Monday, December 5, 2011

The problem with the U.S. labor market isn’t bad full-time jobs, just not enough of them

The Enterprise Blog

quote:
the killer jobs number isn’t the U-3 unemployment rate of 9.0 percent, but the broader U-6 number of 16.2 percent, which includes “all persons marginally attached to the labor force, plus total employed part time for economic reasons, as a percent of the civilian labor force plus all persons marginally attached to the labor force.”

Comment:

That may relate to this quote here from another source:
This is an employment crisis not of college-educated women (just read into the data compiled by the BLS every month) who have an unemployment rate of barely more than 4 percent and decent wages. This is a crisis of men who did not go to college, who do not have the tools and never acquired the skillsknowing how to learnthat are so needed today.

Maybe they should heed Jay Leno's advice and learn how to weld.   However, if the number of unemployed males is so high, that spells trouble for Democrats.  Men tend to favor someone who will bring change, as women are more risk averse.  A lot of unemployed males does not bode well for Obama. 

There was something related to this working man theme today about Democrats abandoning the white working class.

It doesn't help that Obama blocked the XL pipeline.  That would have created a lot of these new blue collar jobs.   There's a school of thought here that the right leader won't necessarily solve this structural problem.  But the wrong leader can make it worse than it has to be.

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