A look at what is really holding job growth back.

No, despite the rhetoric taxes don't seem to be the issue nor is regulation. Here's a great article:

http://www.ft.com/intl/cms/s/0/6d586922-21f0-11e1-8b93-00144feabdc0.html#axzz1gTBbz8iE

Here's a key graph from that article: http://im.media.ft.com/content/imag...10&height=553&title=&desc=US skills shortages

The financial times interviewed a large number of actual business executives and 40% of them said their biggest problem was finding qualified people to fill the openings they do have while only 4% sited taxes as their biggest concern and only 3% felt regulations were their problem. The US has a massive skills gap where we just don't have trained and qualified people to fill a lot of blue collar old economy jobs which are currently seeing a resurgence due to export growth (things like metal working). Worse most of the jobs loses have been in things like construction (there is a link with a list of which sectors have lost jobs and how many) which means those people would need retraining in order to make anything close to what they used to make. A big problem is that in order to get Unemployment you have to certify that you're not attending any type of school or training so very few of those people are actually retraining to qualify for jobs we do have.

Some people have suggested copying Germany's successful apprenticeship program (http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/business-16159943) but even German experts say that would be difficult and long term since the apprenticeship system is deeply rooted in German culture and it's economic system with people starting on the process in junior high and continuing with it all through college. Not to mention German companies still maintain the social contract of employment for life; they're willing to invest heavily in employees but they want loyalty in return and such a social contract between employer & employee died decades ago in America.

A different, but related view, is that America's current economic woes are a result of consistent under investment on several levels. Check out this article:

http://globalpublicsquare.blogs.cnn.com/2011/12/11/zakaria-the-real-burden-on-the-u-s-economy-2/

Zakaria raises some great points about how our taxes are the lowest in the industrialized world (just above Mexico's and Chile's) but our education system has gone from #2 to #20th in the world so we're now getting beat by several developing countries while our infrastructure was rated #8 20 years but now we are #20th. Those are based on results not on spending. Essentially, if the execs are to be believed, the big problem is Americans are in general poorly educated and lacking in the skills they need while our infrastructure is generally clogged and poor so they opt to move their business to places where they can find qualified workers and where the infrastructure is in better shape.

Notice how they're not mentioning taxes or regulations as being the limiting factor here? It's all about lack of skilled educated workers and the need for better infrastructure. What do you folks think about this?

I can BS on one side, and I say it makes sense on the other part.

There is a labour shortage in the industries that ARE hiring. Mainly computers and energy. These companies are scooping up the best talent as fast as possible. Just this week one of my co-workers went to work for a rival company because they offered 20% more in salary.

But, there are also industries that are cutting employees. A lot of them are low-skilled jobs, but that doesn't discount the fact that these businesses aren't hiring. And it has nothing to do with lack of help available.

Interestingly enough, the lack of good help problem applies to those industries that weren't really hit by the recession.

Basically, ConfederateCupcake is bullshitting.

Oh, look...the solutions to our woes are higher taxes and more money for the public education system.

If our current spending priorities are holding back growth, I suggest we eliminate some of that spending. As for public education, that machine continues to underperform and underserve both taxpayers and students and should get an injection of competition. If the monopoly ain't working, the solution isn't more monopoly.

We certainly need massive reform to our education system so that it actually produces people with the skills industry needs. That's more for increasing long term growth though and for the short term making it so people on UI have better access to job retraining so they have the skills to actually fill the jobs we do have is something we need to do better at. That would be way cheaper than just keeping them on the dole.

Oh, and if we want businesses to locate their factories here then we need to listen to them when they say our infrastructure isn't up to snuf or laid out correctly for them because if we ignore them the Chinese or someone else will give them what they want.

So you think the business executives are all lying do you? Damn, you're either a genius who can see through their nefarious plot or a complete retard.

Or someone who can grasp the very basic idea that you don't lay off employees as a result of being unable to find employees.

Now shut the fuck up, sit your ass down in the corner, shit your pants and cry like a little girl.

We're talking about employment growth from here not the reasons for the recession. Please keep up.

