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Job growth cools slightly, recovery grinds on [W:225]

Grim17 said:
Since you all just love charts so much...

View attachment 67140395

As you can see, there has been virtually no change in the percent of eligible working Americans that have jobs since the recession ended in 2009.

That's 3 years of nothing, nada, zilch, zero, zip...
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We can refer to that as a structural shift in the U.S. labor market. Namely the retiring of boomers and a glut of low-skilled/low-wage labor that tends to dominate Anglo-Saxon economies.
 
phattonez said:
You mean capital isn't homogeneous?
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Technology is not crowding out skilled labor. Otherwise there would not be such a massive demand for such. We still need people to make things.
 
Kushinator said:
We can refer to that as a structural shift in the U.S. labor market. Namely the retiring of boomers and a glut of low-skilled/low-wage labor that tends to dominate Anglo-Saxon economies.
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Right. It's not because of malinvestment in higher orders of production. So, unemployment in retail and manufacturing is the same, right?

fredgraph.png
 
Kushinator said:
Technology is not crowding out skilled labor. Otherwise there would not be such a massive demand for such. We still need people to make things.
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When have you ever known me to argue in favor of the Luddite Fallacy?
 
Grim17 said:
Since you all just love charts so much...

View attachment 67140395

As you can see, there has been virtually no change in the percent of eligible working Americans that have jobs since the recession ended in 2009.

That's 3 years of nothing, nada, zilch, zero, zip...
Click to expand...

I suspect that the recession temporarily speed up the process of becoming more efficient. I know that I reduced my staff by a higher precent than I lost in gross sales.
.
When the recession ended, it ended the necessity of frantically trying to become more efficient, and we have probably gone back to a more normal rate of increase in the application and usage of technology. This probably explains the big drop in your chart, and then leveling off by the time that the recession ended.

It also explains why job growth now is just barely above population growth, despite the fact that our GDP has fully recovered from the recession.

There's a heck of a lot of things effecting the labor force participation rate, some pushing it one way, others pushing it the other way. Long term, I suspect that our aging society, and increasing level of technology will win out over the other factors, and the labor force participation rate will continue to drop throughout the century, with the most major mediating factor being the shorter work week or more holidays and vacation time.
 
imagep said:
I suspect that the recession temporarily speed up the process of becoming more efficient. I know that I reduced my staff by a higher precent than I lost in gross sales.
.
When the recession ended, it ended the necessity of frantically trying to become more efficient, and we have probably gone back to a more normal rate of increase in the application and usage of technology. This probably explains the big drop in your chart, and then leveling off by the time that the recession ended.
Click to expand...

Why was it mostly in construction? Why was retail generally unaffected? Why was manufacturing affected a middling amount?

It also explains why job growth now is just barely above population growth, despite the fact that our GDP has fully recovered from the recession.
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I suspect it's mostly government spending.

There's a heck of a lot of things effecting the labor force participation rate, some pushing it one way, others pushing it the other way. Long term, I suspect that our aging society, and increasing level of technology will win out over the other factors, and the labor force participation rate will continue to drop throughout the century, with the most major mediating factor being the shorter work week or more holidays and vacation time.
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It would be a great thing if it was due to increased prosperity and wealth, but I suspect we have stagnated.
 
phattonez said:
Right. It's not because of malinvestment in higher orders of production. So, unemployment in retail and manufacturing is the same, right?

fredgraph.png
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First off the graph depicts construction, not manufacturing. Secondly, there is a severe shortage of skilled tradesman, namely welders. Your strawman is of no use to you.
 
phattonez said:
When have you ever known me to argue in favor of the Luddite Fallacy?
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If you continue to respond with loaded questions, i will not.
 
Kushinator said:
WTF are you talking about? Manpower group is listed on the NYSE and has a current market cap of $3.5 billion. My purpose here is not to spoon feed.
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Manpower specializes in providing employees with lower educational levels, such as welders (as opposed to Accountants) to businesses for relatively short periods of time. The more people who go into welding, the higher their inventory of workers is, and the more successful they can be in their industry. They have a clear bias towards welders and roofers and the like.

Do you deny there is a severe shortage in skilled tradesman?
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No, I don't deny it, I just don't have knowledge of it. Thats why I asked for a source. I was just expecting a better source from you though (thats a compliment, your sources are usually top notch and there are few posters on this forum that I respect more for their knowledge).
 
Kushinator said:
First off the graph depicts construction, not manufacturing. Secondly, there is a severe shortage of skilled tradesman, namely welders. Your strawman is of no use to you.
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Sorry, I meant construction. Manufacturing would be right in the middle there. So do you want to explain why construction was hit so much harder than retail and historically is always more volatile?

fredgraph.png
 
Kushinator said:
We can refer to that as a structural shift in the U.S. labor market. Namely the retiring of boomers and a glut of low-skilled/low-wage labor that tends to dominate Anglo-Saxon economies.
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I'm sure people like yourself who are desperately trying to twist the numbers into something good, will come up with a lot of things to "refer" to the facts as...

