:32 am ET
WASHINGTON, April 24 (Reuters) - U.S. Labor Department report of initial state jobless benefit claims, seasonally adjusted. Week Ended Initial Claims 4-Week Avg. Continued Claims 04/19/03 455,000 439,250 Unavailable 04/12/03 447,000-R 426,000-R 3,589,000 04/05/03 412,000 421,250 3,547,000-R 03/29/03 443,000 423,250 3,488,000-R r-revised REVISIONS: INITIAL CLAIMS: April 12 from 442,000 4-WEEK AVG: April 12 from 424,750 CONTINUED CLAIMS: April 5 from 3,574,000; March 29 from 3,498,000 STATES WITH DECREASE IN CLAIMS OF MORE THAN 1,000: Five states reported a decrease in claims of more than 1,000 in the week ended April 12, the latest period for which the data are available. Those were: Illinois -3,237 Massachusetts -2,183 Arkansas -1,985 STATES WITH INCREASE IN MORE THAN 1,000: Fourteen states reported an increase in claims of more than 1,000 in the week ended April 12, the latest period for which the data are available. Among the largest were: Michigan +11,752 California +8,927 Pennsylvania +6,052 Indiana +2,448 Louisiana +2,379 Maryland +1,871 FORECAST: Reuters survey of U.S. economists forecast: U.S. jobless claims 425,000 in the April 19 week HISTORICAL COMPARISONS: US JOBLESS CLAIMS AT HIGHEST LEVEL SINCE 486,000 IN WEEK OF MAR 30, 2002 U.S. 4-WK AVERAGE HIGHEST SINCE 449,000 IN WEEK OF APR 20, 2002 NOTES: The insured unemployment rate, a measurement of the work force receiving unemployment benefits, was 2.8 percent in the April 12 week, unchanged from the prior week. The department said 802,777 individuals filed for the new government program that extends unemployment benefits for the week ended April 5, up from 786,355 in the prior week. Michigan had more layoffs in the automobile and furniture industries. California had more layoffs in the trade and service industries. Pennsylvania said it had more layoffs in the construction, trade, service, food and transportation equipment industries. Indiana had more layoffs in the automobile and manufacturing industries. Louisiana said it had an increase due to the start of a new quarter of wage credits for benefits purposes, as well as layoffs in the automobile industry. Illinois had fewer layoffs in the construction, trade, service and manufacturing industries. Massachusetts, Arkansas and Maryland had no comment.
True, the market set the rate (including myself, for what I do, IT project management and tech product management/marketing, my salary in the last 5 years hasd gone from 80's to 90's to well over 100's back to 80's, briefly 40's and 60's, and now creeping back up to the 90's) ...
BUT, the market does not set the rate based ONLY, or even primarily, on the lowest rate. You can buy a car for 15K or 50K, and there is a market for both.
So by the same token, you can get a programmer for 40K or you can get a programmer for 80K - and the market should offer opportunities for both *if* the market has a demand for both and can clearly differentiate (and assign value to) the difference between the two - if the 80K programmer offer superior value to the 40K ones - harder working, better coder, speaks English,live in the same time zone, no strange foods, whatever, if the better paid programmer offers a better bang for the higher bucks, and the market values the better bangs (superior products and delivery time, for example), why shouldn't you be able to charge more for the superior bang? People buying 15K cars and 50Ks are both getting what they want for however they value what's important to them - so why wouldn't the market pay higher for the better programmers when they offer superior ROI?
Companies buy all kinds of goods and services, do they always buy the cheapest of everything in goods and services? Or do consideratiions other than the lowest price ever enter into the equation when corporate America buys everything from furnitures to computers and servers to new CRM and ERP systems to advertising to programming projects?
Brilliant man. High school dropout to boot. One of the "uneducated smart"
I have been thinking allot about what he said recently.. Two distinctly separate events have left me with an opportunity to get into the automatic transmission business. I am still mulling it over.
These unemployment threads and the SS threads really make me think hard about such a move. If any FReeper Entreapaneurs or Auto Mechanics have input, I would certainly welcome an FR Mail. It's kind of a scary proposition and any feedback would be appreciated.
"BUT, the market does not set the rate based ONLY, or even primarily, on the lowest rate"PatrioticAmerican:
They sure do. Why do you think indian firms are getting the job? Because they are better? It is because they usually are the cheapest.
Moreover, the customer (or contracting manager) often lacks the competance to disceren the more skilled service vendor and hence all vendors look alike, in which case, choose the cheapest.
There is no intrinsic value to being a programmer, or a marketer, or a burger flipper, no matter how much work you out into it or how much you may have made previously, nobody is intrinsically deserving being paid $5 an hr or 500K a year. It's just supply and demand, no?
If the market oesn't value what you are offering, you can't make the market to assign a value to something it doesn't value, and you can't say this or that deserved to be valued at such and such because of such and such value above and beyond the lowest cost when the market says it simply doesn't care about any value other than the lowest cost.
If I build a widget and want to charge $1000 a piece for it and nobody wants to buy my widget for $1000, am I still correct in insisting that my widget is in fact worth $1000? ... I'm talking about what it's worth in the marketplace, not how much investment I have put into the widget, which may be $1 or $1000,000, but my cost has nothing to do with how the market assign value to my widget.
If I happen to think I am worth 100K a year but the market says no, am I still right in insisting that I am in fact worth 100K per year?
If one look at it in that context, H1Bs and outsourcing is really not the cause of lowered rate, maybe a contributing factor, but the cause of the lowered rate for programmers is really simply reflecting what the market is willing or able to pay - and the H1Bs and outsourced shops just filled the demand for lower pay scale faster than the previously better paid American programmers - and if the better paid American believes he has superior value and should be paid more - but the market is not willing or able to pay for the added value, it in fact has no value, so the better paid American programmer has to either work for lower pay or be out of a job to someone who is - but that's a function of the market, not the fault of that someone who is willing to work for the lower rate.
That is, the rate is primarily driven by what the market is willing and able to pay, not what someone is willing to work for - the market sets what it's willing to pay before the worker respond by willing to (or not, as the case may be) work for the market set rate.
So maybe it's a fallacy that the H1Bs and outcource shops are taking away the jobs from Americans - it's really just the market has now set a lowered rate for the job and H1Bs and outsourcing were faster and more willing to react and adjust to the lowered market rate. The H1Bs didn't set the lower rate, the market did, the H1Bs and outsourcing just filled in the new demand for the lower rate when others mnay have initially balked.
If the rate is set primarly by what the market can pay, even without H1Bs and outsoruced shops, the rate will still be lower because the market is only willing or able to pay a lower rate - and if the current workers can't or aren't willing to adjust to the lowered rate - they'd still be out of a job because even without the H1Bs and outsource shops, companies still can't afford to pay the higher rate - with or without H1Bs and outsourcing, the recession would still have meant job cuts and lowered salary - in fact, probably even higher unemployment rate because if existing workers won't work for the lowered rate and the H1Bs and outsorucing didn't exist to fill in the lower rate work, more projects and products and companies just won't get funded, period.
There are no H1Bs airline pilots - so if the comapny say they can't pay pilots 160K a year and the pilot insist on still getting 160K per year, the company goes into bankruptcy and the pilots are still out of a job.
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