Not sure why my comments were not picked (never are), so I will try again.
Hundreds of articles like this are published which imply that it is simply a matter of luring those "discouraged" workers back (and forget cold hard cash, all we want is a little recognition). It's more like, stop beating those workers off with a stick when they apply for hundreds of jobs they are more than qualified for.
Either that or being 55 + has to be classified as an inherent disability (meaning you get cold hard cash to compensate for the livelihood that was literally stolen from you. HINT, the money is sitting in overseas corporate accounts and could pay every LTE person $75,000), because most of the people I know who have degrees, are personable, and have great experience (including tech) cannot get hired anywhere. I have been trying nonstop for the last 7 years to get back to full time employment and it is not going to happen.
And in case you are wondering, I am not:
1. A doddering old woman in a wheel chair. I am thinner and walk more than a lot of Millennials (about 2.5 miles a day).
2. Addicted to Opioids. (And as an aside, I love how pot is illegal, but these killers are passed out like candy on Halloween).
3. A technophobe (Newsflash, if you know Twitter, Facebook, Snapchat & Instagram you are not automatically technically literate).
If you are under 67 you should be guaranteed a job. No excuse for 40s to be the mandatory retirement age.
12
“There are a bunch of people who were knocked out by the recession who aren’t coming back even in the places where unemployment has fallen,” including older Americans who got caught in the great recession at the same time as age discrimination was setting in.
11
Looks like Obama & demos’ reluctance 2 be mo aggressive bout their stimulus package and repubs clucking about “deficits” and fighting the stimulus really caused human suffering and a weakened outcome from the Great Recession.
3
In others words, decades of supply side economics have weakened the economy.
Tax cuts for the rich do not stimulate the economy. We have been cutting taxes on the rich almost continuously since the 60s, including income tax, capital gains and corporate taxes, and we have the exact opposite of what was promised.
There is no mechanism for tax cuts to stimulate the economy. Investment is driven by demand.
If I give tax cuts to sell human excrement, would anyone build excrement delivery networks? No. If I could guarantee demand for a billion dollars of excrement, would someone find investors to distribute the supply? Yes.
If you want the economy to grow, it has to grow from the bottom up. Workers are the consumers, and most live pay check to paycheck. If they have more pay they demand more stuff.
But all incentives have been aimed at the top, the people waiting for demand to increase before they invest. And the pay of workers has remained flat while the 1% pockets the 40% productivity increase.
And now we have tax cuts for the rich disguised as "tax reform."
Too bad so many economists are paid to make excuses for tax cuts, instead of real analysis.
10
We let incredible amounts of intelligence go to waste. First, when an applicant can't find work because they are "overqualified," something is wrong with the hiring process. "No I don't want a Porsche for ten grand, it's over qualified."
Second, millions of poor people are highly intelligent, but under educated, because we don't instill a love of learning in them early enough, because we are too cheap to pay for high quality childhood daycare, and many schools are treated as cash cows for corporations, leaving them without the resources they need. We also now expect the schools to provide all of the extra services for kids, but don't add extra money, so teachers are supposed to give every child everything they need. It's not possible.
There is also extreme age bias. After a fifty year old loses his job, you say, go get another. But even after going to learn a whole new career, no one will hire them because they're "old."
Then you have millions of people who have a criminal record for minor offenses like possession of marijuana (our country has 5% of the world's population and 25% of the world's prison population) so they can't get a job.
Etc.
There is a whole lot of intelligence going to waste in this country because those that hire are not creative enough to employ it.
7
Yes, we tax work at double the rate we tax capital. Capital is the machinery that replaces us.
As robots and Artificial Intelligence improve, eventually humans will not be able to compete with them at all.
Much of our trading is already done by computers. Computers that trade will not buy human labor, once robots are cheap enough. Even CEOs can be replaced by artificial intelligence.
If we cripple democracy by destroying government, and give all power to free markets, as many advocate daily, artificial intelligence will eventually decide humans are not worth the money.
If the economy exists to serve humans, not corporations, then democracy, not markets, needs to be the primary decision making tool for society. We are doing the opposite.
It is time to start investing more in humans than machinery, because humans are the most amazing machinery we have, but while we take care of our machinery, we let humans suffer from neglect.
6
Yes and laborers are the consumers and create the demand that drives the economy. As long as we keep throwing money at the already rich, giving them the increased productivity of their workers, demand will lag, and so will the economy.
5
The first thing we need is for the People to push through an amendment to the constitution:
Corporations are Not People and Money is Not Speech.
As long as the billionaires are making 90% of political donations, they will be making 90% of policy, at the expense of the rest of us.
Google the Proportion oligarchy study.
8
Yes. Small business owners think their interests are aligned with corporate CEOs, because a lot of propaganda is aimed at them. Every tax cut is sold as a boon for small business, but a small business that is barely breaking even gets nothing from a tax cut. Most small businesses are not corporations, so they get nothing from corporate tax cuts. The proposed lowering of the pass through rate, only helps the 14% of small businesses paying more than 25% now, but most of those are actually investment partnerships of the super rich.
Lobbying firms like the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, which gets almost all of its funding from global corporations sell policies aimed at helping global corporations by claiming they help small business.
Can a local deli go to the state and demand tax breaks and free infrastructure improvements? No. But their biggest competitor can.
Small business owners have been tricked into supporting policies that put then at a competitive disadvantage.
The natural allies of small businesses are their customers, who are actually the workers.
So supporting global corporations and start supporting workers.
4
The American economy = >$50k/year for every child, woman and man.
We have every constitutional right and every legal mechanism needed to share that wealth more equitably, efficiently and productively.
Until a solid 60% or more of Americans understand that and consistently vote accordingly, that wealth will continue to be hoarded by the richest 10k families, and this story will remain current with only minor revisions, decade after decade. You can just reprint it every day.
As soon as a solid 60% or more of Americans vote to share our wealth more equitably, efficiently and productively, things will quickly improve, and the 10k families will sell off their 5th homes and 3rd yachts while 10M families put down-payments on their first home.
Of course, that 60% starts with 51%, and most steps forward are followed by steps back. But there is only one way forward: growing awareness of economic reality and growing political engagement. It's slow and some find it boring, but it's really the only news that's fit to print.
5
The power of the very rich has diminished unions, allowed mergers no small business can compete against, allowed wage-depressing franchise agreements, and a number of other ills that make work and entrepreneurship hopeless. This slide into distress began with the Reagan tax cuts. As long as CEOs and shareholder board members can keep the majority of their income, simple human greed will ensure they do their best to control the government and oppress the rest of us by whatever means available to them. It is up to us to change that.
15
We have a culture that rewards stupidity (variously defined and on various levels). Stupidity eventually weakens an economy.
3
I thank the author for putting together this article. But there is something more insidious going on. I work for the state of Illinois, and I am happy to have had employment through these tough times. But consider that the recession cause a lot of belt-tightening here in our incompetent state government, and likely in most states. This is akin to private companies downsizing and making do on tight budgets. In both cases, a lot of unethical bumbling made this worse than it had to be. But the worst part now is that these varied drastic experiments, new lows of treating employees and customers, is now the norm. Normal rates of compensation we saw prior to the recession, benefits, and often civility and career progression in the workplace no longer seem necessary to our leaders. Profits are not shared; damn the little people, let them eat cake. Greed and inhumanity are emboldened and institutionalized at higher than ever level and there is no counter-force.
8
From the article:
"The unemployment rate, which hit 10 percent in 2009, has fallen below 5 percent"
It would be nice, it the Times would stop printing this totally dishonest number. It means nothing.
For those who bother to read the whole article, we find the truth towards the end:
"thousands of workers who lost their jobs struggled to find work and ultimately stopped looking. Many, according to Mr. Yagan’s data, still haven’t found it."
The use of an "unemployment number" which excludes those who are having a really hard time finding work, is a cruel hoax. Please stop printing it - just tell us the percentage of people who would like to have a job, and can't get one, which is the honest number. Why would the Times not print that information?
13
Why should it be a surprise that when you turn over your country to war-mongers, nit-wits, thieves, charlatans, crooks, liars, power-hungry, self-seeking slimeballs, and sell-outs that bad consequences are bound to occur?
Or maybe it's just payback for our murdering ways and blood-thirsty wars?
Americans have only themselves to blame.
6
I worked in Technology, but when I reached my mid 40's, could not find a new job after the company I worked for retrenched. The people I talked to said I was either over-qualified or did not have one or two small skills that I could have developed quickly for the jobs I pursued.
I returned to my passion - farming - after a while unemployed. 12 years later, I still make below the minimum wage for California and pay my workers more than I make as prices for farmers have fallen in comparison to costs. Had I chosen to stay small, maybe I would have made more, but maybe I would be out of business.
BIG business does very well in today's environment, small and medium ones are structurally handicapped just like workers versus BIG business. We farmers cannot find workers who are US born. Our workforce is ageing fast without people willing to work in the outdoors, especially here near Silicon Valley.
Solutions? Level the playing field between big and small. Move health insurance to all government provided whether immigrant or native. Buy American produced whenever possible. Encourage rural and inner-city jobs and businesses. Start new small/medium size businesses. Perform research for more American opportunities. Make offshoring of jobs more expensive. Use diplomats whenever possible to lower military adventure costs. Partner with democracies not dictatorships.... Don't cut taxes for the rich.
13
Unfortunately for most people, the labor market isn't going to improve anytime soon. As with any complex issue, there are myriad reasons. Globalization? Sure. Technology? Yep. Immigration? In some cases. However, I believe the most significant reason for a sluggish recovery for the majority is a structural change that some have termed "The Financialization" of our economy. Along with an obligation to be profitable, businesses also used to have a social contract with America. That is, business owners became wealthy by providing a needed good or service better than the completion. People were needed to produce these goods & services. That's no longer the case. Today, Corporate America is focused upon playing the stock market and tax avoidance strategies more than making compelling products (which is hard to do). CEO compensation? The ONLY people who do well in the closed-loop system that is Wall Street are financial people and the very wealthy. Work for a paycheck? You're a cost to be managed if the company didn't "make their numbers" that quarter. Doesn't matter if you did a great job or made the company money. I've personally experienced this and have seen it happen to many friends. The only way out is to disincentive people from only "making money from money"; more heavily tax Wall Street transactions & stock buy backs. Incentivize bank lending to entrepreneurs. The question is, how do we make this happen against vested interests?
