America is suffering a permanent destruction of jobs.
JPMorgan Chase’s Chief Economist Bruce Kasman told Bloomberg:
[We've had a] permanent destruction of hundreds of thousands of jobs in industries from housing to finance.The chief economists for Wells Fargo Securities, John Silvia, says:
And David Rosenberg writes:Companies “really have diminished their willingness to hire labor for any production level,” Silvia said. “It’s really a strategic change,” where companies will be keeping fewer employees for any particular level of sales, in good times and bad, he said.
The number of people not on temporary layoff surged 220,000 in August and the level continues to reach new highs, now at 8.1 million. This accounts for 53.9% of the unemployed — again a record high — and this is a proxy for permanent job loss, in other words, these jobs are not coming back. Against that backdrop, the number of people who have been looking for a job for at least six months with no success rose a further half-percent in August, to stand at 5 million — the long-term unemployed now represent a record 33% of the total pool of joblessness.And see this.
Most citizens are not aware that the jobs aren't ever coming back. I suspect when it becomes apparent that this is so, there is going to a very angry populace.
ReplyDeleteI alsosuspect that no talk of "retraining" the workforce is going to delete that anger. Millions of Americans were used to good jobs with good pay and benefits without benefit of education or training. That day is gone. But not the people that want/need/expect those jobs.
why hire blokes when you can just create money from nothing; and charge people to deposit their money in your bank?
ReplyDeleteAs an artist -I like a good graphic.
ReplyDeleteI painted this- http://tinyurl.com/yeatsm8
Graphics can speak volumes, and not just to an artist like myself. Even economists are capable of gleaning an understanding from charts and graphs, if just an economic understanding.
Online- I have seen animated charts. That is the future of charting, animated charts, because they can capture the tenor of a more complex idea.
I do not have the artistic inclination to build the computer-generated graphic I have in mind that might illuminate the statistical employment events this article is aluding to, but I can provide a written description of a chart I have in mind.
Some enterprising folks that create employment statistics, the nearly imaginary ideas of those who have found a way to make a living compiling such statistics.
The employment chart I have in mind today will probably end up looking more realistic than is the norm, because I specialize in describing reality, -or- at least I specialize in exposing those paths along which we might find reality.
The chart I have in mind is found along the truth-path of something similar to a Rube Goldberg drawing.
Envision -if you will- employment represented as an animated ant-bridge graph, where the varied states of employment -or disemployment as some might wish to term parts of it- would be represented by ants forming an ant-bridge across an ant-sized crevasse.
I have devised this sort of graphic representation because it has the benefit of some stronger reality-depicting possibilities for us to view and consider -about the current employment statistics and the reality of our societal condition too.
First, ant bridges are made when some ants lay down their bodies for other ants to trample over, often stepping as if unawares -on the heads and abdomens of the other ants they are stepping on. The imagery is fitting.
In ant bridges (and in our imaginary ant bridge graphic depicting employment conditions) some ants are carried over the bridge by the cumulative and ongoing rush of other ants seeking to gain the other side.
You are gaining ground in the visualization I am trying here -to describe.
Perhaps the greatest advantage of this visual imagery of the ant bridge representing employment is gained by our imaginging the different stresses we can place the bridge itself under by widening or increasing the depth of the ant-sized crevasse over which we might require our graphic-ants to bridge themselves in the name of depicting employment conditions.
Yes, we are seeing jobs permanently destroyed.
I had a neighbor in my youth (fifty years ago) whose father was a television and radio repairman. Some of the readers here would be surprised to read that as a television and radio repairman, he made a good living and lived in an upscale neighborhood. He drove a Chevy, -but a new one.
For nearly twenty years I made a good living running a company whose sole focus was buying and selling high technology equipment.
Toward the end, my small company profitably helped liquidate our own industry. The company maintained a database of 7000 companies nationwide with whom we did business. Not one in a hundred of those companies still exists today, not one in a hundred...
Today the ants in the graph of employment we might imagine as an ant bridge over an ant-sized cravasse are loaded-down and challenged with the impossible task of bridging an ever-widening cravasse burdened by an ever increasing number of ants that do absolutely nothing but hang off the bridge, dangling in mid-air -threatening the rest of the ants that they might fall to their doom.
There is nothing else for these ants to do.
Let them fall. The whole bridge is coming down anyway. It doesn't go anywhere -any more.
