Origins of job market troubles hard to pinpoint

[xchrom]

http://www.washingtonpost.com/business/economy/origins-of-job-market-troubles-hard-to-pinpoint/2012/11/16/243ca40c-2fea-11e2-9f50-0308e1e75445_story.html

Everyone knows that the job market collapsed with the past recession.

But the U.S. employment picture actually began to crumble several years before that, according to new research that suggests that the origins of the current jobs troubles may be harder to pinpoint.

In this view, the jobs crisis began in 2000, when the proportion of U.S. residents of working age with jobs peaked after decades of rising steadily — and then began a decline.

This falloff “represents an historic turnaround in the evolution of U.S. employment,” says Robert A. Moffitt, an economics professor at Johns Hopkins University and the author of a new paper on the subject from the National Bur

[leveymg]

1. "Hard to pinpoint"? It's called offshoring. Duh.

[Little Star]

3. Exactamondo!!!!!!!

[99Forever]

4. No kidding!

How freakin' dumb do those gawdamn "experts" think we are?


Anything but the blatantly obvious truth, I guess.

[Strelnikov_]

2. And 2000 is when the 'offshoring' floodgates opened

If you ain't buying what your neighbor is making, your neighbor will soon be out of a job.

'Free Trade' that mostly works in one direction is not trade, it's a box canyon.

Ain't that hard. Even Leroy up to Pigsknuckle (no, not that one, the other one) figgered it out, and he's dumber than a cow.

[MannyGoldstein]

5. The middle class has no money

It's all been transferred to the Predator Class.

So commerce slows, then fewer jobs are needed to meet the dropping demand.

Only government spending that creates middle class jobs, i.e. Kaynsian pump priming, can make things better at this point. Good thing that bipartisan austerity begins Jan 1. That will help a lot... NOT.

[aletier_v]

6. 36 hr wokweek would create 10 million jobs

the original crash was in 2001, everything since is a holding action.

as productivity increases, hours spent on production MUST decline and hours on consumption must increase. the prblem is that capitalists have driven down real wages.