Posted on 11/11/2010 9:33:02 PM PST by 2ndDivisionVet
The well-paying, predominantly white-collar jobs that once sustained many American communities are disappearing at an alarming rate, keeping the unemployment rate stubbornly high despite the end of the Great Recession.
More troubling, these jobs in accounting, financial analysis, commercial printing and a broad array of other mostly white-collar occupations are unlikely to come back, experts predict.
Although unemployment is high in South Florida -- 12.8 percent -- the trend isn't as pronounced here partly because there weren't as many professional jobs to begin with.
There isn't a single cause to the national trend. Some of it is explained by changing technology, some of it is the result of automation. Sending well-paying jobs to low-cost centers abroad is another big part of the story. So is global competition from emerging economies such as China and India.
The result is the same in all cases, however. Jobs that paid well, required skills and produced vital communities are going away and aren't being replaced by anything comparable.
``Unfortunately, the evidence is that you see a form of downward mobility of workers who are displaced from middle-skilled, stable career occupations,'' said David Autor, an economist at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, in an interview.
Autor published a much-discussed paper in April, suggesting that the U.S. labor market has become polarized, with employment growth in the high-skill, high-wage end, and the low-skill, low-wage end. The vast middle, he concluded, is shrinking.
``The Great Recession has quantitatively but not qualitatively changed the direction of the U.S. labor market,'' Autor concluded, pointing to an accelerating trend that he said has been under way for more than a decade.
As it stands, 14.8 million Americans were unemployed in September, 6.1 million of them for six months or longer....
(Excerpt) Read more at miamiherald.com ...
Exactly - they have done a whole week-long series, trying to prep us ignorant serfs for our new world of austerity. How obnoxious is that?? Meanwhile, it’s good to be King.
Go to work for the federal government. Five percent of them make over $ 150K a year, up from 0.5 percent five years ago. The average federal employee makes almost twice what us dolts in the private sector do. By one estimate, federal employees comprise about 70 percent of the fliers in first class seats from Reagan Airport; when that wonderful Donald Rumsfeld (Robert McNamara’s long lost son) was Defense Secretary, he authorized a huge number of DOD bureaucrats to fly first or business class at our expense. I can’t blame this only on Obama, though he has not helped the situation one iota. Traditionally, government workers made less in return for a very generous pension and early retirement system and no layoffs. Bush, Sr. and his son (no Reagans they) pushed the concept of “Pay comparability” for government workers with the private sector, which to me should mean you get in return the same job security as we have (i.e., NONE). Typical of the Bush bunch, pay “comparability” turned out to be “pay superiority” with no loss of job security. You can’t beat it, work for the federal government.
You really make a great case for globalism. No matter what we do, we’re doomed with it is what you’re saying. Sounds like fun!
First of all, my case says that "Globalism" is going to be there whether we participate or not, so it's best to participate to the extent we can get some benefit. But that doesn't mean we can't manage the consequences.
Interesting that you use the term "Doom"--which originally did not connote failure, but rather a testing. Just because there's a challenge and the path I indicated leads to downfall, doesn't mean there's no other path. As I have indicated, becoming the owners of entities that profit from the market-level wages is the way to go. Americans have to be owners, not of houses, etc., but of profit-making ventures that apply market principles, not protectionism.
Oh, yeah...the adult lemonade-stand kids are recognizable because they're the ones with their heads stuck in the sand in-between their anti-Globalism rants. :-)
Unless you’re a veteran, or non-white/non-male, landing a federal job is a bear.
Lol, failed to stay competitive??? Competitive with whom, people in China and other cheap labor nations who work for scarcely 5% of US wages.
Do you think you're competitive? Tell us what you do and let's find out what you should make based on "competitive" worldwide compensation? Makes no difference what you do. You aren't competitive. No American is "competitive" with the cheapest labor in the world's poorest nations>
Get off your little self-constructed pedestal and tell us what you do so we can determine what you should be earning.
No thank you. I would not be happy working with a bunch of robots. ANYONE can read rules and regs from a book.
They hit the Lotto with the “compassionate Conservatives”.
And look what the CC’s got in return..a kick in the gut in 2008.
Mostly, yes. The reason for the distraction is that the protectionists (the smart ones, at least) understand that they are calling for the government to protect us from a problem the government has (largely) created.
As an example, I myself think private home ownership is a benefit to society, and the government should encourage private home ownership as a matter of public policy (think Jack Kemp). Well, how has that worked out for us? I mean, after the government started managing policy.
There is really very little difference between those folks who think the government can manage the economy to provide them with a well-paying job, and those who think the government should provide them with homes. Or healthcare, for that matter.
Agree with most.
“tax Wall Street parasites more and use this money to slash taxes on those who build American owned manufacturing plants on US soil”
Why does the financial sector need to be in the USA? Why can’t this be moved to Canada, Singapore, China where they won’t be punished?
Speaking of “crony capitalism,” do you have another definition for the process whereby corporations lobby their government for permission to raise their prices to you?
Well heck.
It appears this POS legislation was created by a democratically controlled Congress in 2007 and Bush signed it into law, which makes articles like this very misleading.
http://www.nationalreview.com/planet-gore/246343/obamas-war-light-bulbs-greg-pollowitz
Implicit in you post is the assumption that there is no change and that the people of the world are constrained to maintaining an American middle class. The nature of change is that persistence is not viable.
The centers of world population, China and India are in the process of shucking off the oppression that has held them down. To remain a player of significance in the rapidly changing game, America must embrace the change and adapt to the new world that is emerging to know one knows where.
Obama is not capable of registering a thought beyond the ancient policies of FDR and LBJ.
Corporations without money are rather pointless aren’t they?
How does one crush moneyed corporations at their birth? If the USA doesn’t allow corporations and they are all now based outside the USA, will they be allowed to provide goods and services in the USA?
We are all supposed to go back to be farmers and herdsmen? I think Stalin tried this, communist China. Pol Pot was rather successful as long as you don’t count how many people died.
Did you actually read Jefferson’s two quotes?
Do you have a plan to implement what Jefferson wanted? What would you do?
Your story got me curious to search for the lightbulb. A couple of sites said it was sold out or discontinued, like this...
http://www.lightbulbmarket.com/discontinuedlightbulbswhy
However, if these other sites are not yet sold out, you might still be able to get them...
http://www.beverlyhillselectric.com/120wbr40.html
But #1 is right. We can't have a service economy, because such a thing doesn't really exist.
The first one is fake.
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