We at Seeking Alpha think your blog is great and would love to have you join our team. For details please contact us at contributors@seekingalpha.com
ReplyDeleteThank you,
Michael
About Us
Seeking Alpha (www.seekingalpha.com) is the premier financial website for actionable stock market opinion and analysis. Handpicked from the world's top blogs, money managers, financial experts and investment newsletters, Seeking Alpha publishes more than 250 articles daily. Seeking Alpha gives a voice to over 3000 contributors, providing access to the nation's most savvy and inquisitive investors. The award-winning site is the only free, online source for over 3,000 companies' quarterly earnings call transcripts including all of the Russell 3000 Index. Seeking Alpha has 40 million page views each month and combined with their distribution partners (Yahoo Finance, Google Finance, Reuters, Bnet, Etrade and others) has a total reach of 50 million unique monthly readers. Seeking Alpha was named the Most Informative Website by Kiplinger's Magazine and received Forbes Magazine's 'Best of the Web' Award.
All you can say to these hot shots is "NO SHIT SHERLOCK" welcome to the real world. Why would they just be understanding that shipping all the manufacturing overseas elimanates permanent jobs in the USA. Simple solution, if it ain't made in America don't buy it. Painfull at first but the message will be loud and clear.
ReplyDeleteKimball Corson @ Seeking Alpha: The more useful conceptualization of Say's Law – if any thing approaches being a “law” in economics – is that ‘supply creates its own demand.’ That is, making goods and providing services generates the income needed to buy those goods and services. However, Keynes correctly pointed out this “law” fails if people hoard part of their income and do not spend or invest it. That is, according to Keynes, an important reason aggregate demand can fall. However, now we have another reason Say’s Law fails and a much more serious problem.
ReplyDeleteMuch of the income from manufacturing now goes not to wage earners, but to the owners of the capital which made such high productivity possible, that is, to the wealthy who own much stock in manufacturing companies. The problem is that the wealthy do not spend a big percentage of their income on consumption. They either in effect hoard most of their income, try to invest it in real investment opportunities or park their money in secondary financial markets.
In this manner Say’s Law now fails big time, because of the fact that the distribution of income is massively skewed toward the wealthy and away from wage earners in the U.S who would spend it.
On Income Distribution and Aggregate Demand in the U.S.
I believe this trend (to sabotage and destroy our nation for profit) started about 30 years or so ago.
ReplyDeleteAnd these guys are just catching on now?!?
Good grief.
And the wonderful policies that brought us The Republican Depression of 2008 continue to produce their magical results, even though their champions have been sent packing.
ReplyDeleteThere is a solution...
ReplyDeletewww.thevenusproject.com
those that came before have squatted on all the resources; and I thought all men were created equal. Why is it, then, that those here now and those yet to come must be beholden to those that were simply lucky enough to come before, when there was plenty for all those to have if they but went out and looked for it? That world is gone, there are more now (and many more that will come) who no longer have the wilds to roam to and find their own resources to squat on.
the paradigm must change; machines doing man's labor makes man obsolete, but machines don't need luxuries and don't make salaries. That's not a sustainable economic model.
Reagan made middle class creating UNIONS an 'enemy' 30 years ago & look what happened !
ReplyDeleteSpeaking of jobs, why the hell isn't the fact that the Bureau of Labor Statistics under counted the unemployed in the period 3/08 to 3/09 by 800,000! This little nugget was released on Saturday (so it wasn't noticed)...I didn't see or hear ANYTHING about this today. 1st step toward fixing this is single-payer healthcare, then we need to get money OUT of politics.
ReplyDeleteTom Hickey's quote from Kimball Corson is spot on and resonates directly with concepts espoused by Dr. Ravi Batra. Quite simply, an economy the size of the US cannot self-sustain without significant representation in the profile being assumed by manufacturing, labor services, and other traditionally "middle class" lines of work. The percentage of profit overall last year ( US aggregate) that came strictly from monetary transaction is at worst a harbinger of economic collapse and at best solid proof of unsubstantial, impossible model that we currently use for wealth generation.
ReplyDeleteSo, of course, jobs have "contracted" permenently. The free trade and open market legislation has released us from prudent oversight and fiscally sane tariff creations, allowing a blatant trans-national corporate that considers astronomical, unethically-created profits to be of far greater import than contributing in any way to fabric of our macro-community. The free market myth, once removed from the classroom and applied to the street, is so utterly unfounded that it continues to amaze me that so many politically "active" individuals lay claim to this ideology as having provided anything remotely positive to our culture, our economy, and our commons.