9
We reelected Bush 2.
Cause and effect. His first smug words were: now I'm going after Social Security.....
2
A major food processing company moved from Chicago where it had union employees to Nebraska where it used non-union employees. When they found out there weren't enough workers in Nebraska, the government bussed in immigrants.
Companies are using cheap foreign labor to undermine decent paying union jobs.
4
Those that worry that illegal immigrants are taking American jobs should force legislation that gives them the same employment rights as citizens. The reason that employers hire illegal immigrants is that they are illegal, so they don't have any rights. This makes them ideal for pressuring citizens to accept worse deals.
Most illegals come right through the gate in the existing wall in the back of a semi. More wall will do little.
Life is not simple or easy. Politicians that push easy solutions are usually lying.
Illegal immigration is not a supply problem it is a demand problem. Fund ways to cut demand for illegal immigrants.
2
There is not a single mention of how women fared in the recession, why is this?
3
There is actually. And a chart. Their employment has come back to where it was.
As crippling as the lackluster recovery from The Great Recession may seem, I fear it portends an even more grim future. As Baby Boomers edge into retirement age, millions without the financial stability to accommodate a comfortable retirement, an entire new class will emerge — the aged, overburdened, under-appreciated Americans. Medicare will be a shell of itself, a Republican Congress will obliterate supplemental health care benefits, entitlements will be jettisoned to build a wall, and programs that could retrain workers to be productive in a new labor environment will be non-existent. Add to that an administration that cares not for anyone who isn't wealthy and White, and you've got an enormous problem facing the country.
14
Let's be honest about the comments of insensitivity and cruelty via elevating the sanctity of the free enterprise market. People of all economic conditions have babies. The quality of the kids' lives are directly related to the parent's financial state.
In these contexts, the kids suffer and suffer and suffer.
5
Yes, and instead of investing in all of the children, because they are our future, a large percentage of our population wants to punish them for the sins of their parents (their sin mostly being that their jobs don't pay enough to support a family).
If you want to increase productivity, we should start with the youngest members of society.
There should be free 24 hour, high quality day care available to all parents. This way when parents have to work, or are highly stressed, or are sick. etc, children well have the nutrition, stimulation, education, and services they need to grow up to reach their highest potential.
Our penny wise pound foolish society would rather wait to pay ten times as much to send kids to prison, robbing ourselves of the productivity that healthy, well adjusted, well educated children add to the economy.
The only reason business leaders and policy makers want to draw more workers into the labor market it to keep wages and salaries as low as possible.
The political, economic, business, and technocratic leaders of the US are morally and intellectually bankrupt and are a malignant burden on humanity.
6
Republicans in Congress are to blame because they don't understand basic economics. They thwarted all but minimal fiscal stimulus during the recession while screaming about "deficits". They could have charged the economy & they could still do it now if they would invest in infrastructure. Instead, they want to invest dwindling tax dollars in more cuts for the rich & for corporations - none of which are fed back into the economy to improve conditions for anyone but those with capital. Laborers continue to lose.
17
Automation and technology is ELIMINATING human labor. Get used to it - it isn't slowing down. => The economy is undergoing dramatic changes as technology expands its presence. Customers at retail outlets scan their purchases and pay without human assistances; Fast food apps and kiosks eliminate counter staff; Restaurants with tabletop ordering and payment replace waitresses with delivery staff; Automatic toll collection eliminates human toll collectors. Online ordering is decimating local retail. Less visible are manufacturing plants that operate with few humans and distribution centers where robots move goods in and out of the facility.
5
Almost 10 years after the economic meltdown I myself have found my attitude toward employment part and full time has changed with the current economy where I would not expect to secure a full time well paid position but rather temporary unstable low paying work.
Precarious employment is not full or part time work, and I'm sure there are many people who acccept this and others who do not.
The issue with the current job market is really finding reliable stable employable individuals than what is offered by the current job seeker (deploreables) as they do not fit into this category. NEXT
There appear to be two--at least--changes in the nature of work that are driving the long term problem of under employment, both related to technology. One was pointed out here: as jobs came back, companies filled many of them with machines. The explosion in AI is only going to expand the ability of companies to replace humans with machines, and they will. The second is more subtle and nastier. Jobs in our economy that pay decent wages increasingly require bright people to do them. Some years ago, I worked with a manufacturer on finding people to perform, and worse supervise, tasks that involved milling large pieces of metal to very close tolerances. Competent machinists were being confronted with new computer driven lathes, and many could not handle it. I wonder how many previously competent workers were lost when accounting turned to spread sheets. I can think of more examples. What is always in shortest is raw intelligence, and we cannot do much to increase it (sorry, the Bell Curve was right), unless we import more. The Peter Principle says that people are promoted to their level of incompetence. The lesser known Paul Principle says that in a time of change, you can sit still and become incompetent. That, I fear, will increasingly be our issue with employment.
2
Of course, even among those who have reentered the market, the scars are still there. People who enter the job market during a recession have fewer, worse opportunities that pay less and are less likely to have benefits - and because of the way that employment history influences future employment, that's a long-term effect that can chase people their whole lives.
8
Another change from the past is widespread drug testing. Before the 1980s very few workers were subjected to drug tests with a focus on positions that affect safety. Now drug testing is common for all kinds of positions and includes legal (prescription) drugs which act as proxies for medical conditions.
Should you really be drug testing people who pick strawberries, stock shelves at the mall or do a wide variety of white collar jobs? Particularly testing for prescription drugs or marijuana use, which is now legal in several states, may be counterproductive. I suggest employers take a hard look on a position by position basis at whether they need to test for drug use or whether they would be better off with actually evaluating whether a worker is doing a good job. That's what trial periods for new hires are for.
9
What happened to the 1.5 million missing workers? Look at Social Security Disability rolls. They were already rising from 5.5 to 7.1 million (2002-07) and then jumped further to 8.8 million in 2012 where they remain as of 2016. (They peaked in 2014 and are down a bit from their peak.) Some combination of skill mismatch, poor training opportunities, lack of demand and opiates have created a group that is unable or unwilling to work and this is the rather modest safety net. Government programs might help re-integrate some of these people, but it seems more likely at the state than the federal level given the current Congress and administration.
1
In 2003 a serious injury and complication had me in the hospital for 6 weeks. Then I had home care with antibiotics for several months and physical therapy that lasted nearly a year. Yet I was rejected for temporary SS Disability. You make it sound like SS Disability is available to anyone, but none of the problems you list make one eligible for SS Disability.
4
Disability has always been hard to acquire; temporary disability is closely monitored and permanent disability is either not available, or very hard to get. Unless disability is mandated, as is unemployment, some States do not even offer it, or require it to be offered by an insurer. I worked in benefits for 33 years for a large East Coast corporation; disability was fought in most cases. Medical exams were required, not once, but throughout the process. If an individual could be trained for a desk job, that person was required to apply for training for desk jobs. As I recall, an employee had to be incapable of any kind of work to receive permanent disability.
You must be a Democrat, because instead of pushing for the right policies, you give up because the wrong politicians are in office.
You have to push for the right policies to get into office, not the other way around.
1. Too bad that in the immediate aftermath of the recession, we had a Republican Congress that refused to invest in desperately needed infrastructure projects. We still have that Congress.
2. In the 1960s, when the technology industry was taking off, a company paid for my brother-in-law's graduate school and employed him summers beginning in his undergraduate years, in return for his commitment to stay with them for 5 years after graduation. In fact he stayed with them his whole career. American companies no longer make that kind of investment, in spite of their immense profits and whining about the shortage of skilled workers.
15
Too bad that when the Democrats had filibuster proof control over both houses and the presidency, they didn't pass a real stimulus and universal single payer healthcare. Democrats work so hard at not answering Republicans that even when they have the raw power to enact their entire platform, they don't.
Yes; there are many reasons for this. It seems to me as if many of those who are still not employed are just being overlooked. The causes as you note are many. I would suggest though that if the data for those who are over 50 was examined one would see clear indications that this demographic has been heavily hit. If one has been able to keep their job they are often doing ok. Lose a job over 50 and good luck to you. Why on earth are only those up to age 54 studied? Last I checked that's many years from being able to receive SS benefits and retire.
Yes, I know there's all sorts of anecdotal attestations of those who were able to start their own business or get hired but these people overlook the fact that starting and running a business is not for everyone. In a similar vein just because you were able to find a good job at say 63 doesn't mean that it is likely for most. I know many who have never been able to find work or work that is commensurate with their skills and experience since being laid off. Ageism in the workplace is alive and well and no one, short of those impacted by it and their loved ones seems to care.
21
"Ageism in the workplace is alive and well and no one, short of those impacted by it and their loved ones seems to care."
This is especially true in IT.
You could have a recent IT degree and your skill set may be current but employers will hire younger people who can barely do the job. Many feel that is because younger people are cheaper, you say you are willing to take less money but employers will still not hire you.
I suspect it could be that the cost of health insurance is higher for older people by why on earth is health care even tied to employment? If this country had universal healthcare like other advanced developed countries then this would not be a factor.
Then the few times you get an interview everything seems to go well but for some reason you still don't get the job. I think many times the interviews are scheduled so that they can check off the relevant diversity checkboxes (older, minority, veteran, etc.) even if they are not seriously considering you for the position.
It burns me up when you read in the newspaper about how companies are hurting for technical talent.
