- 06 Jul 2018 12:01
#14930483
Where to start?
1] IIRC, the unemployment rate is not the right measure now after the GFC of 2008. You should be looking at the Labor Participation Rate. IIRC, it has still not gotten to anywhere near the all time high. All time high came after more women entered the workforce. People who gve up looking and people with part time jobs are not counted as "unemployed", yet they could get a full time job if there was one they could do.
2] The article talks about a lack of people with the required skills. So, now we should hear about how our schools have failed to output young people who have the skills necessary to smoothly slide into a job. After decades of freezing and even cutting school budgets now we hear that the students can't get jobs because they lack the skills. Maybe the company owners will have to *pay* to send "interns" to trade schools to have them taught what they need to know. Incl. a stipend to feed them while they learn.
3] But, yes, wages are way too low. the economy is always in a war. A war between the workers and the owners. After Reagan the labor laws have been changed or ignored to benefit the owners and now the owners are crying that they have squeezed the workers so hard for so long that the next generation of workers [i.e., the children of the squeezed workers] are not educated enough to hold down a job. The owners got all they wanted and now are crying. I say tough shit.
4] Who's fault is it that the current crop of graduates is sub-standard? If we can even prove that they are such. In my mind, it is not right to blame a whole generation of students. They were just kids. They mostly all didn't have the life experience and/or skills to know what they had to do. They looked to their parents and society to tell them what they needed to do. To teach them what they needed to know. Did our society do a good enough job at doing that? It seems not.
5] I was one of the people who was forced out of the labor market by the GFC of 2008. I had a one man carpet cleaning comp., I had a great reputation in my community. But, people didn't have enough money to pay to get their carpets cleaned. My business suffered. My business got to the point in early 2009 that in Jan. [winter] I did $100 worth of work all month and then in Feb. it was $150 all mo. I went to the welfare office and was told I would have to take early Soc. Sec. which meant getting less for the rest of my life.
. . . I'm guessing there are a huge number of older people like me who are now on Soc. Sec. and the rules may keep them from going back to work if the economy/nation desperately needed them to work at something they were very good at and physically able to do. But, they are not "unemployed".