These problems with employment are being created by design. When enough people start to face the real issues, we will then have the power to initiate a remedy.
ReplyDeleteYou don't have to be an economist to know that certain jobs will never come back.
ReplyDeleteSomeone beat me to it. Thevenusproject.com.
ReplyDeleteThe jobs are not coming back. I been trying to tell this to my son for a while.
I told him to get off the grid as soon as he can and learn to live on his own.
I hope he will check out the project himself but this is right the jobs are not coming back.
this is the decline of the united states.we had our industrial revolution at the turn of the century do you think the goverment at the time liked all those people no they needed them to build the infrastructure and work in the factories guess what we all got greedy and spoiled now its time for china and india to bring their peasants into the middle class the united states will never be again what it once was.
ReplyDeletethanx for that Venus project link. It was very interesting. If we want to secure our jobs then the only thing possible to do is that rather then Import, export and force people to buy the products. Thats what china does. Making cheapest electronics and sell it to everyone in the world. Even Apple iPod writes "Made in China" on its back. Thats shit.
ReplyDelete"..export and force people to buy the products.."
ReplyDelete"...Even Apple iPod writes "Made in China" on its back. Thats shit."
---
iPod is made in China these days because Americans find bomb-making more profitable, (or else why would Pentagon put $600+ B war budget).
America's ability to force its will is fast Waning.
Well, when they came for the agricultural jobs, no one spoke up. When they came for the meat packers, no one spoke up. When they came for the landscaping jobs, no one said a thing. When they came for the roofers and drywallers, no one stood up for them. When they came for the manufacturing jobs, we bought cheap imports from China. When they came for the engineering jobs, we turned a blind eye.
ReplyDeleteNow, after this steady decline to third world status, now we're all supposed to be shocked? This has been happening since Reagan's policies were instituted.
We've been fed the lie that this so-called "free trade" is inevitable. No one cared as long as it wasn't their family who suffered and they could get a cheesy appliance at a low price.
Of course, there is nothing inevitable about the way we've allowed "free trade" to be set up, namely, to accelerate the accrual of wealth among the top one percent, the rest of us be damned.
No other industrial nation on earth operates that way -- if you don't believe me, try to sell a product in Japan. And they all confer health care as a right as well. Meanwhile, what little taxpayer wealth we accumulate is transferred to private interests, from the military-industrial complex to financial bailouts.
Our competitors are under no illusion they are the police force for the planet, and they use their resources to benefit their own people. We underinformed jingoistic morons chant USA USA while we're robbed blind and told that it just has to be that way.
Now we'll all suffer, and soon there'll be no one left to speak up for anyone else.
the "job loss" problem is worldwide; technology has made the large population a surplus global commodity; and with our refusal to invest in human capital, ie, education, we are priced out of the market for that surplus commodity...
ReplyDeleteMy high-tech mapping company folded in May '09 after being in business for 20-plus years. Out of six highly qualified technicians, only one has found "permanent" employment since then. One other person is working a six-month contract job that probably will not be extended. The other four continue to be unemployed. We're talking about people who have been making mid- to upper-five-figure incomes after earning advanced degrees and receiving specialized training in skills that have been in demand for decades. They're being supplanted by similarly trained people in India and China who are lucky to be making 15-20 grand a year (and who also do a piss-poor job).
ReplyDeleteIf this is how the country's leadership has decided it will be (unemployment problem could be easily fixed)then US needs to live with it. Strong police force is needed (it was displayed recently at G20 meeting) to cope with the consequences.
ReplyDeleteUnions are the problem and will continue to be the problem until people realize that union workers are way overpaid!!!!! a few years ago when i would say that to a union worker they were quick to say "unions i cant get fired or lose my job" are they saying that now??? i hope that guy screwing on lug-nuts on an assembly line is glad because of his $25+/hr job we pay outrageous prices for cars and that goes for any union shop they pay there workers too much and then the we pay dumb prices for the shit they make. thats why all the non union shops out source. we've become a society where we expect to get rich or wealthy quick without having to work for it. its all a bunch of crap and the union workers should've seen this one coming. if unions are so great why aren't the members of congress in an union??? ill tell ya the same reason they wont have to use the same public option health care that we will! CAUSE UNIONS SUCK!!