I don't see how hiring someone younger who goes to a technical bootcamp for six months is a better employee than hiring someone with college degrees in a technical field and years of IT experience. I don't see how bringing in and hiring foreign workers on H-1B visas is better for this country than hiring US citizens.
This will continue as long as companies put profit over people.
6
What I'm about to say is not an answer for everyone; if it is not an answer for you move on.
I am 53 and hold no illusions about gaining a good job despite having a college degree in a field in demand.
I have my own business. When I started it years ago I was derided for leaving the safety blanket of corporate America. That safety blanket is made from the same cloth as The Emperor's New Clothes.
I strongly suggest if you have been unable to find a job adequate to live and save for retirement, that you strongly consider starting your own business. It used to be that entrepreneurial risk was high compared to working in an existing company. The last 8 years has taught us that that risk differential is minor at best for most people. I am not suggesting you wave a magic wand and a business
7
Companies used to train people but now they expect trained people to appear out of the woodwork and complain when they don't. I tire of hearing companies complaining about the shortage of skilled people when they refuse to have apprentice programs or skills training.
Also, for years we stressed a college education and denigrated hands on workers. Now we have college graduates that can't find work and a shortage of people that can maintain and fix things.
Blind reliance on the "magic of markets" is not working. Our present version of capitalism is a game of Monopoly, someone ends up with all the money.
31
Here is what's holding the economy back: An urgent need to transition to a low-carbon economy and no help with that from the federal government -- and no prospect of federal support for what is ultimately going to be required.
2
We had a low-carbon economy hundreds of years ago, called the "Dark Ages." Not too many of us wish to transition back to that.
1
Stan, just because you have clever lines, doesn't mean you are right.
Once installed, renewable energy is nearly free. The price of renewables is dropping, while the price of fossil fuels is rising. And those process don't cause the damage from pollution or the ways for oil.
Instead of moving as quickly as we can to a future of cheap clean energy, we are attacking that future and subsidising 19th.century technology.
Why do we want to put ourselves at a competitive disadvantage?
1
It is ironic the most scarred areas are Republican controlled though. People make the excuse that they were the rust belt and manufacturing regions. But how about Pittsburgh, PA, Not far from Youngstown OH?
Education definitely makes a difference. So President Obama and Democrats like Mrs Clinton definitely have the right long term solution. Too bad the snake oil salesman Republicans corner the narrative the electorates so eager to hear: "you don't need no stinking education, all you need is to bring back big coal." As reported in NYT last week, even some coal areas are installing solar panels now. And guess what, you do need technical competency to hook the panels up with the converter etc.
16
Yes, but not everybody has the intellectual capacity to perform complex tasks, and right now instead of training these people to do something productive that will help the economy and their self-worth, we're throwing them away and replacing them with robots and cheaper foreign labor.
1
"we're throwing them away and replacing them with robots and cheaper foreign labor."
Who is "we"?
[Companies only focused on the bottom line are] "throwing them away and replacing them with robots and cheaper foreign labor" [with the tacit approval of the government after bribing politicians to look the other way].
There, I fixed that for you.
The problem is that corporations are NOT people. Money is NOT speech. As long as the US government continues to insist that these concepts are true then these problems will not be solved, in fact they are only going to get worse as time goes on.
3
Yes, and the high tax states dos better during the recession because spending did not drop as much.
It’s all of the above...
1) Dislocation caused by technology and globalization
2) Disincented, resigned, non-participants in the employment markets who have left the system, and are working the system
3) Corporations who see themselves as purely profit-optimizing, who treat people as fungible resources, with no sentimentality
4) Paradoxically inflexible labor whom are trapped in the wrong location...
5) ... and hyperflexible markets and labor where matching has low transaction costs
6) Higher skill requirements for jobs today that are not being met, for whatever reason
7) A lost generation due to mental illness, drugs, etc
There’s no one sized fits all solution. Let’s get to work, stop demonizing.
13
Make short selling illegal.
10
Thanks President Bush for this economic disaster, the Iraq disaster, and Katrina. Did I leave anything out?
Heck of a job.
13
Modern job search methods -- the automated online screening -- have made it harder, not easier, for people to get back in the work force and overcome any gap in work.
13
"Modern job search methods -- the automated online screening -- have made it harder, not easier, for people to get back in the work force and overcome any gap in work."
You are absolutely correct on this point.
I have sent out hundreds of resumes, you will only hear back from 1%, the rest will not even acknowledge that you even sent them a resume.
The algorithms look for certain keywords, if you don't have the right keywords then a human being will never see your resume.
The algorithms are coded by younger White males, for some reason they seem to find jobs for other younger White males but they do not work as well if the job seeker is a woman, a minority or older.
This is no longer due to overt racism but instead due to personal biases that subconsciously get encoded into algorithms that end up discriminating. How else can you explain the fact that the people who need the jobs the most are women, minorities and older people but they are the ones having the hardest time getting a suitable job?
Gaps still matter, if you have a current job employers will fall all over themselves to offer you a new job, if you are out of work because you took time off to take care of an elderly parent then you are treated as if you are radioactive.
The system is seriously broken. Companies are making record profits but they are not investing in people and infrastructure. The government is starving for tax revenue but is talking about tax cuts. No wonder people are losing hope.
2
I have not recovered yet. Hope to. Someday. Sigh. Or sob.
7
The recession is not really over. We expanded the money supply to make it look that way but there has been no real recovery. While all the republicans that I know are thrilled with all the good economic news, they all note that it isn't good for them personally; however, they refuse to connect the dots. They are also beginning to take note that Trump's obsession with destroying Obama's legacy is destroying more than his legacy and they don't like it.
21
One sign of an economy being at full capacity is inflation rising, because supply can no longer increase to match demand. Inflation in the U.S. stays around 1.2%, well below the Fed's supposed target for average inflation of 2% -- meaning that they expect sometimes higher, sometimes lower. Yet they are raising rates to try to slow growth.
Why don't we try getting the economy up to full capacity first, before we suggest that people are permanently out of the labor force? If demand increases until the only unemployed are the structurally unemployed -- those who can't or won't work -- and the frictionally unemployed -- those temporarily between jobs, then and only then can we really judge how big the pool of structurally unemployed people is. When the economy remains below capacity, it still has the capacity to expand and thus increase the number of people employed. To suggest those not working will never work risks being a way of excusing our situation of keeping the economy depressed and below capacity, by claiming we're really at full employment even when many measures argue that we are not. These measures include low overall inflation, relatively low labor share of the economy, sluggish growth of wages, as well as the % of the working-age population employed. All suggest that the economy remains below capacity.
How to get the economy up to capacity? Low interest rates; a large stimulus to make jobs and put $$ in the pockets of the poor and middle class, who will spend it.
10
I think the very system and structures put in place to protect entrepreneurship has ultimately killed entrepreneurship. Stringent patent laws and creation of too-big-to-fail entities are allowing the market players to keep their overall wage bills low and reap greater benefits from their market dominance. Automation and outsourcing are not the reasons. They are rather the adverse effects of increasing monopolistic nature of the market. No wonder many displaced workers are not making any attempt to make themselves useful.
8
Somebody who quit school in eighth grade to go to work and start a family is not particularly employable when the jobs dry up or are robotized. Most of the new jobs are fixing robots or require reading skills beyond these folk. While the real responsibility for these people's future lies with their former employers, now in bankruptcy or the company was simply dissolved, These employers can not or will not meet their responsibilities. So the responsibilities fall to the various states, not the fed.
2
All these fancy economists could do themselves a favor by closing their spreadsheets and rent a camper and go on a tour of America. If they did that, they would discover hollowed-out towns and cities where the factories have closed because companies have moved manufacturing overseas. There are millions of us 55+ year old men who have no hope of every having a good job again. Someone is making money from automation, but it's not us. Who wants to hire a 60-something laid off factory worker? We're unable to work because we're not wanted. Sure there's McDonalds at $10/hour but nothing that we can support our families on. The country once respected us and we were proud to be American workers. No longer.
46
Visit my area and I will show you vacant real estate where at one time a steel mill was located. Empty buildings that once thrived as manufacturing facilities. I could go on but why. Companies using hedge funds to buy out the competition and become the dominate player in the market. Where are the anti-trust laws?
3
These jobs didn't come back in the 80's, 90's or 00's. Why would they come back now? The world's economy moves on. We either move with it or get left behind. Well, not exactly. We we've goodbye to the train of progress or we choose to stay uneducated. ignorant, isolated and behind.
6
"That small-sounding change masks a vast human toll: the disappearance of more than 1.5 million workers from the economy"...the bet here is that the estimate is low.
those in middle age, and certainly those older, still skilled and productive, were neglected when the crunch took their work...after their unemployment benefits and extensions ran out one might say that they "disappeared" but it'd be more accurate to say that they "were disappeared."
not even a phone call as the economy inched back,
nothing from obama's washington...unresponsive barely fits the lack of connection, disdain is not a stretch....never mind the percentage of these who were veterans.
just "a bunch of people who were knocked out by the recession who aren’t coming back" a "bunch" or a basketful...no income, rising property taxes that took their homes...in the old soviet they'd be non-persons, in the land of the free and the home of the brave many became derelicts...disappeared in plain sight.
16
ecco: Do you recall Obama's Jobs Bill? The Bill which funded infrastructure repair, maintenance and new construction for new grids? It was poisoned by the Republican Congress, loaded up with so much garbage it had to be tabled. The only piece of legislation Obama managed to salvage was the Affordable Care Act; and, that required cooperation with insurance carriers who demanded the right to set rates and rate increases. So, those premiums have risen, while wages have not kept pace. Except for large corporations, businesses dropped their health care benefits, pensions, and matching 401K's. Jobs were outsourced to India and China; those were manufacturing jobs. Obama did everything a President could do to increase jobs and health care. Now, the Reconstruction gift of the Electoral College has produced an unqualified, poorly educated, five time bankrupt and grifter as President. He has severed NATO toes; alienated an old ally, Australia; gathered a Cabinet of plutocrats and opportunists who will milk the government for expensive perks. The GOP Congress will try to reduce services and established programs through diminished funding. Wait until the consequences become too obvious for even Trump supporters to ignore. Those unemployed Carrier workers are the tip of the iceburg.
