[Views from Ithaca] The Jobs Market Isn't as Healthy as it Seems

Oh you mean because we have outsourced our manufacturing and let illegals compete for the remaining low skill jobs, thus suppressing available work and the wages of said work? SAY IT AIN'T SO! But trying to get companies to bring some jobs back and raise the value of the worker by enforcing immigration laws is terrible. TERRIBLE.

That doesn't even mention the glut of useless college degrees we doled out to an entire generation fed terrible boomer advice like "just get a degree and you'll be good" or "just pursue your passion and the money will be there."

 

Where the jobs are being created matters, but maybe not to the overall narrative.

The Rust Belt and rural areas are still being left behind to the cities.

 

The economy may be tired of all of this winning.

 

Who do think outsourced those jobs?

It's the same people who got massive tax breaks and claimed that money would help bring more jobs.

You know the so called job creators.

Who is hiring the immigrants?

 

A couple of things

On immigration and outsourcing, if Mexicans cant come here, GM will go to Mexico, they already did. The economy is global because of advances in technology and communication. It will only become more global.

That also is the reason for slow wage growth. The minimum wage should be raised to a livable level, however American wages have to be competitive with other countries.

IMO the long term solution is getting serious about teaching trades in high schools. If the job boils down to putting round pegs in round holes, companies can find anyone anywhere to do that. Unfortunately the automotive workers unions didn't realize this

 

Can’t agree more

On the job market being tough , this is apparent to any recent college grad trying to get a job . Unless you had internships and connection built up while in school you are at a pretty big disadvantage.

I have a masters and couldn’t find a job , so I’m currently back in school getting my PhD . It’s a good thing I test well .

 

Exactly more server jobs is not the same as more executive level positions.

DD

 

Neither does the the political party that believes in small government...

I think the private sector has proven it can’t have the responsibility of retraining workers.

 

Spare me the working class populism. It sucks, but you have to adapt and you may have to move.

I believe we convinced ourselves with this free market dogma that people would get back on their feet.... but we need public investment in our labor.

 

L-O-L

With amazing economic news, SamFisher turns to anecdotal evidence to let everybody know the economy actually sucks! I love it when NYC lawyers think they have their finger on the pulse of the American economy!

 

100% agreed.

Ike had it right, be like IKE !

DD

 

Is it because of our trade issues with Wakanda?

US government lists fictional nation Wakanda as trade partner

The US Department of Agriculture listed Wakanda as a free-trade partner - despite it being a fictional country.

A USDA spokesperson said the Kingdom of Wakanda was added to the list by accident during a staff test.

The department's online tariff tracker hosted a detailed list of goods the two nations apparently traded, including ducks, donkeys and dairy cows.

In the Marvel universe, Wakanda is the fictional East African home country of superhero Black Panther.

The fictional country was removed soon from the list after US media first queried it, prompting jokes that the countries had started a trade war.

Wakanda first appeared in the Fantastic Four comic in 1966, and made a reappearance when Black Panther was adapted into an Oscar-winning film last year.

The unusual listing was spotted by Francis Tseng, a New York-based software engineer who was looking up agricultural tariffs for a fellowship he was applying for.

He told Reuters news agency that, when he first saw Wakanda on the list, he got "very confused": " thought I misremembered the country from the movie and got it confused with something else."

After the listing was removed, a USDA spokesman told the Washington Post that Wakanda's listing was added as a test file for staff, and was never supposed to be public.

"The Wakanda information should have been removed after testing and has now been taken down," he said.

After its removal, an Orlando-based reporter asked: "So do we, or do we not have free trade with Wakanda? Also where are things at on negotiations with Agrabah?"

Our incompetent administration working hard for us...

 

I guess you missed the Bloomberg article...

The pulse of the American economy is in the cities, but not so much the rust belt still.

 

This can't be overstated. Having a skilled trade is so valuable now. Having experience in a skilled trade affords you leverage.

All that being said, I'm about to blow it all up and go out on my own. I'm scared shitless. But I have to check that box or else I'll always look back and wonder what if. But having an expertise in a trade is what is affording me this opportunity, which is why PG's post resonates so strongly with me.

 

A) 6 out of 7 manufacturing jobs were eliminated by automation, not trade.
B) Manufacturing jobs will decline everywhere in the world. They are going to be replaced by machines soon enough
C) If illegals are putting downward wage pressure, just raise the minimum wage. In reality, this is not the case. Illegals are not the reason customer service and working at the mall pays squat
D) I work in business and have hired people out of college for over 20 years. And I will tell you the most useless degree people get is in business where they learn a bunch of useless ideas about how to do business that has to be unlearned and they have a lack of critical thinking. You know who perform the best? English and Philosophy majors. Go figure. If you want to be successful in business don't get a degree in business (unless its accounting).

 

One of the biggest lies ever sold to the public was the retraining nonsense, meme version "learn to code", if you actually believe that, you've either never met these people or there's a solid object lodged somewhere in your brain preventing its function.

 

While i dont disagree about automation, it still leads to more Americans need to learn trades. Another myth of immigration is they take low paying jobs

I don't have numbers i also have an overall anecdote. I have been on a lot of commercial contruction sites and the higher paying trade jobs are dominated by Hispanics, looking at residential construction sites, it's not close

 

That's simply not true, the fed assisted in a rather long study on this, and what they found was that the computing manufacturing, a very low labour intensive industry would expand in productivity, whereas the rest of the manufacturing industry was offshoring, and because we were all busy sticking minicomputers in our pockets, it was outshining the rest of manufacturing losses alone.

So they'd see, manufacturing productivity up, labour down and conclude : because automation, but what it really was, was computer productivity up, jobs increased by say, 50, air conditioning factory closed and moved to Mexico/China/India, jobs lost 3000.

Of course even from an observable position, the massive closure of factories should have been telling people that it wasn't "automation", because machines need factories too, if you replace a worker with a machine, the machine doesn't exist in a hole in the fabric of the universe.

But of course, the people benefiting from it will roll out the "experts", more phds the better, to tell people that "it's the automation", whether it's a lie or ignorance, well that's on each person to decide, but either way it's an empirically false statement.

Um, the demand for illegal labour is because legal labour is more expensive, by pushing up the cost of legal labour further, it just increases the demand for illegal labour, creating a greater pull for illegal immigration, whilst increasing the unemployment rate amongst citizens. It's the type of policy a government would enact if it actually hated its own poor, the type of outcomes you'd get from that is more homelessness, more people living in squalor (crap on the streets, garbage everywhere), etc.