BTW if you actually read the Financial Times article (hardly a leftist or liberal source) you might learn a few things or at least be able to bring up some sort of substantive critique.

Yes, precisely. Except that the recession and overregulation are two of those reasons, which resulted and are still resulting in layoffs. You don't lay people off because of a lack of qualified people.

I call bullshit too.

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Paladin, you can do better than that. Do you really believe that public education is a bad thing? It's not enough to say that it generally underperforms and thus is not worth its money. The FT's article specifically mentions Germany's private-public dual education system. The result of many things, but also of public education is that the USA has a trade deficit of close to a trillion USD, while Germany has a trade surplus of 1.3 trillion USD, which is about a third of all wealth generated in Germany!

If those industries aren't finding the skilled workers they need, they'll need to train those workers themselves and make a commitment to not relocate overseas, because one of the big reasons that people aren't seeking those skills is not because those jobs aren't glamorous but because for the past 2+ generations we've been told to not bother with those career paths because there's always some Indian or Chinese or Mexican guy who will do it better and cheaper than you. College these days is more about learning to read and write papers, not practical industrial skills; the revamping our education system needs should come from employers who decide to train apprentices in what they need to know.

OVER REGULATION?! I'd love to hear what you think was over regulated and hopefully it's not the old, and provably false, canard about the Community Reinvestment Act of the 1970's which only effected 0.005% of loans outstanding (and had the highest repayment rate of any mortgage group).

I can agree with that. Germany does this better than us, I think, with it's two track education system. They don't tell people that everyone must go to college but for those who don't go to college they do get them into trade schools and apprenticeships which mean they do have marketable skills (metal working, plumbing, automotive repair, or what not). We used to do that but really that approach has been declining in the US since the early 1970's when we started pushing the idea that everyone should go to college. I'd love to see a German style apprenticeship program but the Germans are right that you can't just drop that into the US because it's interconnected with educational systems and part of German corporate culture.

Without changing its total education spending, the government could and should shift funds from useless humanities and liberal arts studies into programs for the hard sciences, engineering, etc. Those are the skills that this economy needs.

As for what’s holding back the creation of new positions, the top reason has in fact been weak consumer demand, not uncertainly over government regulation. Weak demand is related to the dramatic loss of household wealth since the financial crisis and the pressing need to pay down debt. Which is why—and I’ve said this before—the most effective interventionist policies would focus on relieving middle class debt, not necessarily expanding infrastructure and supply.

A change in corporate culture would have to come from employers, not the current crop of kids who are stuck between a rock and a hard place education/career-wise. If they decide to not go to college, their resumes will never even be seen by a human and even if they go to college and get a STEM degree they still likely won't have the practical skills these employers want. So instead of all this focus on noisy complaining kids there should be more on what employers can do to turn things around.

What changes would you like to see from employers? More on the job training? Do you think government has a roll such as giving tax credits or even subsidies to encourage such job training?

Now that I can totally get behind. You want to study women's studies or some other equally worthless and unemployable major, great, but you do it on your own dime. If you study a hard science or engineering though you get a free ride as long as you can maintain a 2.5 GPA or something like that. I think I'd also review the college certification process to make sure we're giving student aid to students who are actually learning real science; no more letting wack job religious schools teach "Creationist biology" and letting that count as a real science class called biology. Let's pay for science but make sure it's good science.

Apprenticeships, mostly. Get more into apprenticeships with the promise of stable employment if the apprentice does well, rather than internships where the kid does grunt work in exchange for maybe a reference on a resume. I don't think the government really needs to do anything or should do anything; it should be an employer-directed initiative. But it seems that a lot of employers would rather just complain about the kids these days.

Complaining about the kids these days has been a popular past time since the dawn of time.

There is one thing I think we could do to help get people education after high school and that is to make it into charity deduction on income taxes.

What I mean is that in addition to scholarships if people just want to give money to anyone to use for school they should be able to treat it like a charity thing.

