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One reason cited for Germany’s excessive welcome of sketchy, potentially dangerous Syrians is the need for new workers to keep the factories humming. Der Spiegel reported, Rx for Prosperity: German Companies See Refugees as Opportunity, noting that the German population is “shrinking” and the nation faces a labor shortage.
Is it not odd that Germany doesn’t look closer to home for new workers — like Spain? That country has plenty of young people being strangled from unemployment. Some Spanish workers have in fact relocated to Germany for job opportunity, but why isn’t there more outreach?
Plus Spain is culturally Christian and has a European sensibility. Jihad is not a cultural value there. By comparison, a poll from the Arab Center for Research and Policy Studies found that 13 percent of Syrian refugees support ISIS.
But if Germany must have new workers, why not make use of Spain and other European nations with large unemployment? Wasn’t ease of movement for workers advertised as an advantage of the borderless European Union?
Jerez de la Frontera – where more than 1 in 3 is out of work
Every day is a challenge for 27-year-old Miguel Angel Vaca Fernandez, as he strives to keep his head up and rise above his circumstances.
He is one of a huge number of unemployed young people in the city of Jerez de la Frontera, in the Andalusia region in southern Spain.
The overall jobless rate in this city is at a huge 40 percent.
Behind that dramatic statistic are the individuals, like Miguel Angel, who every day are facing the challenges created by longterm unemployment.
“I’ve been unemployed for three and a half years. It’s a truly hopeless situation, you start believing, ‘that’s all, that’s life’. You keep muddling through,” he says.
“There are days you don’t want to get out of bed. Then there are other days you get up with some small hope, but it’s just for nothing, it’s desperate.”
Miguel Angel is training for the police entrance exams. Competition so tough that this year 58,000 people applied for 1,300 available police jobs.
Concerns about a lost generation in Spain are something Miguel Angel knows about all too well. Continue reading this article
One of the toughest skills for automation engineers to crack is the amazing human hand with its unique dexterity — but it’s not for lack of trying.
Amazon’s highly automated warehouses have thousands of Kiva robots moving racks of merchandise around to human box packers — for now. The company is working to develop a machine that can discern, grasp and pack objects through its yearly Amazon Picking Challenge, a contest for robot designers to create the the next major step in human worker replacement.
Meanwhile, sewing presents a similar problem because clothing construction is almost completely based on manual dexterity, where the process requires handling fabrics that can vary tremendously in terms of stability, stretch, slipperiness, thickness and other qualities.
But now the brainiac engineers say they are getting close to a workable SewBot.
Add sewing to the growing list of jobs that won’t need imported immigrant workers to perform because smart machines will fill them in the future. As the following article points out, “in coming decades the gains [in automation] could add up to a significant reduction in the need for human workers in many fields.”
Another quote that should be getting attention: “By 2030, 90% of jobs as we know them today will be replaced by smart machines,” according to a 2013 report from a Gartner tech analyst.
Why isn’t automation being discussed by any of the gaggle of Presidential candidates? The workplace is being fundamentally transformed, while Washington acts as if nothing has changed and the jobless recovery is an unexplainable curiosity.
Automation gains could reduce need for human workers in many fields
ATLANTA—In a former kitchen-cabinet workshop here, a dozen engineers are creating robots to sew garments and rugs—tasks usually relegated to low-wage workers in distant countries.
SoftWear Automation Inc., the startup that employs the engineers, promises to transform the apparel industry, automating production so goods can be made in factories anywhere by robots and small teams of people tending them.
So far, the robots can do only basic tasks, like sewing around button holes or the edges of fluffy bath rugs. They can’t do other things people are good at, such as holding together two floppy pieces of material while sewing them into a shirt. SoftWear’s SewBots can’t produce a finished garment, though the firm hopes to reach that stage next year.
The garment industry is interested in the technology, but “people are going to start small with us,” says K.P. Reddy, SoftWear’s CEO. “It’s going to be incremental.”
The same can be said for many potential applications of robots, 3-D printers and other forms of automation, ranging from the assembly of myriad consumer goods to caring for the elderly. Though progress has been incremental so far, in coming decades the gains could add up to a significant reduction in the need for human workers in many fields.