ReplyDeleteThe real problem is that *all* American jobs pay too much. And the reason for this is that it costs too much to live in America. And the reason for this, in turn, is because rents, taxes, and everything else cost too much. And so on and so on.
ReplyDeleteWhy do these things all cost so much? Because prices have been artificially bid up due to: 1) availability of debt at low interest rates; and 2) government subsidies. And the reason for this, in turn, is that government has been captured by corporate interets: the bankers that want to collect interest payments and the corporate elite who want their industries subsidized at the expense of the taxpayer.
At the end of the chain of causation is a corrupt government that has been captured by financial and corporate interests.
Does anyone remember when such items as BIC pens and toasters were made in North America.That's when the rot set in.Our captains of industry decided it was more profitable to move production/jobs/wages off shore.They forgot one thing..we are their market and without us they have no profits!
ReplyDeleteAnyone that claims unions are the problem hasn't read history...
ReplyDeleteIf it wasn't for unions your children would still be working in coal mines from sun up to sun down making 30 cents a day from the age of 8 yrs until their premature deaths around 24yrs....forget any education...
Unions haven't destroyed this country...corporate policy to "increase shareholder value" did...
It's time to get back to the day when corporations were created only for public projects...not personal gain...
When a corporation has more rights than a living breathing human being...destruction is inevitable...
Jobs - Permanent Jobs - Millions Of 'Em
ReplyDeleteCommunist China, 1995--- the dawn of capitalism.
The Hong Kong based guide talked about the free enterprise zones, building projects, golf courses, and roads with a chest full of pride and visible excitement. Capitalism was everywhere along the tour route, and judging from the advertisements on billboards and posters, the world was coming to China!
But although the government was embracing "for-profit" business for the first time, the train-ride out of the country evidenced the abject poverty of what would become a willing and able workforce. Another communist built wall was falling; another socialist society was moving closer to "The Force".
Today, in the very birthplace of capitalism, an entrenched, arrogant, and incompetent congress equates greedy executives with the demise of capitalism while the economic force field it demeans catapults third world nations onto the leader board of global economic growth potential. Capitalism dead? Hardly.
As congressional fat cats lament the corruption of governments throughout the world, they line their pockets with favors from powerful lobbyists on Wall Street, within drug companies and insurers, and seek the bed of every conceivable public and private special interest group, ad nauseum.
Isn't "lobbying" a euphemism for "corrupting"? Isn't our government as corrupt as any of those that we so pompously criticize? Aren't all business taxes passed on to consumers?
The failure of the grandiose Health Care Reform movement, or its transformation into a "we'll just let the taxpayers continue to bite the bullet for spiraling costs" welfare program is a glaring example. Our eloquent President has changed his tag line from delivery system cost containment to "what the heck, we'll just change the definition of insurance and move on".
They just don't get it --- do you? Chinese and Indian economies are glowing because their businesses are growing. Emerging markets emerge through capitalism. Why? Because their governments nurture the job providors.
Here, we cut our entrepreneurs off at the knees and expect them to be globally competitive. We tax and abuse our creative best, allow power mongers to control the reins of government, and encourage our citizenry to ask: "what can my country do for me?" Career politicians who can't remember their last private paycheck are voting American capitalism comatose.
For "the rest of the story", Google the title.
Steve Selengut
sanserve (at) aol.com
http://www.kiawahgolfinvestmentseminars.net
Author of: "The Brainwashing of the American Investor: The Book that Wall Street Does Not Want YOU to Read", and "A Millionaire's Secret Investment Strategy"
One quick edit : within the 1st comment which was made by "The Grey Tiger," after the word "Manufacturing" please also insert : "Programming, Customer Service Call Centers, Accounting Services, X-Ray Examination Services, Tax Preparation Services, and Any and All jobs and services which may be performed in a "virtual" manner.
ReplyDeleteSince Manufacturing was the first to go, it is most often cited, but we should all be aware that Manufacturing was only the beginning of the irreversible permanent destruction of numerous job classes within the United States.
There is no doubt in my mind what so ever that Profit lance will show you how to make money online, but there are many obstacles your going to face in order to do it or to get to where I am at. What I mean is, there's allot of information, tools and resources in this course that your going to have to get familiarized with before you can become successful. Yes you will earn money but to make a living out of it your going to really need to understand how everything works.
ReplyDeletewww.onlineuniversalwork.com