
America’s labour market has suffered permanent harm - dataminer
http://www.economist.com/news/finance-and-economics/21596529-americas-labour-market-has-suffered-permanent-harm-closing-gap
======
ChuckFrank
Contrary to the millennial gripes and the 'trophy kids' syndrome, I believe
that there's a generation of highly specialized and highly educated people out
there whose expertise is going to waste because they are not getting the first
important steps to start working on the job. The work gap that most of these
people are going to experience is going to have irreparable harm to the
product, with regards to all the papers unwritten, projects unstarted, and
lessons learned - for all of us.

~~~
jared314
A few years ago, I believed outsourcing was the main culprit removing the
bottom rungs on the career ladder. That was until someone, older than I was,
told me: "A career is not a right." That's when I understood that it is a
choice by business owners and business managers to only hire pre-trained
workers. It is a choice to run at half staff while waiting for a "perfect
fit". Despite the large number of skilled, and near-skilled, workers,
businesses are choosing to hire fewer workers, all the while bemoaning a
skills gap.

~~~
busterarm
This might be the longest period in a while where some fast-spreading illness
hasn't killed large numbers of people across multiple demographics.

Usually wars and sicknesses create a significant need to train new workers,
but wars on their own aren't doing enough anymore and would only harm the
demographics that are suffering anyway.

It's totally horrible for me to say this but a deadly flu pandemic is needed
for the health of our economy.

~~~
michaelochurch
_It 's totally horrible for me to say this but a deadly flu pandemic is needed
for the health of our economy._

If it comes to that, I prefer a French Revolution style class war. Fewer
deaths, more gain for each death _and_ in total, thus more efficient. Between
10 million deaths, no correlation between dying and deserving it, and chaos
and no reason to believe in political progress, versus 200,000 deaths, a high
correlation between dying and deserving it (i.e. higher death rates among the
current elite) and the likely deposition of the corporate upper class, I know
which one I'd pick.

I'm not sure I agree with your premise-- I don't think society ever needs
traumatic death, and I wouldn't want the violent revolution _or_ the flu
pandemic-- but if it were true, there's a much better way of getting it, which
is to rise up and depose the assholes running the world now.

I think the problem is related to what you are saying but much more prosaic.
For the most part, humans are myopic and reactive, and the people who tend to
rise in organizations (in peace time) are even _more_ that way than the
general population. They make shitty leaders, though, due to their lack of
vision. The result is that, when there is progress, such people would rather
cut costs (and involve fewer people) than do more. That, in a nutshell, is why
Corporate America is so depressing: it's run by mindless cost-cutters, not
leaders.

Couple this with the mean-spiritedness of the US society and you have long-
term joblessness and, eventually, widespread, cancerous poverty of a kind not
seen since the 1930s.

~~~
magicalist
> _Between 10 million deaths, no correlation between dying and deserving it,
> and chaos and no reason to believe in political progress, versus 200,000
> deaths, a high correlation between dying and deserving it (i.e. higher death
> rates among the current elite) and the likely deposition of the corporate
> upper class, I know which one I 'd pick._

While the most famous people executed during the French Revolution were from
the aristocracy, the vast majority of people executed were not. Inciting
rebellion and food hoarding were the common accusations.

This source[1] puts it as 6.25% "nobles", 2% noblesse de robe, 14% upper-
middle class, 10.5% lower-middle class, 6.5% clergy, 31.25% working class, 28%
peasants, and 1% unidentified.

I know you say "if it comes to that", but anyone wishing for a real revolution
to enable some kind of social justice is deeply misguided. The poor and
downtrodden may not be the first against the wall, but they will be there in
much, much larger numbers.

[1] [http://www.jstor.org/stable/1881548](http://www.jstor.org/stable/1881548)

~~~
busterarm
They'd be there in larger numbers too with a pandemic due to availability of
health care and also the closer proximity that lower-class people are forced
to live near each other.

Lower-classes get fucked in greater numbers when there is any social turmoil.
They are a proportionately larger group of people. I don't have any numbers to
look at but I think it's pretty likely that more than 60% of the French
population during the Revolution was working class or peasants...so
proportionately they may have fared better, because you have to look at their
numbers in the population, not the percentages from who was killed.

Anyway, the long-term social effect was (from where I'm sitting) positive.