1
Outstanding piece from Ben Casselman. He and NYT economics coverage really at the top of their game. Excellent links to pursue evidence and the state of research.
Pity about the comments, which are mostly anecdotal or ideological, and make little reference to the detail of the article. Go to the top of the class Mr Casselman; at least one commenter appreciates your quality.
10
The overwhelming reason for a failed employment drug test is marijuana. Please do your research rather than imply otherwise. The second highest fail is cocaine-related drugs. Also, if you are an employer and your applicants are failing a drug test for legal use of any medication, including pain medication, you only have your own prejudices - and the reporting of obsessive demonization campaigns in papers like the NYT - to blame.
9
What are you trying to say? Your home (and mine) is in one of the states that front the Ohio River and are the epicenter of the opioid crisis. According to the research, which has been published in the Times, this mess has had a negative effect on the overall economy. It certainly hasn't helped in this region. Though being denied employment or fired for detection of legal meds (with proper documentation) is wrong, where are the "prejudices" and "demonization campaigns" as regards to still-illegal pot or always-will- be- illegal and destructive coke? Next time you drive US 52 to New Richmond, look for the ghost bikes in memory of cyclists killed by pilled up and smacked up drivers. Blame-the-media is no more than a head- in -the-sand position.
1
OK, so they can't find people to repair damage caused by hurricanes Harvey and Irma? Maybe people in the "depresseed" part of the country need to get on their horses and move to where the WORK is.
1
A 65 year old is going to build bridges?
9
Maybe the unemployed who can fill jobs available, but too far to travel to, can be given financial support to travel, establish a home base, and time to find a job. Maybe we could duplicate some of what FDR did in the Depression: the CCC, work in parks, bridge repair and maintenance, upgrading schools, clinics and public hospitals. We can find work, and we have the money to move people with financial support. If we can fight other people's civil wars all over the world, we can fund jobs for our own people. The military is no longer a jobs program. If we can bribe dictators so that oil corporations can get their resources, we can fund jobs for our people here at home. If we can pay Congress for two days work per week with no legislation or any other sign of productivity, we can fund jobs for people who actually are willing to and want to work.
6
Why not? Heavy equipment doesn't need all that much muscle to be operated. It's actually easier than being on your feet flipping burgers all day, which is what I've seen elders doing in some depressed places.
2
Too many people.
Way too many people.
8
You've certainly got that right. There are possible solutions even there, but why should business help when their profits are doing just fine thank you ?
And then you've got people who won't stop beating this Dead Horse:
"linked the decline in employment among men, in particular, to opioid abuse"
Please - enough already
1
My scars are hardly the worst of what is still falsely called a recession, but they will not heal in my lifetime. That is simple math. It is repulsive to hear Summers wonder if that is permanent or quasi-permanent damage. Or to hear Bernake talk about so very many people who did everything possible not to "drift too far away" from the job market. Age discrimination has been a tsunami. As HRC (she got my vote) asks "what happened," what didn't happen is the real question. Nothing. No one went to jail for the financial conspiracy crime of this century, no legislation corrected it. The people were left wiped out and blamed with no corporate accountability. Who expected to recover from that?
41
Yes, if we had bailed out the people instead of the banks, they could have paid off their mortgages, medical debt, student loans, rent, and consumer loans. The money would have still made its way to the banks, with much of their bad debt transformed into good debt.
The Fed gave away a net of about two trillion dollars in new money to global banks in the form of near zero interest loans, and buying junk bonds at face value. They didn't invest that money in the US economy. Their excuse? They were waiting for demand to come back, even though the whole point was for them to bring demand back.
If that money had been equally divided among every citizen, it would have cone to about $6,000 each, $24,000 for a family of four. That would have saved millions of homes, and created a huge boost to demand. It probably would have been too big a stimulus.
Greed is defined as putting money ahead of your own self interest. The Greeks used the story of Midas, who turned his daughter to gold, to teach that lesson 2,000 years ago.
The global billionaires are so greedy that they are destroying the world's economy that makes them rich, to raise the next quarter's stock price, to boost their stock options.
The true job creators are the workers who are also the consumers. All of their new productivity since 1980 has been redistributed to the shareholders. That is why the economy is anemic.
1
In driving through large segments of the country, I notice big pockets empty of significant economic activity: where once there were factories, shopping strips, busy restaurants, now there are run-down or deserted buildings. It is still easy for corporations to locate new enterprises were the economic action is; but it is much more difficult for those who once had jobs in the blank spots to move on. Get more education? Sell that old house? Move to prosperity city? You have to be kidding.
28
Disability is a culprit from what I have witnessed while looking for people to employ. I know too many who on disability, are out fishing. There is a segment of the workforce, policemen included, who see this as an easy way out. They just need any excuse. Taxes go up in your town because of it and houses don't sell due to high taxes, The town falls apart.
3
Now is the time. Increase immigration limits. Import more cheap workers.
Companies should not be subject to free trade. They should not have to raise wages. Increase the supply of workers
1
This is a Depression not a Recession. The elite just manipulated data to make it sound better.
27
Agreed. Depression it is.
2
When a nation no longer produces much of what it consumes on a daily basis, how is any kind of employment recovery even possible? It's like expecting a bicycle to resume moving on its own after you've coasted to a stop and are no longer pedaling.
12
This is all a bunch of baloney. The jobs gap is caused by immigration and environmental regulation. This was proved by the election results and will soon be verified further when we see the percentage of working-age white men employed as dishwashers, roofers and coal miners increase sharply.
3
Yet another article acknowledging what ordinary people have known for years. The economy changed permanently in the aftermath of the financial crash. There is plenty of blame to share. It's not that most Americans are lazy. A few are, of course, but the ravenous demand for gig work suggests that there are plenty of people out there desperate for work, any work. The high rate of disability payments is largely due to medical costs; anyone receiving benefits who gets a job instantly loses their health care. To a cancer patient, that's a rather significant disincentive.
17
After the rapidly approaching age of the-end-of-work, do you think we will need a change to what the "experts" call socialism. Some experts will change and it will be a golden age of humans learning to help strangers.
This is what some experts call a welfare state. It is a great advance of humanity. Lots of brutal details, but it must be.
If the experts do not accept change it must lead to civil war and secession, and that will really be brutal, and could wreck everything.
1
I think a cultural change has occurred where blue collar jobs have lost their "social status." Workers in such jobs are often viewed as "losers" in our society...even if the job pays a living wage.
My sense is that this lack of dignity causes many unemployed to simply give up and turn to drugs or other unproductive activities.
5
Realistically, how much should you be able to make if you haven't invested four plus years and approximately one quarter million dollars in learning your craft? The days of an assembly line worker affording a suburban house, 2.3 kids, two cars and a trip to Disney every few years are long gone. Be grateful they lasted as long as they did.
6
Ironically the first reply to your comment proved your point.
2
Why have I never seen an analysis of the OTHER effect of China - low prices. We have gotten so used to being able to buy a t-shirt on sale at Kohls for $4 that consumers absolutely recoil at any price increases. Until there is a whack of inflation, the economy will remain idling.
7
It's been a long time thankfully since I've last had to look for a job. I didn't realize that drug testing is now part of the normal screening process. With most everybody on medication of some type, especially doctor prescribed pain killers, what are we doing to ourselves? It's like we're looking for reasons why people shouldn't work. I absolutely believe our species has entirely lost its point and is no longer necessary. A world full of squirrels gathering nuts will probably do just fine as far as higher life forms go. Why bother with the extra baggage the rest of us brings with us.
8
So I'm not on any meds and have never taken illegal drugs of any kind. I'd pass a drug screen any day. Of course I'm not who the employer wants to hire due to my age so good luck with that!
2
If you cannot honestly and realistically answer the question "What do I, and only I, bring to the table that makes my boss money?", you'd better be picking up more skills, networking like crazy and saving 20% of your income. The next recession is coming down the road some day.
5
Saving 20% - what a great dreamer
3
"It is not clear what has been preventing workers from returning to work as the economy has improved." Spoiler alert: Employers do not tend to hire workers who have long gaps in their resume. The longer you are out of work, the harder it is to find someone who will "take a chance" on hiring you. Eventually, even people with higher education and genuine skill sets can become essentially written-off by hiring managers.
31
It's more complicated than that. As my business has grown through the last decade, I hired more people. I used to make a point of hiring people who had been unemployed for a period of time. I assumed that they would be more motivated. That turned out to be an erroneous assumption on my part. I have two wonderful people who have worked out (and hopefully will work for me until they retire) but a good dozen who did not. I found older workers who did not really desire to learn new skills, some who had intractable bad work habits, and some who were just looking to punch in for enough months to be able to go back on unemployment. I collectively term these problems as rust. These issues came up for the majority of this type of hire. I don't know the answer to the problem, but I will say that I do still hire folks who are unemployed, though not as often. I don't have a blanket policy against them. I realize that larger companies might have one though.
7
"I will say that I do still hire folks who are unemployed, though not as often."
You did not say what industry you are in nor what type of jobs you were hiring for nor what you were paying. These are all factors in how successful an older, employed worker will be.
In IT there are plenty of workers who do not need training as they are constantly learning new skills. They will work harder and have a better work ethic than the youngsters. Based on your success rate I would venture your company is not in IT.
Good for you for at least trying to make a difference. In my experience larger companies do not have blanket policies against older workers, that is illegal under federal laws.
The problem is that many hiring in those companies are younger White males, and people tend to hire people like themselves that they feel most comfortable with:
http://healthland.time.com/2012/12/10/so-much-for-qualifications-employe...