“By 2030, 90% of jobs as we know them today will be replaced by smart machines,” three analysts from the research firm Gartner Inc. wrote in a 2013 report. They defined smart machines as ones doing things previously thought doable only by people, such as learning from experience. Machines, they said, “are evolving from automating basic tasks to becoming advanced self-learning systems mimicking the human brain.”
By 2050, such machines are likely to “do every job that we presently do,” says Vivek Wadhwa, a fellow at Stanford University and frequent writer on technological trends. “The more I look forward, the more convinced I am that jobs won’t be about sustenance any more. Since everything will be so cheap, our jobs will be about knowledge and the arts. This is what will keep us busy.”
The most common tasks for industrial robots today include heavy lifting, welding and applying glue, paint and other coatings. Robots can lift heavier weights than people and are far more precise. Unlike people, they can be relied on to do exactly what they are told. They also can work around the clock. Continue reading this article
As Washington plods along with its 20th century assumptions regarding labor and the economy, the technology-fueled future is here and changing all the rules. Just when we have adjusted to the idea that cars are produced by a robot factory with few humans, now the 3D printer is being rejiggered to build autos.
On Friday, Fox Business’ Stuart Varney interviewed Local Motors CEO Jay Rogers about his company’s development of the 3D printing process to build cars. Rogers says everything will be printed except the motor and the wheels. Varney observed, “It looks to me like you have gotten rid of the labor force. I didn’t see any human beings there, I just saw a computer-driven machine.”
And people wonder why the jobs have not returned as the economic recovery progresses — Friday’s jobs report included the fact that a record 93,770,000 Americans are not in the labor force while Wall Street is doing very well. The new machines are a big part of modern unemployment.
Below, Local Motors’ Strati model reveals some of its print layers if you look closely at the front.
As a result of these rapid technological changes to the workplace, America does not need to import immigrant workers to do jobs deemed by some to be too unpleasant for citizens. Given the automation revolution, the appropriate number of immigrants is ZERO.
A recent Popular Mechanics article featured the 3D car:
A little quality time behind the wheel of the Local Motors Strati roadster.
This spring Fiat Chrysler CEO Sergio Marchionne called out the auto industry for the staggering amount of money it wastes in the design and manufacture of cars. His solution is based on classic business principles: consolidate and eliminate redundancy. Local Motors CEO Jay Rogers perceives the same challenge, but he’s attacking it from a completely different direction. For Rogers, the problem stems not from business organization but from the fact that we still build cars the same way we did in 1915, on assembly lines with thousands of individual parts. It doesn’t have to be that way, and the proof is parked in his Knoxville, Tennessee, garage, charged up and ready for a drive.
Local’s answer to the cost-cutting question is the Strati, the first 3D-printed car. It’s a humble (albeit very cool-looking) thing. Built—printed—in Detroit, in collaboration with Oak Ridge National Laboratory in Tennessee, the Strati is a small electric two-seater, the first of many models in Local’s plans. Two factories, scaled to employ 100 people each, are under construction now and scheduled for completion by the end of the year. Local plans to build its own cars, but it could also end up working as a supplier for original-equipment manufacturers, some of whom have met with Rogers already. “One of them said, ‘This would be great for prototyping,’ ” Rogers says. “And I said, ‘Forget prototyping! This is how you make the car.’ ” That’s the radical big idea, the one that prompted Popular Mechanics to bestow a Breakthrough Award on Local Motors last year. Continue reading this article
There are numerous lists of jobs being made obsolete by automation sorted by expertise level (e.g. blue collar, financial, medical) and also by skill type, such as in the chart below:
Today’s item purports to list the top ten jobs moving to the automation column soon. A brief look reveals they account for millions of American jobs.
Surely this country doesn’t need to admit millions of immigrants to fill a non-existent future worker shortage — no such thing will occur, because computers, robots and automation will take up all the slack and then some.
Advances in automation and robotics are putting a lot of jobs at risk. Here are ten jobs first in line for the robot takeover.
The job market is a battlefield, and it’s about to get a lot worse. In addition to competing against other skilled job-seekers for work, you’ll soon be pitted against robots as well.
Robots have been working alongside human employees in industries such as manufacturing for a long time, helping accomplish tasks quicker or more efficiently. But, as the fields of cognitive computing and artificial intelligence continue to grow, we will see many more industries — from the food industry to customer service — affected by automation.