~~~
magicalist
> _Anyway, the long-term social effect was (from where I 'm sitting) positive_

The positive social effects of...the Reign of Terror? You might as well throw
in the Holodomor, the Khmer Rouge's Killing Fields, The Great Leap Forward,
etc etc etc as everything's much better now than it was then. Post hoc ergo
propter hoc, amirite?

~~~
busterarm
The entire modern era of our civilization lies in the shadow of the French
Revolution. It accelerated the rise of republics and democracies and the
spread of every modern political ideology of today. 'Déclaration des droits de
l'homme et du citoyen' is not only a fundamental document of the Revolution
but also the first (Western?) document to define all rights of men to be
universal; valid at all times and in every place and pertaining to human
nature itself.

I think that's pretty damned positive.

~~~
magicalist
> _Déclaration des droits de l 'homme et du citoyen' is not only a fundamental
> document of the Revolution but also the first (Western?) document to define
> all rights of men to be universal_

And it was published four years before the executions started in ernest. Even
if it hadn't been: all revolutions cause birthing pains, but it is fallacious
to argue the converse.

------
patrickg_zill
Talking about unemployment numbers without talking about how they are
routinely massaged, and the calculations changed, is either stupid (for the
journalist not knowing about it) or evil (if the journalist does and is merely
trying to toe a line).

See shadowstats.com for instance - they (the BLS) have changed the way
unemployment (and many other stats such as CPI) are calculated over the years,
and are no longer very accurate.

~~~
adventured
Every time I read an article about our supposedly improving unemployment
picture, I try to figure out if the author is ignorant or malicious, because
it's the same story with every article. As though the 6.6% number were even
remotely real.

13.5% U6 unemployment [1]. Down 5.x million full-time jobs [2] since the
recession began (which even ignores population expansion and the expectation
that we should have more full-time jobs now). Records on poverty, food stamps
and SS disability fraud. A continuing plunge in the labor force participation
rate [3] that makes it look like we're knee deep in a depression. We routinely
drop a city the size of Pittsburgh out of our labor force.

There has only been a recovery in asset prices, and that's strictly due to the
Fed's QE programs [4] massively artificially suppressing the real cost of debt
(which you can see in real-time effect when there's talk of, or an actual
tapering to the QE program).

[1]
[http://www.bls.gov/news.release/empsit.t15.htm](http://www.bls.gov/news.release/empsit.t15.htm)

[2] [http://www.businessinsider.com/full-time-vs-total-
employment...](http://www.businessinsider.com/full-time-vs-total-employment-
chart-2013-12)

[3]
[http://data.bls.gov/timeseries/LNS11300000](http://data.bls.gov/timeseries/LNS11300000)

[4] [http://www.zerohedge.com/news/2013-05-06/sp-and-without-
qe](http://www.zerohedge.com/news/2013-05-06/sp-and-without-qe)

~~~
pessimizer
Prime age employment (18-54) is lower than it's been since around 1985.

[http://stefanmikarlsson.blogspot.com/2014/01/were-not-
seeing...](http://stefanmikarlsson.blogspot.com/2014/01/were-not-seeing-lot-
of-progress-here.html)

------
hristov
Sorry I don't believe this. If it is true that we are close to maximum
employment, there would be more pressure for wage inflation and more overall
inflation. In places other than the bay area (which is its own world)
inflation is really low nowadays. If you take into account various promotions,
many prices are actually lower than last year.

And other than in the STEM fields, there is pretty much no wage inflation. If
job growth increases and wages increase, I guarantee you we will see many
people entering the work force. No-one likes poverty.

~~~
1457389
Did you not comprehend the portion of the article which outlined a supply side
problem? You don't see higher wages in that kind of scenario, you see a steady
diminishing in the market.

------
michaelochurch
Something I've noticed is that companies have a level of technical morale that
is not quite the same thing as general morale. If general morale is how much
people like the organization and trust its moral decency, technical morale is
the sense that the people and products are of high quality. They're correlated
but not the same thing. General morale is a group's self-esteem (although,
when low, it becomes us-versus-them against the leadership) and technical
morale is its self-efficacy.

Technical morale is also very slow to recover, and I think the U.S. has lost
it over the past 30 years. People don't assume that others are capable.
Rather, the prevailing assumption is that an as-yet-undetermined person is
lazy, stupid, and incapable. People have this vague sense that things don't
work as well as they used to; I don't know if that's actually true.

On the matter of how they view each others' competency, groups tend to be
either in a state of trust-density and trust-sparsity (a "group Bozo Bit")
with no middle ground, and we've flipped that switch a long time ago.

