Bill Clinton says the unemployed don’t have the right skills. It’s not so.

[salvorhardin]

One of the few outright false statements in Bill Clinton’s speech last night was his claim that unemployment remains high because workers just don’t have the right skills... ...the New York Fed, found that a skills mismatch caused only 1.5 points of the 5 point increase in unemployment after the financial crisis. ... Edward Lazear, a Stanford economist who served as chair of the Council of Economic Advisors for George W. Bush from 2006 to 2009, and James Speltzer of the Census Bureau, found (pdf) the same thing. ... Lazear and Speltzer also found that unemployment shows the same trends across education groups, indicating that what’s causing unemployment is low demand, not that people don’t have the skills necessary to be employed. ... Jesse Rothstein of the University of California at Berkeley, found, like Lazear and Speltzer, that unemployment rose about the same amount across all education groups. He also tries to figure out whether wages have increased. If employers are having a hard time finding skilled workers, they should increase their wages. Did they? No — not even for new job postings, and not even if you correct for changes in the number of people employed by each industry due to the Recession...

Full article with graphs: http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/ezra-klein/wp/2012/09/06/bill-clinton-says-the-unemployed-dont-have-the-right-skills-its-not-so

[xchrom]

1. yeah - i caught that too.

committed ED reform elites have to keep repeating that little factoid to make the rest of us believe it.

[formercia]

2. It doesn't require skills to flip burgers.

The jobs were outsourced years ago.

Here's a small example:

--snip--

Foreign and local machinery makers in China, the world's largest construction market, are struggling as the slowdown saps investment growth to 10-year lows. Falling profits have spurred firms to cut production or seek new clients.
Global leader Caterpillar Inc has started exporting Chinese-made machinery to the Middle East and Africa.
--snip--

http://finance.yahoo.com/news/china-approves-157-bln-infrastructure-093404338.html


Those jobs are gone forever, most likely.

[salvorhardin]

3. Aye, and many of the jobs that remain will be gone soon too

For instance, Amazon bought Kiva Systems back in March. Kiva makes a very ingenious robotic inventory and shipping management system that's already widely used, and eliminates the need for all but pickers in fulfillment centers. It doesn't take much imagination to see that Amazon will soon be replacing most of its warehouse runners with Kiva robots soon, and it's not hard to imagine that robots will replace even the pickers in short order.

[div style="text-align:center;"]

[AngryAmish]

4. THis has been a concern of mine for some time now

There is less work to do. Many jobs are getting automated. Within ten or so years truck drivers will be redundant. Airline pilots already can have the airplane do most of the flying. Expert systems already do a better job of diagnosing patients but people are too skeeved out by not having a doctor.

What happens when we can build a house with what is essentially a ink-jet printer writ large?

In my opinion about one third of the population is already unemployable. What happens when 60% of the population can't find work? That is why pot should be legal, keep them stoned and not causing trouble.

[salvorhardin]

5. Seriously, this is a good thing though

Warehouse fulfillment centers (again running with the Kiva example, but yours are good too) are exactly the sorts of jobs we want to be replacing with robots. Humans shouldn't have to do that sort of work. It's awful. See this February 2012 MoJo essay: http://www.motherjones.com/politics/2012/02/mac-mcclelland-free-online-shipping-warehouses-labor

It's also exactly what the early 20th C. futurists predicted would happen -- except they also predicted that the workers would benefit with greatly shortened hours, and [em]more[/em] pay. Instead we got all the benefits of automation, but the owners took all the rewards.

[Viva_La_Revolution]

7. Warehouse work filling orders is not really bad at all

unless they make you do it in a hot warehouse and pay min. wage while expecting you to do twice as much as a normal human.
when I was doing it several years ago they worked you hard, but not like Amazon apparently.

[digonswine]

9. I agree-

I worked in an Ashley Furniture warehouse loading furniture into trucks. We needed to be smart and pack each item by hand to maximize product per unit of space in the trucks. This was actually a mod-skill job.
Right after I left the company, they implemented a a system where your computer(scanner) told you what to pick and where to put it. This made the job lower-skill, took away any pride in doing a job well, and minimized creativity. I was glad I got out when I did.

[Mopar151]

6. Employers need educating, too.

Not to mention some SERIOUS mental health treatment...... Many - particularly small business owners - need to be shown how managing their businesses ( especially enviromental and safety issues) better, even with more employees/service providers, can make them significantly more money, with less risk.
We need, also, to remind all sorts of people in the "managing classes" that treating people like dirt COSTS them, and their employers/owners money, and not the reverse.

[raccoon]

14. Amen! There are plenty of people who apparently think being an a-hole is how to be a good boss. nt

[Mopar151]

8. An overhaul of the tax code and accounting standards would help -

Right now, deferring maintainence, and getting rid of employees not absolutely essential in the very near term, are big wins on the balance sheet - whatever their effect is past the next quarter.
That's very much an education issue, and it's anything but a simple one..

[4th law of robotics]

10. That's still 1.5 points

Or 30% of the total.

I really think the stimulus should have included a lot of money for adult jobs-training.

[Yavin4]

11. The Economy Needs Less Workers. Lower The Reitrement Age to 58.

Between globalization and automation, there are fewer jobs in the economy. We need less workers. The best solution is to allow older workers to leave the workforce earlier in order to free up more jobs for younger workers.

[salvorhardin]

12. There are a lot of things we could do

Lowering the social security eligibility age, making 32 hours the new full time work week, increasing vacation time, and reversing the credentialization trend, among others.

[raccoon]

13. Ask the IT folks about this meme! Off to greatest. nt