Saying someone won't hire a particular person because they are not a good "fit with your corporate culture" sure sounds better than saying they did not hire that person due to discrimination based on their personal biases but for older workers it is essentially the same thing.
2
As mentioned somewhere in the article, a recession is just a trigger, even without which it is getting harder for some group of people to find jobs. To make things worse, it is getting easier for those people to live without jobs for several reasons. For instance, they can hide in homes of parents who are much wealthier than in the 60's and 70's (and tend to spoil their kids occasionally).
1
Maybe if wages were higher and speculators hadn’t driven up the cost of real estate in cities where most of the new jobs have been created, people wouldn’t have to “hide” in their parents’ homes. What incentive is there to work for even $15/hr when the cheapest homes cost $1 million or a one bedroom apartment rents for $3k a month?
3
It is called Creative Destruction. A process which makes capitalism the greatest creator of economic benefits for the most people than any other economic system ever created.
3
The "creative" part went to you as felt personal success, and the "destruction" part went to some other abstraction within the human community but was actually a human being as vital, as worthy, as significant as you, but the dehumanization fell as a tragically destroyed life for what possible point of understanding?
5
Why then are AIG, GM, Chrysler, Wall St. chiselers, The over leveraged banks, etc. etc. still around? Could it be socialism for the rich and capitalism for everyone else. Socialize the risk and privatize the reward. Nice.
12
The government made $22 billion selling off AIG units at fire-sale prices. Yes, we spent a lot on the auto companies, but if those had gone out of business, the economic loss and accompanying job losses would have been profound. As for the "Wall Street chiselers," there are at least 20,000 fewer of them than there were in 2007. Bank capital requirements have been increased substantially since 2008, and banks now are much less likely to require government intervention.
It's fun to disparage your favorite bogeypersons, but the schtick works better if you deal in facts instead of fantasy.
A very helpful analysis. Prime age men, particularly black and those without college degrees, are increasingly out of the workforce. Some of this has to do with integrating those with criminal records back into the workforce, another is not paying for college education and retraining. I suspect many more are caring for elderly parents or are caught in depressed areas and are unable to move due to family commitments or the jobs of relatives.
10
The biggest cost of just about every business is labor.
Eliminating or reducing labor costs - merely controlling them is considered bad management which is punished by Wall St analysts - has become THE BUSINESS rather than the product or service. This is the Reagan legacy and the religion of the GOP today.
In the twisted logic of the GOP, Wall Street and the C suites, the Recession was the proof of "the financial threat" of labor . But it was also the cure.
The lost jobs will remain lost, and there will be two lost generations: th 50+ who lost their jobs ,and college grads who were trying to join the workforce. The former will hang on for as long as possible but despair is their constant companion in old age. The latter will never realize their potential and the next Recession may knock them out of the workforce once and for all.
18
Lost jobs are lost for a reason. There is no need for them.
And many of the 50 somethings graduated at the height of a previous recession.
8
The "need" has been filled by low paid workers in India, Japan, China and Mexico. The jobs are still being done, just not by Americans. Where robotics could be installed, more workers were displaced. The question in a consumer economy remains: who will have any disposable income for anything other than basic necessities? Who will keep this economy running for all of us? How long can the plutocracy exploit the poor in other countries for their workers and resources before even that is not enough to maintain America? Wars are not going to salvage the economy, with the exception of certain military contractors. Don't count on a rich juvenile 71 yr. old who has never worked to solve any of the above. Eventually, even his "base" will realize those factories are permanently closed; their jobs are permanently gone; there is no money for education or retraining; pensions funds were looted and health benefits were terminated. This might not be obvious in the short term; however, the long term will not be good for ordinary American citizens.
2
We've had jobless recoveries ever since the offshoring of jobs reached critical mass in the early 2000s. Germany, facing the same forces of globalization, managed to retain over 20% of their workforce in production - the US is down to 8.6%
When you have a closed, two-party system, and the one party that traditionally advocated for workers, suddenly decided to battle the other party for the affection of capital, as the Democratic party did in the early 1990s, the dour picture the statistics paint of our economy was entirely predictable.
Now, large parts of our country are operating at developing world standards. Absent a drastic re-ordering of priorities in Washington, it will only get worse. Countries in this trajectory tend to move to the right - just ask the Germans.
24
more jobs is not necessarily the answer but better paying jobs is. lwhat is needed have a minimum wage of $20 an hour. and that $20 to move each yearwith inflation. and lets tax dividends as earned income.
10
If we raised the minimum wage to an annual salary of $100K then everyone could retire as millionaires.
1
"and lets tax dividends as earned income."
Hope you mean capital gains.
Look at a 1040, dividends are added to normal income.
With a living wage needs to be pensions, breaks, vacation (paid), sick leave (paid)--it's called basic union labor.
5
Why only 20? What is wrong with 50 or 100? It is the same answer. It is economically impossible.
1
and there are other forces at play, perhaps hard to measure. many firms have had a closed shop mentality for some time (open only to less experienced workers who they can train and pay less)
one result of a struggling economy over time is for people (whomever their corporate tribe) to keep hiring 'within the family' and the access to the closed shop gets more difficult
8
What's missing in this article is how jobs have changed or how employers have changed how jobs work. We have a just in time job model where employers hire people if they need them and fire them if they don't. They do this by hiring people as temps and as independent contractors. These people are not given any benefits at all. Once the job ends they may or may not be eligible for unemployment. This just in time model for jobs fails to take into account the reality of modern life. That reality includes monthly payments for rent or a mortgage, car payments, health insurance, utilities, credit cards, and the daily expenses of living such as groceries, laundry, gasoline/transportation, etc.
We have an economy and a society that doesn't value experience so older workers have been unable to find jobs or jobs that pay decent salaries. The only people who have succeeded in today's economy are the very rich who do not have to rely upon a regular paycheck to settle their accounts each month. Another problem is the way employers go about listing jobs and what they require. Employers don't want to train or invest in employees. They use recruiters who often don't really know what's needed. And even before we are hired they are asking us illegal questions on line: age, SSN, when we graduated, marital status.
When employers can't find their perfect employee they complain that there are no qualified Americans. We're here but they don't want to pay us, hire us, or train us.
62
I think it was Coase who dealt with the question why the corporation exists. The argument (summarized) was that the transaction costs to locate the person with skills was high enough to make it more efficient to keep the talent in-house.
Since AirBnB and Uber have cut transaction costs to these functions. Are we seeing employers anticipate lower transaction costs to locate the skills needed, therefore choosing to hire & fire because the information can move more freely?
3
Yes, they don’t find the erfect employee who will blow them. It must be said.
We hear the same thing from economists on both the right and center-left for a while: "The recession and global economic change - the hand of god - have destroyed certain jobs. Those folks should re-train, move, or just grab those bootstraps, instead of pining for jobs our position papers say are gone forever. It's not personal. It's the nature of the free market, and that's ok - let it work."
The problem is, a lot of other jobs would have been destroyed too - in banking, finance, venture capital - by the free market, and as a result of the actions of those who hold those jobs (unlike factory workers). But they weren't destroyed. Unlike every other industry, those ones are doing better than ever.
Why? Politicians across the aisle, major media, etc. decided that this was one area in which the free market couldn't be allowed to function. So taxpayers bailed them out. That's one of the things that makes it so hard to stomach all the research about what workers should be doing better in this new economy.
40
Yes, always lots of talk about factory robots -- advances in software have eliminated many office jobs too.
1
The article leaves out a lot
In the last 8 years, the population of the US increased by 18 million. Most of the 16 million jobs created where simply used to catch up with population growth
The starting point for job growth, picked , was 1/2010, where employment was below normal. That makes the job growth larger by 1 million, than 5/2008, a more appropriate reference. If you start there,
Most of the new jobs created are inferior to those lost. When you had a job in manufacturing at $ 26 per hour your are not eager to work in retail at $ 10.33 (NYS average).
That economists, and the Fed can not see that part of the unemployment picture is due that good jobs have been replaced with lousy ones is a troubling indication on how detached from ordinary Americans they are.
55
The article says "Mr. Yagan’s research could be read as an indictment of economic policy after the recession. If Congress and the administration had been willing to act more aggressively, they might have avoided some of the long-lasting damage that has been done."
What? "Congress and the administration"? They're equally guilty? Here's another case of false equivalence. Because Mitch McConnell said that Republicans would never cooperate with President Obama, it was the Congress who refused to act more aggressively - so much so that Obama had to cut the amount of spending even before he sent his request to Congress. Had not the Republican party been so "concerned" about increasing the debt (they didn't give a hoot about deficits, it was a ploy to keep the President from bringing the economy back as quickly as possible), there would have been much less of a recession. How could you not mention that in the article?
45
Suddenly, now that the Repubs are in control, deficits are fine. Making Obama a one term president was the only goal.
6
Yes now the GOP cold not care less about the debt.
1
It is refreshing to see a fact-based analysis to a complex problem, even though it does not have or purport to have the answer. I believe it is likely that the inability to pass drug tests is an issue in some markets, but the video game phenomenon sounds like too much fantasy (and older adults judging younger ones with an over-broad brush). It may be an issue, but I doubt it is significant.
The most important cause not addressed in the article is the issue of "place." First, there are many jobs available, but not necessarily in the locale unemployed people reside. It is very difficult to get someone in Dallas to take seriously a candidate living in Milwaukee, even if they say they are willing to move. Further, many of those who were displaced in factory towns were middle aged people with strong roots in their place due to adult children or parents needing help in that locale or they don't want to uproot their kids in school or their afraid to leave where they grew up (an indefensible reason). The cost of moving and leaving their social net may also be prohibitive.
Thus, place may be the real barrier to employment for a variety of real and psychological reasons. Economics assumes people will move to where the jobs are, but it is incapable of weighing other non-concrete and non-uniform factors. At minimum, the longer someone lives in a place, the scarier it is to leave. Until this issue is baked into the analysis, it will always limit the value of economic theory.
