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 ...
There is a lot of the problem. Non value added chuckleheads prorating to a project at top dollar.
Dump the dead wood, streamline the process.
Good point. I am fortunate; I produce something real.
Bingo. Any improvement in productivity, and/or willingness to work your people to death with a massive back-up labor pool leaves us outmatched at every step. Something only protectionism can counter.
I’m no fan of protectionism, though.
I am a producer as well.
But I see most of my budget eaten up by nipple heads in meetings acting important and throwing out road blocks to production.
Heck, if the process worked we wouldn’t need the eggheads being paid top dollar to troubleshoot the process.
They thrive on BS rather than focus on production.
A BIG problem I see now adays is we have gone down this route that only College educated douchebags are smart.
We are on a path that disenfranchises the Common man, the backbone, the soul, the very bulk of the economy. The consumer.
Try to run a company without producers.
If the middle class is dispensable you just dismissed your profit
Just for the record, I strongly favor protectionism!
...that is protecting our liberties against unionism.
Big Labor and its anti-business, anti-capitalist, anti-freedom agenda (propped up Democrats) is a cancer. We can kill this evil beast with Right to Work. Those fools who still wish to join a union outfit can still do so but without coercing others to be part of the corruption.
He pretends to hate Wall Street while he really has very good relationships with Wall Street leftists.
I swear, What I am seeing is management thwarting production.
The more ****ed up it is the more they can demand in pay to “fix it”
Dr Demming was right
I see the six sigma black belts hose **** up all the time
” ...that is protecting our liberties against unionism. “
An even bigger problem is the teacher’s union because our educational system just isn’t any match for the Chinese and other countries.
But we have an even bigger problem in that our pop culture values style and despises anything of real substance. There’s a saying that in China, Bill Gates is their Britney Spears. In the US, Britney Spears... is our Britney Spears.
“He pretends to hate Wall Street while he really has very good relationships with Wall Street leftists.”
not the millions in the finance industry that lost their jobs.
Right to work IS the answer.
And that doesn’t just apply to the Unions. It applies to elite eggheads as well.
Everyday, a push to take ownership over non value added processes and dismiss value added processes.
All based on class.
I have seen college educated folks build empires thwarting the process, and innovative worker bees dismissed as cattle.
Please excuse my ignorance; what are value-added and non-value-added processes?
Please excuse my ignorance; what are value-added and non-value-added processes?
Value added is a guy that saves the customer money and makes the company money doing the job in one week.
Non value added are the 25 bean counters charging for 8 weeks after the job is done rangling over BS that doesn’t change the end product.
Value add refers to “extra” feature(s) of an item of interest (product, service, person, etc.) that go beyond the standard expectations and provide something “more” while adding little or nothing to its cost. Value added features give competitive edges to companies with otherwise more expensive products.
America will NEVER be able to compete with China as long as the capital gains tax rates are 0% there, and up to 35% here.
It is by design.
We need a president that can lead! All that has to be done is lower the corp rate tax to 10% Loosen regulations so that companies can compete. Give companies tax breaks for creating jobs here...The more jobs they create the bigger the tax break!
I have never understood some of this stuff that goes on in the world.
Say I own a breakfast cafe, And I think that potatoes and flour are cheap so I serve huge portions of hash browns and huge flakey biscuits for the same price as the clown across town that is skimpy and charges more and treats his customers like ****, the egg yolk is busted, there is no tobasco on the table the portions are small...
Who do you think is value added?
Where would you eat breakfast?
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.