Posted on 08/18/2018 8:16:05 PM PDT by 2ndDivisionVet
This morning, the Labor Department announced that the national unemployment rate ticked up to 4 percent in June for good reasons, as hundreds of thousands more Americans sought work. For the first time in recorded history, the number of job openings is higher than the number of people looking for a job. That has raised hopes that wage growth might finally begin to pick up, with employers bidding more to attract new workers and offering raises to retain their existing staff.
Full employment — that magical economic state, in which everyone who wants work has it, and at a good wage too — finally seems to be near. In much of Iowa, it already is. Out of every 100 people who want a job, 98 or 99 have one. The rate of wage growth has doubled of late, and businesses are scrambling to find workers. “It does feel like things are a little different in the last year,” Elisabeth Buck, the president of the United Way of Central Iowa, told me. “Businesses are getting a little desperate.”
In that, Des Moines and the surrounding area stand as an example of what might be coming for the national economy, both good and bad. Full employment has a remarkable way of improving the lives of low-wage workers and drawing new individuals into the labor force. But it also exposes the scars that even a very hot economy is unable to heal....
(Excerpt) Read more at theatlantic.com ...
Lot of good farmland disappearing...……………………...
Big farms are almost ***this*** close to full automation, for all intents and purposes. In the 19th Century 90% of the country farmed, now it’s 1.5%.
So, you have some deeper insight in the article.
I did a search of the article.
The name Trump doesn't appear in the article.
A 4 percent unemployment rate is considered “full employment.” We’re below 4 percent and we have 0.95 candidates for every job opening. We’re beyond full employment.
Yogi Berra might say that if you had full employment, you wouldn’t. Why? The folks at the unemployment office would be unemployed.
These were problems in the 80s and 90s. An employee could go to lunch and have another job that afternoon. Half my time there was helping veterans and the other half welfare-to-work, since I took a promotion from another state department to do that. If my welfare moms (they were 97% female) had a head on their shoulders I could find them a very decent middle-class job where they could leave TANF and SNAP behind. We also would pay their tuition up to a bachelors degree (masters in special cases) so they had a leg up over the average worker in that way at least. Most of my veterans, of course, were pretty much self-motivated and didn’t like sitting idle. Some of these were mid and upper level executives and I often boosted their pay over their last position by $50,000 - $100,000 or more.
Nobody goes there anymore, it’s too crowded.
Can you get me a job as a gigolo to college-age girls?
But I haven’t seen wages go up very much. A lot of places can’t find workers — you can’t entice workers to join your company if you don’t offer more money.
Must feel good to see that area booming like this! Very nice recreational areas around there too. Anyone who thinks Iowa is flat hasn’t been there.
The article is pretty clear that wages are going up.
Not anymore, it’s not.
Can you get me a job as a gigolo to college-age girls?
Figures, lazy until the end. You want to be gigolo, go out and market yourself, create a brand and do it. No one is preventing you from doing it.
“We got ‘em right where they want us.”
Good on you!
Are you sure you’re not going to be in a rocking chair next to a spittoon muttering incessantly about Sessions?
I received an unsolicited email the other day asking if I was interested in a position in information management. I haven’t worked since leaving the UOG in 2015. They found my resume on Link-In or some other professional networking site I no longer use.
I have no desire or need to work again. But, it might be interesting to have an interview except the job was in California and I refuse to live there. I replied with a polite but firm “No thank you.”
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