
Unemployment Rate Jumps to 26-Year High (Update2) - newacc
http://www.bloomberg.com/apps/news?pid=20601087&sid=a98aM2w2bVZs&pos=1
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patio11
I think we're seeing a growing divide between two economies which are very,
very dissimilar to each other: people who have commercially valuable skills,
and people who do not.

In good economic times, the structural changes in the economy are largely
masked: construction had an insatiable need for strong arms to carry materials
and swing hammers, and the service industries were booming. In weak times,
companies start to look around the office and say "Hey, who here is worth the
price differential versus an 18 year old in
$COUNTRY_ABSTRACTED_TO_AVOID_COMPLAINTS_OF_RACISM"

There does not seem to me that there will ever be an obvious economic reason
to prefer a, e.g., a 40-something barely literate American with an arrest
record over four outsourced workers. Only one of those counts for our
unemployment rates, though.

The unusual deepness of this economic funk is also testing received bits of
wisdom, such as "a BA automatically means you have economically viable
skills."

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Dilpil
I wonder how much of this increase is due to the way unemployment is
calculated. When workers stop looking for a job, they are no longer counted as
unemployed. When they start looking for a job, I assume they are once again
counted.

Given that we had been hearing a good amount about economic recovery and
lowering unemployment, is it possible that formerly discouraged workers got
back into the job market? Nothing fundamental seems to have changed since 6
months ago.

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vanekl
And it's falling if you're skilled.

~~~
lallysingh
Yeah, strange. At work I've been doing a lot of technical interviewing, and
there seem to be lots of people hiring good programmers.

On the other hand, these are some persistent layoffs.

Are the workers made unnecessary by either lowered product demand or increases
in productivity? The former means a big % of our economy could depend on a
boom/bubble structure. The latter means that these people will need some
serious retraining/adjustment before they're back in the workforce.

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vanekl
One, the US is in the midst of a major restructuring of the economy. It's
going to take time. A lot of us are going to be playing musical chairs until a
more efficient allocation of our labors occurs. It's as much about /how/ our
talents should be allocated in this new economy as opposed to our talents.
That's a subtle difference, but an important distinction.

Two, Americans don't move around as much as they used to. We used to move
about once every 5 years. Now, when a recession hits, we don't move to where
the jobs are as much. That slows the recovery down.

Three, there are major pieces of legislation that have not been resolved. That
does not help the business community decide whether it's OK to hire. The
quicker the legislation is handled (one way or another), the faster the
restructuring of the economy and the faster people will be put back to work.

Four, "productivity" in the midst of a recession is just a fancy name for
fewer workers doing more work because their co-workers were let go. This new-
found "productivity" wont last long, and will go back to the mean as soon as
rehiring starts.

Five, there will /always/ be a demand for people to fix other people's screw-
ups (if you're in the IT industry). The last two jobs I was on they were
looking for somebody who can migrate their ancient systems to something more
modern. People are figuring out that's it's really easy to build things, but
quite a different matter when it comes time to migrate.

Six, we are working our way through a large bubble. This recession says more
about the bubble than the skills of the labor force. But, yes, major labor
adjustments will be made.

Seven, businesses are scared and banks wont lend to small business. It's not
that labor is unnecessary, but that next to nobody wants to take the risk in a
down economy, or those who do can't get the capital. Some well-managed
companies haven't laid off anybody and are thriving (e.g. Apple). Google has
started re-staffing, so they see things picking up. It will take time, but
it's getting better. The well-managed companies see the shift and are first
movers.

Eight, this economic restructuring is normal. It's scary if you've never lived
through one before, but it's by no means unique. It's actually more than
normal, it's occasionally necessary to force a restructuring and wring out the
excesses.

Nine, things are better than they appear on the surface. We have started the
recovery but it's hard to tell because the lagging indicators are still down.
Just because pessimism is in vogue doesn't mean things are getting worse.

Lastly, we have finally slipped our shackles. No more WinTel. Instead, we get
to figure out the best way to handle multi-core. RDBMs are no longer de
rigueur; we get to apply NoSQL where it makes sense. Hardware is so cheap that
instead of doing backups we just use clustering or multiple-allocation. RAM is
so cheap that we can put the whole internet in it. Disk is morphing to solid-
state right before our eyes. The opportunities are far greater than they have
ever been. And those of us who have been keeping up will lead the way.