34
Economics is a pseudo-science that can only manage to derivatively explain what happened yesterday. Usually by lying about how much they expected it to happen the day before
3
And the assumption that they will move to where the jobs are also assumes they can sell or rent out their home if they own one. As well, the jobs are often located in high-cost locales; just how does someone from some small town in the south say relocate to NYC or Boston to get a job? If they've been out of work for a while just how will they find a place to stay while they job hunt? How will they come up with the funds for an apt?
5
The "experts" are mystified as to why workers sit home. Work does not pay. It hasn't for quite some time, at least in a way that doesn't require racing at a good clip to the bottom of the pile.
I worked in construction, an industry that gets hit first and hardest in a recession. One thing I noticed, back in the day, was that when things turned around it was boom time again only with a different cast of characters such as permanently downsized cubicle refugees, salesmen, middle managers, you get the picture. They were stepping backwards as far as pay was concerned but there was money to be made if they worked hard. Then more recessions and more downwardly mobile men of a different variety came on the scene; factory workers, itinerants, restaurant workers, i.e. the less skilled and less motivated. Meanwhile the pay started to drop. Then the immigrants came along, I'm sorry but it's true, pay, working conditions and morale all took a hit. The coup de grace was this last recession. This kind of work now goes begging. The only ones who will accept dirty, difficult and dangerous work at the low pay offered are desperate unskilled natives and immigrants documented or otherwise. I have aged out of the workforce and my body has racked up some damage but I would jump back in if I thought the game wasn't rigged. The big contractors and developers are making lots of money. This dynamic plays out in other industries that used to pay a living wage. Unions are the way to go. E- verify too.
54
Most of the jobs that are created are minimum wage, and not even full-time, would be my bet. The gov't in Canada uses the same nonsensical stats.
14
Glad to see that some other country does the same idiotic thing we do. The other stupid thing is that the same jobs are posted multiple times on multiple sites. Dice, Monster, Indeed all have the same jobs with the same agencies or employers and these jobs repeat after about 2 "pages". I doubt that anyone in the government who looks at job creation numbers has noticed that.
11
When violent revolutions occur, the oppressed never forget who gave them the scars. See: Payback is in our DNA, too.
9
Then you would need the N.R.A. to fight against the Nat. Guard.
Boy, it's almost like there are inherent contradictions in capitalism that in the long run cannot be resolved... gee, I guess we might as well keep analyzing the issue from within that flawed lens, surely we'll fix it...
18
How soon we forget the drive and dedication by the Republican Congress (during and after the Obama years) to block any possible success for the Obama administration. If we didn't have racist leadership in the House and in the Senate, we would be riding the crest of a powerful recovery even now.
38
Too much help and average Americans might not hate the government quite as much. Republicans would then have a problem on their hands. Letting the masses rot in resentment is a good recipe for those who believe the government is a swamp/cesspool etc and that it should be cut down to the point that it merely functions as a wellspring for plutocrats.
14
We have entered a Second Industrial-Digital Revolution which is disrupting traditional occupations. Remember the Luddites. Remember Feather Bedding?
Go look at an auto plant. How many people do you see?
Go look at an interstate being built. How many people do you see?
Go look at a coal "mine." How many people do you see?
Plus, there may well be more auto manufacturing plants in the US today than ever before, but they are not in the Rust Belt. Folks with their homes 'underwater' can't afford to move.
Automated delivery trucks are coming. That's 3 million truck drivers.
It's not that the machines will rise up and kill us; it's that they'll rise up and put us out of work.
Go to Home Depot and see how many checkout clerks there are.
16
Employment prospects will never improve as long as businesses are encouraged to import foreign goods and foreign labor.
11
This study should go back to the 1970s. The effects of the 1970s deindustrialization and two-tier contracts persist. The precariousness of the social fabric began with the cynicism engendered by the Vietnam War and Watergate and the unemployment of that time.
Unemployment unmoors a person from the social fabric; you realize you can starve and die and that your death would only provide employment to the police who would pick up your body for the morgue.
Without a militant labor party, I don't see things changing.
27
It is an unfortunate truth that is not being spoken of that there is a great big pile of ex-workers who are just done.
They started working in the late 70s and 80s, had few if any skills besides putting a piece of metal in a machine that went "clunk", saved next to nothing because they were never taught nor valued money management and planning for the future, and now are 50-60 and unemployable. No government program will fix them. No training is going to get them hired. They go on "disability" for high blood pressure and depression - the new welfare. However, since they are white, we can't call it that. It's disability.
They will gut it out until they take early diminished Social Security, and then we will hear of all the impoverished retirees until they shuffle off this mortal coil. It sounds cruel, but it's just a bunch of highly unlikable facts.
This economy has little to no use for them.
But they are a small bunch, and we need to stop pandering to them. They largely did not wind up where they are due to circumstance - they lived their lives the way they chose, and they are stuck with the results.
14
Wow, thank you for that lovely comment. I'm 58 and started working in the 80s. I graduated from college with a degree in biology and minor in chemistry. I've worked very hard and I've watched others my age work very hard. And guess what, ever since I've been in the job market all I've heard is that there are too many of us going after too few jobs and that we're useless too. I'm white, female, and I'm at the point where the economy has no use for me.
I kept my end of the bargain with my country as did those white male workers who didn't get college degrees. We worked, paid our bills, raised kids if we had them, stayed out of trouble, and tried to save for the future. Some of us retrained. The one thing we couldn't stop was aging and being born after 1954. Nearly everyone born after 1954 has been unable to have a lifestyle that even approaches the one their parents had. Why? Because our politicians decided for us that we didn't need any protections as employees whether we did manual labor or office work. Now we're seeing the results: too many people giving into despair and using drugs.
54
Our parents and grandparents EARNED that by defeating fascism. What have we boomers done.
Better to pander to banks and insurance companies.
4
Some economists even hailed recessions for their “cleansing” effects, purging unproductive companies in much the same way that forest fires burn up dead wood and release seeds that provide new growth.
Except when it comes to Big Banks. Then they print dollars like mad to bail them out with no one going to prison as the rest of the economy nosedives. Because of course they are too big to fail like the rest of us.
15
From my experience with these "missing workers" online, it is clear that the chief problems are pills/heroin and videogames/internet-surfing. Also, I very much doubt that they can ever be brought back into the working populations, as they have no wherewithal, and live a life of vicarious tribalism.
4
Hopefully a tipping point hasn't been reached whereafter no broad-based prosperity will ever again be achievable. I know it's complex so only mention one long-developing and long-lasting threat- the public education system.
5
Employers used the recession to hone their skills at overworking, underpaying and generally oppressing employees, skills they rely on even after the economy recovers.
27
I have to wonder how much gender issues influence the data. I see employment rates dropped more for men that women. If a woman is paid less for doing the same work, who gets laid off? And who gets hired first? Basic economics suggests that the people who do the same work for less money has the upper hand. The data published here do not disagree. Also as more women become the primary earner, more men are assuming parenting duties and are not looking for work outside the home.
4
We have a skills gap. Regardless of any economic recovery, businesses won't hire someone who can't do the job. That's why so many people are still unemployed. Our future is brain power. We should be putting MUCH MORE resources into education, particularly at the youngest years, where the basic thinking skills are developed.
5
Businesses used to hire people who couldn't do the job all the time. They found a likely young person who interviewed well (and possibly reminded the interviewer of his nephew) and TRAINED him (it was usually a him) to do the job. Then they paid the newly trained worker enough that he wanted to stay with the company that treated him well and gave him a chance. That was back when companies understood that one way to do well by the shareholders was to build an experienced workforce. Well that is all gone now. Companies don't train or pay well and workers leave with whatever skills they have because that is the only way to get any sort of raise at all. But just because that is what we have now, don't pretend that i was always thus. It wasn't .
14
@Polly - In those days, they could get workers who could read and write, showed up on time, and tried to do a good job. There are fewer people like that today.
1
I have a degree (Mediocre U, 1989). I read and write English reasonably well. I should work in Fast Food? Actually, I didn't mind doing banquet service for a while. Until higher management discovered they could bring in the temps from the Derelects 'r us agency for a Dollar an hour less, and steal money out of their pockets for uniform rental/laundry service ($12 a day). But they won't even talk to me about it, at that rate I would be losing money driving half way across the county the minute I turn the key in the ignition (There is NO public transportation for late night gigs).
7
Add racism and ageism to the mix. My husband, an electrical engineer for 40 years. has been unable to get a permanent job since 2002 due to an unjust termination. He has worked contract jobs to help us get by, but the last one ended in May 2014. He does very well on phone interviews, but when he shows up for the actual interview, the interviewer can hardly contain his/her shock because he is black. He is tired of coming in second. One recruiter, who told my husband that he was the top candidate, later told him that a "candidate of lesser quality" (his exact words) was hired instead. Engineering jobs are paying much less than a few years ago and the descriptions indicate that the company wants the candidate to do the work of three people. Something is definitely wrong with this economy when highly experienced engineers like my husband can't get work.
67
We talk about inequality day after day while we have leaders who promised to end it. They only know us at election time, election after election. Welcome to what we keep tolerating and have resigned to bear in generations to come as long as we can surf and text. Mindless insects caught in a crafty web of someone's skillful design.
3
A few years back, stories were posted about job openings not being filled. The impression I got was employers looking for the "perfect fit" and not willing to "train" a worker into the position. The hiring manager would complain of the lack of people with "the right skills" to match the job.
An example would be an opening for a machinist. The job sat open for 18 months while hiring someone and training them to fill it would take about 3 months. The employer interviewed for this was bemoaning lost sales for her inability to fill the position.
I am curious if employers have become more picky in selecting who to hire based on the assumption that the Internet is going to deliver the ideal job candidate. Don't hire "Joe" today and start training him because you expect "Tom" to arrive tomorrow and already have the skills you seek.
19
I was in IT when I worked, and things were a little different. We had trouble finding any candidates at all who were remotely suitable, and this was in the 2011-14 period.