A 2013 research paper out of the Oxford Martin School in the UK estimates that roughly 47 percent of the total US jobs are at risk of computerization or automation. That means almost half of the jobs in the US could end up being automated.
But, which will be the first to go? Here are 10 jobs that will be at the top of the list.
1. ASSEMBLY LINE WORKER The conversation about automation upending the manufacturing industry has been happening for decades, and it still hasn’t come to fruition. Tech, factories, and jobs have had a tricky relationship since the Industrial Revolution. Robotic technology has been used in manufacturing for decades — especially at major operations like Ford and Toyota — and the technology continues to advance. But there are still some hurdles in regards to fine motor skills and decision making that need to be overcome before the robots will be able to work on their own in manufacturing. Even the best robots still require humans to closely observe and orchestrate their work.
2. FIELD TECHNICIAN Many jobs require an employee in the field to physically visit a work site or piece of machinery and check on the operations. New advances in the Internet of Things could render this work obsolete.
“Low-cost sensors combined with high availability cellular/satellite communications and cloud technology are being implemented to automate and alarm these sites, and can be checked and maintained from a desktop or mobile device,” said Scott Perrin, president of mFactor Engineering.
The need for employees in the field will be there, just not solely for the collection of data. Jerry Dolinsky, CEO of Verisae, said that the role of “meter reader” will be obsolete in the future. For example, British Columbia has already implemented smart meter programs. The field technicians focused on troubleshooting and problem solving will still be in demand, however.
3. CALL CENTER WORKER At this point, most people are familiar with automated customer service lines and telemarketing. Using natural-language processing, automated call lines are able to better understand what customers are saying and direct them to the proper resource. There’s usually still an option to be routed to a ‘real person’, but even that could be eliminated in the next few years. Continue reading this article
Google’s tiny urban cars (pictured below) are already cruising the streets of Mountain View. And as Consumer Reports pointed out, some of the components of autonomous vehicles already exist on production cars, such as crash-avoidance systems. Think in terms of cruise control evolving in advanced technological ways — that’s how the changes seem to be moving.
Now the corporate robotizers have targeted highway truckers for obsolescence, even though they are a part of American culture, with films and music.
In 1978, Sam Peckinpah directed the film Convoy, starring Kris Kristopherson, during the craze of CB radios used by long-haul truckers.
The late Johnny Cash appreciated working people and sang a tribute to big-rig drivers in this clip:
But now the suits say they need robot trucks because the industry is “facing a major driver shortage” — but if that were true, wages would be going up to attract more workers. Nope, self-driving trucks are just cheaper, that’s all.
But when half of the jobs in America are done by smart machines in 20 years (as forecast by Oxford University researchers in 2013), who will buy the automation-produced goods and services? How is the brave new economy supposed to function when tens of millions of workers and their paychecks have been made obsolete?
Within a decade, 18-wheelers may be hauling freight across the U.S. highways without a driver touching the steering wheel or the brakes. And that prospect stands to significantly alter a $700 billion industry and affect millions of professional drivers nationwide.
Just as automakers and tech companies like Google race to develop driverless cars, corporations are ramping up efforts to take humans out of the cabs of semi-trucks.
Daimler test-drove an autonomous heavy-duty truck on I-15 in Las Vegas last month. Auburn Hills-based auto supplier Continental has developed cameras that can replace exterior mirrors on commercial vehicles, including semis, an early step toward developing a self-driving system.
And at an industry conference in September in Detroit, California-based Peloton Technology demonstrated its platooning technology, which lets a lead driver control the acceleration and braking of another truck that follows, saving gas and reducing the likelihood of accidents.
All could lead to fewer humans behind the wheel in an industry that’s facing a major driver shortage.
“I think we’re evolving in that direction,” said Walter Heinritzi, executive director of the Lansing-based Michigan Trucking Association, which represents trucking companies throughout the state.
“Like most industries, we’re relying on fewer and fewer employees. If you can make money without a driver, you’re miles ahead financially.”
