Unemployment falls below 9%

Francesca R said:
It's just that gatekeepers of the left are apt to regard higher stock-market wealth as something that inordinately benefits the rich. So it was a bit surprising.
Click to expand...
I'm sure there are some extreme lefties who feel that way, but most of us who call ourselves Liberals recognize that healthy economic indices are a good thing.
 
BenBurch said:
How about the oil patch, Tricky? Welders in demand there?
Click to expand...
Yes, as long as there is a lot of drilling (and there is) we need a lot of welders. But this is not body-shop welding. It is very high-tech, some of it underwater welding, and much of it in proximity to volitile gasses. Takes a lot of training.
 
Francesca R said:
OK. Would you say that "trickle down" is a useful general rule too (essentially the same thing in other words)? If not what's different about it?
Click to expand...
Again, let me barge in on your discussion with Ben. Trickle-down involves making the rich even richer and hoping that some of it will make it to the poor and middle class. A general increase in the health of an economy (such as a stock-market jump) often ties directly with the poor and middle class. Stocks mostly go up because they have a lot of people working and cranking out widgets, or because consumers have money and are buying their products.
 
Tricky said:
A welder without training is not a welder. That's a welder trainee.
Click to expand...
And once you train them you have welders. If employers are waiting for welding to become part of the high school curriculum to train their specialized workers for free they'll be waiting a long, long time.

At any rate, 7 ads in a metro area of 8 million doesn't seem like a shortage to me. I also wonder what the employers complaining about a shortage are paying their welders?
 
Tricky said:
Yes, as long as there is a lot of drilling (and there is) we need a lot of welders. But this is not body-shop welding. It is very high-tech, some of it underwater welding, and much of it in proximity to volitile gasses. Takes a lot of training.
Click to expand...
Exactly. And skills so specialized require on the job training, no classroom can teach that.
 
Bri said:
But let's say that instead, 10 people decide to go to college or stay home with their kids or take care of their aging parents for reasons that have absolutely nothing to do with the economy. They still drop out of the labor market, but for entirely different reasons. It cannot be determined how many people dropped out of the labor force because they have given up looking for jobs and how many dropped out for other reasons.

-Bri
Click to expand...

Determined "to the person"? Perhaps not, but it can be estimated with reasonable accuracy.

http://www.bls.gov/opub/ils/pdf/opbils74.pdf (from 2009, but it hasn't gotten any better)

http://articles.businessinsider.com...0019659_1_unemployment-rate-workforce-workers (from 2010)

http://www.bls.gov/news.release/empsit.nr0.htm (2012)

The last set of data seems to indicate that the discouragement number is somewhat steady relative to recent data, but is still extremely high, and at any time they could re-enter the job market (and thus spike UE rates).

Here's a very recent snapshot:

http://governmentinexile.typepad.co...s-told-by-obama-and-the-mainstream-media.html
 
Tricky said:
While you might have a case that a specific change in the price of certain stocks is not necessarily good news for the economy, you cannot possibly argue with the fact that the general trend of the stock market parallels the health of the economy. It is one of the main indicators of the health of the economy. Trying to paint it as "not important" is a desperate and stupid ploy by Obama-haters who are frantic about him actually succeeding in turning the economy around.
Click to expand...

It's not about Obama, or Bush, Clinton, or any other individual President for that matter. It's about the disconnect between the real economy and Wall Street.

Your sort of thinking was the prevalent theory in "the market" right up until the bottom fell out in 08, despite several other major downturns going back more than 10 years.

The "trend" of the market (led mostly by financial stocks) continued to soar based on the rapidly inflating "bubble" in real-estate prices and the related spending and loan spree based on home-equity.

Meanwhile, 100s of 1000s of jobs were being destroyed outright or shipped overseas as the REAL economy continued it's decline in real terms. Sooner or later, reality overtook fantasy and the market crashed.
 
The solution is simple...

...we just need to get more money into the hands of the rich.
 
BenBurch said:
Just so.

Investors are not stupid people.

The value of a company, it's "market cap" is most usually more strongly influenced by whether it is selling product than anything else, because that is how revenue us usually generated.

And as markets rise, so too do portfolios rise.

As portfolios rise, wealth rises.

When wealth rises, economic activity increases.
Click to expand...

One word rebuttal: Enron
 
Tricky said:
Well guess what, Muldur. That's exactly what the Dow Jones Industrial Average does. It does not perfectly reflect each individual componant of the average, but overall, if companies are making money, the economy is improving. You don't need an MBA to figure this out.

So if a "rising tide" means conditions across the board, then it does indeed lift most boats."
Click to expand...

The history of the last 30 years says otherwise.

A rising water level in someone's private swimming pool doesn't do much, by which I mean that adding to the fortunes of the 1% doesn't lift all boats.
Click to expand...

This I agree with.
 
BenBurch said:
If so, there are a number of professional welding schools existing for no reason at all, and a lot of vocational programs at community colleges that are wastes of taxpayer's money.
Click to expand...
Then the companies that need welders can send their trainees there, in exchange for an unpaid apprenticeship while being trained.

But if there's a shortage of welders in the Chicago area it's not apparent from monster.com.
 
RandFan said:
...we just need to get more money into the hands of the rich.
Click to expand...

I think the general election this fall will boil down to the choice between that approach and Obama's proposal to re-establish higher tax rates on upper income people. (Both parties agree on spending cuts, at least to one degree or another.)
 
WildCat said:
Exactly. And skills so specialized require on the job training, no classroom can teach that.
Click to expand...
Incorrect. A lot of these skills are not taught on the job. They are taught in vocational education classrooms. Some are taught by specialized institutes. But you sure as hell don't do OJT when one mistake could blow up a rig. I'm sure there are some welding jobs that you can do with OJT, but certainly not all.
 
Muldur said:
One word rebuttal: Enron
Click to expand...

I do believe that's why the measures cited are things like the DJIA and such rather than the performance or profitability of a single company in a vacuum.

Surely "Enron" isn't the reason for the positive economic indicators cited for the last couple of months. (Not even figuratively, since one of the indicators was the addition of nearly a quarter of million net jobs in January.)
 
You must log in or register to reply here.

Back
Top Bottom