I remember a buddy in the next cube trying to hire an entry-level worker to do simple operational work. The job required some knowledge of Unix, Windows, and SQL, but just the basics. You had to be willing to do grunt work, and start at the bottom, but the job paid $60-80K in Columbus Ohio. Most of the candidates, upon examination, were totally unqualified.
1
the article says 'it is not clear what is preventing many fro returning to work?''Could it be cultural sloth work ethic collapse, the traditional definition of work no longer exists, a permanent realignment of skills unsuited to most? The reasons are many. Eventually, most governments will have to provide a guaranteed income to avoid mass civil unrest. This policy would eliminate the need for any other welfare or benefit transfer systems. It's a new day..
12
Suppose you run a business. You make cars. You cut lawns. Are you going to hire more people, build more factories, or buy another mower, if you can't sell more cars or cut more lawns? It's true that people want a new car or their lawn cut, but they don't have enough money to pay for the car or the lawn service. Too many are not working. Too many have low paying jobs.
It's not taxes or regulations that are holding the economy back. It is the lack of money on the part of those who would like to spend it. There are only two sources of money.
1. The Rich have a lot of money. They could afford to pay their workers more, build new factories, hire more people, BUT they are not going to do that until there are people who can buy more stuff.
2. The only other option is the federal government. It can print money. It can spend money. There are many worthwhile ways to do so. It can fix our roads and bridges, build a new power grid, give grants to the states to help with education, sponsor research, etc., etc., etc. Even simply giving money to poor people to buy food gets more money into the economy.
As a percentage of GDP our public debt was almost 50% larger in 1946. From 1946 to 1973 we increased the debt in dollars by 75%. BUT we had prosperity. Real median household income surged 74%.
After WWI we had 10 years of balanced budget. We decreased the debt in dollars by 38%. This was followed by the worst economy in our history.
Those who don't learn from history are ...
31
We prospered in the 1950s when Europe was still rebuilding and the rest of the world was either in closed communist systems or Third World.
Those days are gone, we live in a world with many players, so the comparison makes less and less sense.
5
Option #3: we can tax individuals and corporations and we can create tax brackets that act to redistribute profit either directly or indirectly - for example, we can more heavily tax corporations based on the ratio of remuneration between the highest and lowest paid employees, or the percentage of total revenue derived from selling items produced overseas. There seems to be a perverse, Ann Randian assumption that the sole end outcome for any business must be returning value to owners. But, this goofy notion is not a natural law, it's just something greedy people made up. We could just as reasonably decide the primary end outcome, beyond selling a service or product, is functioning as a great employer or being a responsible environmental steward, or minimizing the carbon footprint and we can structure the tax code to redirect businesses to consider these options.
3
Human - That is a myth, the "Europe was Rubble Myth,". look at http://piketty.pse.ens.fr/files/capital21c/en/pdf/F1.1.pdf which shows that the output of Europe was about the same as the US in the Great Prosperity 1946 - 1973.
hey 19, Your option 3 is the same as my option 2 since after you tax the Rich, the only way to get the money to the people who need it and will spend it is for the federal government to spend it. And if you run the numbers, I think you will find that you cannot raise enough just by taxing the Rich. And they are very good at hiding their money.
This much under-employment and unemployment is not happenstance. It's been done to us on purpose by 1%s who regard themselves as aristocrats and the 99% (or at least the 90%) as peasants.
Their pledge of allegiance is to their own wealth and power and to international corporations. They are not Americans in any practical sense of the term.
Some of them colluded with Russia, I strongly suspect, to institute a proto-dictator they expect will make their dreams (and our nightmares) come true.
43
This "big picture" is a jigsaw puzzle missing several pieces. Work has changed because manufacturing is no longer strictly assembly line and is done much more cheaply in other countries. That condition will extend into the distant future. All economic activity must be calculated and analyzed on the global scale. National metrics such as GDP are no longer as meaningful as they once were because capital and investments flow around the world. Therefore, tax changes in one country may or may not stimulate new capital investments in that same country. Finally, the influence of special interests, lobbyists, and campaign financing on tax and investment policy and legislation cannot be overlooked. Economists cannot and generally do not take all these inputs into consideration when explaining why things turn out a given way.
7
Little is said about the employability of the upper sector of the 25-54 age group over the eight years of recovery since 2008. In that time two generations of college-degreed Americans entered the workforce and were eager to find jobs and willing to work for lower salaries, all at the expense of those laid-off workers who attained the age of 60 or over. The present recovery is largely fueled by the demand of technically-savvy people, a skillset many of the older laid-off workers did not posses and/or were not willing to learn. The manufacturing industries that left the country will not return in force, as many of the developing countries, particularly in Asia, have been successful in increasing the skills of their workers to become first rate manufacturers. This was not true in the 1990's when we were the eminent manufacturing hub of the world, particularly in the high-tech fields. Whereas we reduced our government supported research in science and technology since the 1980's, other countries expanded theirs and became efficient competitors. A necessary step towards a substantial economic recovery is to emulate our past, post-sputnik, efforts in regaining technical leadership through government investment at levels approaching 4-5% of GNP, a level that our Asian competitors are presently aiming for. This must be accompanied by an equal, or even greater investment to educate our youth to be able to fill the newly created jobs that we need to stay ahead of our competitors.
19
The end of careers has been in full swing for 20 years. We are now in the middle of the human widget phase where everyone is an underpaid and stressed out contract employee. The only upside is that colleges are going to start failing left and right as parents and kids realized there is no value in going $50,000 in debt for a job that will never materialize. And need I even mention that all these meccas of higher education use contract employees who have no benefits and no job security?
91
A good follow-up to this article would be a specific discussion on how the turnaround has affected older workers. The sad fact is that most hiring managers today are younger than 50 and the older person who wants to work until he or she qualifies for social security or wants to work beyond social security is not given a fair shake. I'm retired from the military, a college graduate with further training and experience in project management, and performance improvement with experience in government, corporate, and medical fields, but it hasn't meant a thing. Like many others,I get offered only retail jobs at minimum wage.
Take a look around the next time you are in a Target or Walmart or even a fast-food restaurant. Chances are several of the employees will have gray hair and skills far beyond what is needed for the job they are doing.
My contemporaries and I don't expect to earn what we did before the recession and we don't necessarily even expect the same jobs, but the workplace at large needs to recognize our skill sets. I'll work for less and do something different if I have to, but that different thing doesn't have to be in a retail store at minimum wage with a manager who is half my age and knows little about management.
For me, freelance writing has been a partial stopgap, but it's not a regular paycheck and doesn't provide the security needed by so many of those in the same boat. Hiring managers must recognize experience and be willing to use it.
100
And yet a certain group says it's YOUR fault. That group is in power now and it's not about to change. They will place no blame on their own who want skilled young desperate cheap labor. willing to work for peanuts.
14
Completely agree. It is discouraging to have managers afraid to hire people whose careers were hurt in the recession and will need to work into their sunset years. It can be something different, but we don't have a choice.
The 1953 cohort was 55 when the recession hit. We are 64 now, and there are a whole lot of us. It has been hard to change careers even with credentials, hard to be a re-entry worker, even after training. We are all downsizing early--the obvious response to this scenario. We don't need more stuff or more house--we need to work.
Consider the talents and skills we still have. I wish we could form work collectives and create our own jobs for ourselves, since no one will give us a chance.
1953 kids step up. Seriously! We need to organize! Anyone want to take the lead here?
8
" .. Hiring managers must recognize experience and be willing to use it."
Sir, a little helpful advice -- humble-brag rarely works. A little humility can.
1
Well, I personally know nine people who found new jobs, thanks to Ryan and McConnell.
I see them every morning when they hand me my donuts.
Don't look for anything like a recovery any time soon, not after Mr. Trump has spent eight months aggressively alienating every trading partner we have on the planet.
Whatever may happen with jobs, don't look for people to earn anything approaching what they were before. Profits should continue to surge, though. And investments in twenty-layered shell corps.
I understand wall-builders should be doing fine in the near future.
60
You're not paying attention. The steepest rise in employment (and wage recovery) occurred since Trump took office.
1
It's really hard to put Humpty Dumpty back together again. Analyzing macro data and making the umpteenth reference to "the opioid crisis" is relevant, but there are myriad reasons "why the jobs recovery is not complete". Here are a few not mentioned in the article: large increases to healthcare costs, the psychological impact of losing a job ("the opioid crisis is an EFFECT of the 2008 recession at least as much as it is a CAUSE of an incomplete recovery), technological developments, globalization, changing tastes and preferences. Articles like this seem to toggle from macro data to anecdotal, "slice of life" profiles of individuals impacted by -insert issue here-. Bottom line: Life is hard and unfortunate things happen. Humans must be adaptable and anticipate change. Expecting the same thing to happen over and over again is not the answer. Standardized parts, assembly line production and related concepts that fueled that mindset are going extinct...so must the mindset. Analyzing the same old macro data will likely yield the same old conclusions.
11
The hardest burden has fallen on not just the least educated, but also on those over 50, many of them among the best educated.
I'd seized my chance to move upward - following the American dream - and relocated to take a PhD, which was funded through a lot of teaching (as an adjunct). The recession slowly wiped out all my adjunct employment over the following three years, with cutbacks all around that meant my income dived steadily downward. That meant the end of my PhD even as I was writing my dissertation; no employment, no more PhD.
I became partly disabled with a back injury during those years as well -- the price of being over 50, and of course my scanty adjunct-level insurance vanished concomitantly.
My elderly mother, meanwhile, was needing more and more care and my still-fully-employed siblings didn't want to do it, or couldn't relocate to her neck of the woods.
Now it is I who care for my mother, while still being less than fully fit myself, and having only intermittent and part-time employment in a rural area that has no higher ed employment. I've lost my savings, am accruing no social security for my own later years. My mom has the high quality of life that many over 80 enjoy. Meanwhile I expect to have poverty through my entire older years, EVEN THOUGH I COULD BE WORKING in any of the fields or positions for which my master's (and ABD) and decades of experience qualify me.
