"Many Rival Nations Surge Past the U.S. in Adding New Jobs"

[applegrove]

Many Rival Nations Surge Past the U.S. in Adding New Jobs

By NELSON D. SCHWARTZ at the NY Times

http://www.nytimes.com/2013/06/08/business/employment-in-us-lags-where-it-was-in-2007.html?_r=0

"SNIP.....................

A new paper by two economists from the University of British Columbia, Florian Hoffmann and Thomas Lemieux, concludes that over half of the recent variation in employment trends between the United States on the one hand, and Canada and Germany on the other, can be attributed to the construction sector.

Although the construction field gained 69,000 jobs in the first five months of 2013, with 5.8 million jobs in May, that was still nearly two million fewer jobs than in 2007, according to the Labor Department.

Other countries have generated jobs on the basis of strong exports. Germany’s economy, for example, was powered until recently by shipments of machinery, cars and other products of its high-end manufacturing industries. Australia emerged largely unscathed from the downturn, thanks to booming Chinese demand for raw materials.

The German government also went to great lengths to discourage outright layoffs, instead encouraging employers to keep workers in a part-time capacity. At the same time, letting workers go in Europe is a much more costly proposition for big employers than it is in the United States.

....................SNIP"

[elleng]

1. and Congress ain't gonna help us do infrastructure improvements

which would help EVERYONE, EVERYWHERE!

[applegrove]

2. Yup. Canada added 95,000 jobs in May. That is a huge amount for us.

We are a tenth your size. They were all private sector jobs too. Of course our conservative government has been doing a big infrastructure improvement scheme the whole time. Shows you Conservatives here in Canada are Keynesians.

[Warpy]

3. We won't be employed until they finish crushing us

That's my take on it these days.