But bear in mind that since the EP ratio flattened out in 2009, the number of eligible workers has expanded by over 8 million people. When you do the math, that is nearly 4 million additional Americans who aren't working. Now have another look:

ep_ratio.jpg
 
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phattonez said:
Why was it mostly in construction? Why was retail generally unaffected? Why was manufacturing affected a middling amount?
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Your graph clearly shows that the employment of construction workers increased during the housing boom, and decreased during the housing bust, and is now again at about the same level as retail employees. I don't find that surprising, and I believe that you probably don't find that surprising either.

sorry, I think I am missing your point.
 
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imagep said:
Your graph clearly shows that the employment of construction workers increased during the housing boom, and decreased during the housing bust, and is now again at about the same level as retail employees. I don't find that surprising, and I believe that you probably don't find that surprising either.

sorry, I think I am missing your point.
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That's percent change, and it's all business cycles, not just the most recent one.
 
imagep said:
Manpower specializes in providing employees with lower educational levels, such as welders (as opposed to Accountants) to businesses for relatively short periods of time. The more people who go into welding, the higher their inventory of workers is, and the more successful they can be in their industry. They have a clear bias towards welders and roofers and the like.

No, I don't deny it, I just don't have knowledge of it. Thats why I asked for a source. I was just expecting a better source from you though (thats a compliment, your sources are usually top notch and there are few posters on this forum that I respect more for their knowledge).
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You would have a point if they continually stated that skilled trades were highly demanded, but they do not (this trend began in 2008). Why don't you tell me what would be an acceptable source criteria and i will (just this once) provide one that meets your criteria.
 
Grim17 said:
I'm sure people like yourself who are desperately trying to twist the numbers into something good, will come up with a lot of things to "refer" to the facts as...

But bear in mind that since the EP ratio flattened out in 2009, the number of eligible workers has expanded by over 8 million people. When you do the math, that is nearly 4 million additional Americans who aren't working. Now have another look:

View attachment 67140399
Click to expand...

Then that represents little change. About half of our citizens work, and about half don't. I'm not surprised by this at all.

Or am I just missing your underlying point?
 
phattonez said:
Sorry, I meant construction. Manufacturing would be right in the middle there. So do you want to explain why construction was hit so much harder than retail and historically is always more volatile?

fredgraph.png
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Because the demand for new housing fell off a cliff. As Image stated, i am not sure what your point is....
 
imagep said:
Then that represents little change. About half of our citizens work, and about half don't. I'm not surprised by this at all.

Or am I just missing your underlying point?
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That's not little change. That's huge. A 5% change over a typical 62.5% means that 8% more people are unemployed than are typically employed. Nearly 1 in 10 people who would be working are not.
 
Kushinator said:
Because the demand for new housing fell off a cliff. As Image stated, i am not sure what your point is....
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In every. Single. Recession?
 
Kushinator said:
You would have a point if they continually stated that skilled trades were highly demanded, but they do not (this trend began in 2008). Why don't you tell me what would be an acceptable source criteria and i will (just this once) provide one that meets your criteria.
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Most any source that is not by a private company that has a vested interest in selling tools, or in having a large pool of tradesmen. It would also help if the source wasn't politically motivated (ie Heritage Foundation).

You seem to like data from the government, I will accept that as being a reasonable source.
 
imagep said:
You seem to like data from the government, I will accept that as being a reasonable source.
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And government is less biased than companies?
 
pinqy said:
Ok, let's say you expand the definition to everyone in the entire population who is not employed. You now have one picture...employed out of total population.Pretty much everyone in the world uses the ILO definition of actively looking for work.

[qutoe] it's important in demographics for people to understand how many people will be working and how many people who will not be working.
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Sure, but you don't need to change the definition of unemployment to see that. And by expanding it to all not working, you cannot tell who will or will not be working. You can't tell who wants to work, who is available, or what anyone is doing about working.

They are. And they are studied. Expanding the definition of unemployed would actually hurt researching those issues. As it is, we can look at who is working, who is looking for work, who might start looking for work, who doesn't want to work etc. That would be a lot harder to do if you simply grouped everyone together as "unemployed."
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It seems you don't quite understand. What you mentioned will still be studied and analyzed. The other is just a simple formula used in demographics to determine the future costs of public programs and how they will be paid. Roght now the boomers are going to need a lot of young people there to pay for their pensions, medical expenses and so forth. Will these expenses be covered by those who are working and paying taxes is an important question. This research also has implications in immigration also.
 
phattonez said:
That's not little change. That's huge. A 5% change over a typical 62.5% means that 8% more people are unemployed than are typically employed. Nearly 1 in 10 people who would be working are not.
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The increase in hourly productivity during the recession might explain that, well at least thats my best guess.

How would you explain that?
 
imagep said:
The increase in hourly productivity during the recession might explain that, well at least thats my best guess.

How would you explain that?
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Malinvestment in higher orders of production means that employees have to shift from capital goods to consumer goods to meet the prevailing time interest. As long as government is trying to prop up an arbitrary time preference, unemployment will continue. The reason higher orders of production are affected more than lower orders is explained by Austrian Business Cycle Theory. It is the only theory that explains why capital goods are always hit harder in a recession than consumer goods.
 
phattonez said:
In every. Single. Recession?
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Yep. It makes sense as well! People are less likely to spend money on real estate when the risk of losing your job increases rather dramatically. We are less likely hold back spending on retail purchases, you know... because they typically do not require financing in the tune of 3 times your yearly income to purchase. You are beginning to grasp at straws.
 
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