If I want to give ConfederateSon $200,000 to go to college then I can do that and not pay any tax penalties (gift taxes) and instead I can put that $200,000 deduction on my taxes. Also ConfederateSon doesn't have to count it as income and it isn't taxable. Of course you would have to make sure the $200,000 is only used for education so it would have to be in a trust and it could never be used for anything else. We wouldn't want ConfederateSon blowing the money on the lady-boys.

And then we can encourage all these "rich" people to not only pay for their kids college but other kids and other adults as well.

And it doesn't have to be high amounts. It could be anything. Some person could just give a person a couple hundred or grand to go to a trade school (like being a truck driver) or it could go all the way up to several hundred thousand to be a doctor.

Notice I said encourage them to do it and not force them to do it.

I dunno, probably 'regularize' or something, go look in a fuckin' dictionary.

Public education is not a bad thing. It's throwing money after things that don't work that's bad. TIIC keep pouring money to get kids that don't care to read and write, while chipping away at things like GATE programs and extra-curriculars that are known to attract and keep the kinds of kids in school that the article mentions.

Then, there's the fact that one has to attend the schools within one's own neighborhood, rather than be allowed to place their kids in the school of their choice. I was self-motivated, but even that wasn't enough to get me into the pre-algebra class that I probably would have been qualified to take in seventh grade had I not been in a class with a teacher who spent as much time raising us as he did teaching.

There's several reasons that we lack proper job skills:

One, many of the skills are in new fields where there just isn't a large amount of skilled workers.

Two, many skills in our labor force, especially in manufacturing and hi tech, were atrophied in the labor pool when we shipped the majority of those jobs overseas. Instead of having in house talent, you have your choice between less experienced workers here and experienced but often less efficient workers overseas. It's very difficult to have enough people in Widget design with 5-10 years experience when 75% of those jobs went overseas for a decade and only now are beginning to return due to companies being penalized for outsourcing in the tax code now.

Three, we don't have enough people choosing science and engineering in higher education. Secondary education isn't sufficient. That will fix itself as the labor markets demands it.

Four, corporations have created a new meme as a way to depress wages. You know, all those paid liars inventing new and better ways to fuck people. Most jobs have ridiculous skill sets required now that they know people don't actually have and often the job itself doesn't require. They use this as a wedge against people asking for salaries commensurate to their actual abilities by claiming that the candidate abilities are inferior and then assigning them lower wages.

Pretty typical these days in the corporate world, especially in tech, where there's too much for any one person to know.

Education isn't so much the problem as bureaucracy is. That's only one reason big business goes overseas.

Try this John.

Of course another problem is foreign trade barriers such as the brand new giant import tax China just slapped on US made cars. Even though US imports last year only amounted to ~18,000 cars Chinese buyers had recently taken a liking to US made cars and US cars were receiving great press in the Chinese Automotive media for being higher in quality than Chinese cars yet still offering better value than European or Japanese imports. US cars also have a large amount of cache in China which worries Chinese domestic automakers (Buick, albeit made in China Buicks, are China's best selling luxury car brand out selling European and Japanese luxury cars by a wide margin).

That's an interesting idea which needs to be considered more closely. Aren't there already educational savings account programs which allow parents (or even students themselves) to contribute pretax money like an IRA or a Medical Savings Account? I suppose they still have yearly contribution limits (just like IRAs do) so they require the slow but steady approach where as you're approach would provide an additional option of someone giving a large charitable gift all at once. It's worth considering in any event.

It is in the dictionary!

http://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/regularize

reg·u·lar·ize/ˈregyələˌrīz/

Verb:

• Make (something) regular.
• Establish (a hitherto temporary or provisional arrangement) on an official or correct basis.

Who should be looking what up in the dictionary again?

They're called 529 plans.

Been reading up on them as it closer to spawning season, and they don't seem that bad. Washington's at least, you pay into it based on what college costs at the time and get paid out whatever the rate is at that time. So in otherwords if I pay 1/10th of a years worth of college at the UW this year, when the crumbsnatcher is 18 that translates into 1/10th of a years tuition.

http://www.get.wa.gov/documents/compare_plans.pdf