I'm not alone. But I am abandoned. As are so many others.
133
I truly empathize! The reality is life is a crapshoot for everyone and the leveling force should be government to protect and save those who are overcome by life's circumstances. Obviously, government has failed miserably!!
Politicians are corrupted by a system that rewards lies and hypocrisy. Politicians exist because of the largesse of wealthy donors. The politician's future rests upon doing the bidding of the people who put them and keep them in power. That's government in a nutshell.
As unfair as T.L.Moran's life is, sadly there are many millions of Americans who are far worse off and lack the education, the intelligence and the health to survive in this country.
American politicians have collectively turned their back on millions of citizens in hundreds of towns and cities like Elyria, OH. And, I suggest that they are paid to do so. It is no surprise why a lying hypocrite (who also happens to be a megalomaniac) rises to become president. People are viscerally angry!
2
T, you don't cite what field you are in. High demand areas (engineering) have no problems. Social sciences -- not good, at all. Everyone knows that, T.
We used to regulate our economy to make it create jobs. It was profitable and it funded rising standards of living for the poorest among us.
De-regulation was a lie meant top enrich a few who were already rich even more at the expense of the rest of us.
The solution is obvious, go back to regulating the economy to be stable and job producing. That means exorbitant profits go away in favor of average profits the money will be moved back into the pay and tax rolls where it belongs to support the people of the nation from which the profits are being made.
That is fair and rational, what we have now is irrational and unfair.
54
Slowing down the express immigration train may help as well.
We used to import foreign labor when it was needed. Not so much today.
Certainly not as things become more automated.
7
What the authors failed to mention in this article are that some people, including myself, never found the quality jobs that were lost or devolved after the financial crisis. I now work for myself, however, I'm not making nearly what I did prior to the crisis. The job I did have was working internally for a large commercial real estate company, while after the crisis owners turned to 3rd party companies for the services I was providing. That said, I am also working on a Masters degree in an unrelated field which may also be overlooked in the article.
18
When I was a young lad I was constantly being told I needed a college degree to get a decent job. Remember the ad that showed Abraham Lincoln being turned down for jobs by a jobs because he didn't have a degree, and finally being offered a job as a chauffeur? Trouble is that the people I knew that had one were constantly applying for low-level jobs that were all that was available, and they were always told they were overqualified and people like them never stayed at jobs long. This people doing the hiring could never see that different people had different desires for life, and not just manufacturing jobs but all jobs were designed to have the same sort of people doing the same sort of things. The only exception was people like artists or writers, and these hardly ever got paid. And this was before the mass automation and exporting of jobs. Unions used to also be a help too, but unions didn't help people be creative individuals but more cookie cutter creatures.
These days, it isn't just that jobs are being taken over by computers, it's also that people are still wanted to be more like computers themselves. It isn't just that education must be affordable and easier to get, it's that everything has to be made more suitable for human beings. Nature and the environment must also be respected This is the only way that people will be able to have decent lives at home and at work and in between and not be constantly tempted to nullify themselves with drugs or suicide.
8
"The American economy has created nearly 16 million new jobs in the eight years since the end of the Great Recession" The economy may have created jobs but they are NOT the jobs people lost, many are now minimum wage jobs without benefits leaving them much worse off. Good jobs with benefits did not come back after the recession.
96
The only growing segment is service industry, mostly fast food.
And maybe elder care. Who wants to do THAT for 8/hour?
5
We'll all be working at Dunkin' D and Starbucks. But only until they perfect automated servers.
3
Gee, J, what happened 2015's "hey, things aren't so bad?"
Many knew that claim was phony. Which is one reason why HRC lost -- stale ideas never work effectively.
1
"Thousands of workers who lost their jobs struggled to find work and ultimately stopped looking. Many, according to Mr. Yagan’s data, still haven’t found it." Well said. And many - men and women, in every field - who were age 45 to 50 and up are in this category.
Many have lost an entire DECADE of working and, if possible, saving, and saving for retirement.
Why? Because the labor market marches onward and the focus for desirable labor naturally corrects, re-corrects and falls on the young and younger. It's assumed to be easier and cheaper to hire them. Will younger people stay? Stay long enough to provide value to an employer? Maybe. Maybe not. But it's assumed to be cheaper to just deal with the turnover of the young. Meanwhile, many experienced, eager to work, skilled and relatively loyal workers -- older men and women -- sit on the sidelines, make due with part-time, or free-lance. So many of these older workers have largely already fallen off the stats, as they've gone for months, years, without work or work that is counted.
114
Once unemployment benefits run out, you are officially not counted among the "unemployed" anymore. Nice rigged game, ain't it.
10
You describe my situation perfectly. In 2009, Barnes & Noble eliminated my position, after nine years editing books at a small publisher they had bought a few years earlier. They gave me all of five minutes to decide to sign a paper that said they weren’t laying me off because of my age (I was 54). I had to sign it, or they wouldn’t have let me have the severance package. After that was gone, I had to drop my health insurance, and start hitting my 401K. After a year, B&N gave me some contract work. I was still in touch with the younger people who hadn’t been laid off, and know that they really loaded them up with work, to make up for all the senior-level editors they had laid off, in batches, 2009 to 2013. Eventually, that publishing branch was closed by the New York office.
Soon enough, my income dropped so low that I was forced to sell my condominium and rent a room and a storage space for my furnishings. I now live in a federally subsidized apartment building and get food stamps. I am an adjunct teacher (I have a master’s) with no benefits and no more guarantee than a barista at Starbucks that my next class will be full enough to “make.” I had to take early retirement at 62 last year, just to make ends meet. It’s been years of discouragement and ageism. I had some great job interviews but sometimes I was half the age of the interviewer.
I now live in a federally subsidized apartment building and get food stamps. I am done. I am so done.
38
@Janet:
From the BLS web page:
"Some people think that to get these figures on unemployment, the government uses the number of people collecting unemployment insurance (UI) benefits under state or federal government programs. But some people are still jobless when their benefits run out, and many more are not eligible at all or delay or never apply for benefits. So, quite clearly, UI information cannot be used as a source for complete information on the number of unemployed."
You can read their explanation of how they count the unemployed at:
https://www.bls.gov/cps/cps_htgm.htm
2
Starting from scratch after losing your house has a tendency to put one behind economically. Fairly hard to recover from this when you are over a certain age.
The largest demographic moving quickly into poverty are the baby boomers.
So many of them are in the poorhouse right now and it is only going to get much worse. I really wonder where so many will end up in another decade or two.
No money saved for retirement or it was legally stolen. Nothing.
Slab City living in a 30 year old motor home, here we come.
79
Who can afford to purchase a 30 year old trailer - if you can even find a trailer park these days? Maybe they still exist where you live, but as far as I'm aware my hometown has maybe 2.
2
Great points here. The recession hurt a lot of people and did lasting damage. Combine that with the fact that the majority of workers in this country are not saving anything for the future, and we have a giant disaster on our hands.
For so many years, people were "forced" to save through pension plans, which were a part of total compensation. In general, wages for those with pensions were lower than those without. But those with pensions could retire and live a stable retirement with both pension and social security benefits.
Then came the 1980s and 1990s, and the dismantling of pension plans. In their place, the wonderful 401(k), which was touted as "educational" and a "great opportunity to earn large returns." In reality, it was a great opportunity for the corporate CEOs and institutional shareholders to rake in additional profits, knowing all along that the cost savings of small matching contributions vs pension contributions would be enormous.
And now, those whose fathers and mothers benefited the most from those pensions are the same people left out in the cold with nothing in their bank accounts and nothing but misery in their futures.
14
Right. The only positive thing I see in the conversion from pensions to 401ks is that since data mining a decade ago revealed conclusively that most people aren't able to 401k a healthy enough retirement is that calls to convert social security into a similar scheme have largely been muted.
2
Oh, come now! There are jobs aplenty just waiting to be filled...if and when many of the unemployed or underutilized or underpaid just wake up to the fact that moping, complaining and plain old lack of gumption will never be the answers. The hardest part is starting to work - at almost anything...and then going from there in a day and age when most change jobs and careers many times over.
5
How about you get one those jobs - typically in the service industry making minimum wage with low/no benefits - and go raise a family and send your kids to school and take vacations and save for retirement on those wages. We'll all be watching closely to see just how you make it all work so easily.
151
Been there, did that. It turns out that those jobs are better than no job. Some jobs simply are not going to come back no matter how strong the economy ... being resilient also means being flexible.
11
Please point to a time in the last twenty years when policy and finance did anything to promote your idea of "flexibility". In fact I challenge you to find ANYTHING that proves that big business and regulation did ANYTHING BUT endeavor for this very situation we find ourselves in.
8
Maybe recessions are like TIAs (transient ischemic attacks, also called "mini-strokes"). There is a cumulative effect of repeated insults to a system. In the case of our economy, it has increasingly been working to the benefit of the very few, often at the expense of the rest of us since at least the 1980's. What may have seemed like a downturn to some was a cataclysm for many others. I think many people were simply overwhelmed beyond the ability to recover, like a body which has had one too many infections. The question is, when are we, or really ARE WE going to do what is necessary to fix this? Unfortunately a real fix will require some sacrifice on the part of the rich, either by increasing salaries and benefits for employees or paying more in taxes, or both. If we can't do that, then we need to get accustomed to the permanent loss of people from participation in society. Will they be missed?
70
Voodoo economics works really well, does it not?
3
How does a country have a "consumer driven economy" when there are few to no consumers left? That's where we are headed, whether the cheerleaders here want to admit that or not. Of course, then we could open the borders back up and import all the $5 an hour illegals we want. They'll keep it all going, right? Right?
8
There's also the prospect that people are making less, in real terms, even though they may technically be considered employed.
79