The American Trucking Association says 3.4 million truckers moved almost 10 billion tons of freight in 2014. The industry employs more than 7 million, but the number of drivers has fallen in recent years. Continue reading this article
We see lots of photos of robots on factory floors, where the machines weld and assemble 24/7 with no coffee breaks. But construction workers shouldn’t think that their jobs are safe because they are outdoors and not as repetitious as some. New robots and techniques are being developed that are revolutionizing the construction process. One new skill being invented for robots’ metallic claws is bricklaying.
Below, the Hadrian bricklaying robot on the right is named for the famous wall.
We can see a robot that looks like Sawyer working as a mason in the video following where it helps human bricklayers. It doesn’t move very quickly, but then it doesn’t stop for lunch.
The robot bricklayer is just one example of the fundamental changes via automation that are occurring in the building sector of the jobs economy. In Amsterdam, a Dutch team is creating the world’s first 3-D printed house. The house is experimental, but the direction of building is clear — more machines and fewer humans, just like the rest of the economy.
One lesson to be gleaned is that America doesn’t need to import millions of low-skilled immigrants from the third world to construct our houses and buildings.
Construction once supplied a decent living for blue-collar citizens, before elites engineered mass immigration to drive down wages. In 2003, house framer William Ennis described how his career was ruined: “I started out making $800 to $1,200 a week here for a 40-hour week. It got to where I was having to work seven days a week, 12 hours a day, just to make $600 a week. And that’s just in the past three or four years.”
A 2013 report from the Center for Immigration Studies found that 66 percent of construction workers were America born, which means that 34 percent were foreigners. Certainly the percentage in California is higher, judging from the Spanish one hears on work sites.
The purpose-built robot bricklayer comes from Australia. And its inventor says bricklaying is a job Australians don’t want to do any more. Right.
Robots have slowly integrated themselves into our modern lives and now do a lot of helpful things. However, one thing robots haven’t been able to do is lay bricks, due to the kind of labor involved.
In fact, bricklaying hasn’t changed in thousands of years: it’s still something done completely by hand. It’s backbreaking work, though, and often results in worker injuries.
However, an Australian engineer has a solution: a robot bricklayer that autonomously lays bricks faster than any human ever could. In fact, this robot can build a house in just two days. Continue reading this article
Despite the extreme headline, the factory being constructed is not 100 percent robots with zero humans: rather, the aim is to cut only 90 percent of the facility’s workforce. Oh joy.
Nevertheless, the headline shows the trend as it is envisioned by captains of industry from Beijing to Fort Worth. Human workers are a cost to be eliminated, and the robot-automation technology is here to accomplish that goal. However, the mass eradication of wage-earners (shoppers!) seems a tiny detail yet to be worked out.
Unlike many American reports about smart machines taking jobs, the Chinese paper gives hard numbers of how many workers are planned to be eliminated. The US propaganda organs prefer to overlook the social effect of the current workplace revolution, just as they have ignored the results on citizen workers of permissive immigration for decades.
Construction work has begun on the first factory in China’s manufacturing hub of Dongguan to use only robots for production, the official Xinhua news agency reported.
A total of 1,000 robots would be introduced at the factory initially, run by Shenzhen Evenwin Precision Technology Co, with the aim of reducing the current workforce of 1,800 by 90 per cent to only about 200, Chen Xingqi, the chairman of the company’s board, was quoted as saying in the report.
The company did not give a figure for the investment in the factory, but said its production capacity could reach a value of 2 billion yuan (US$322 million) annually.
Robots are set to take over in many factories in the Pearl River Delta, the area of southern China known as the ‘world’s workshop’ because of the huge export manufacturing industry there, as labour shortages bite and local authorities face the need to spur innovation to counter the economic slowdown.
Since September, a total of 505 factories across Dongguan have invested 4.2 billion yuan in robots, aiming to replace more than 30,000 workers, according to the Dongguan Economy and Information Technology Bureau.
By 2016, up to 1,500 of the city’s industrial enterprises will began replacing humans with robots. Continue reading this article
Progress never sleeps these days, and the expansion of machine intelligence is growing faster than most of us civilians can follow. However, one simple metric is the development of the self-driving car, since Google co-founder Sergey Brin forecast in 2012 that self-driving cars would be available for consumers in five years.
But it was lesser-known Delphi that scored the impressive cross-country drive, which took nine days from San Francisco to New York.
Below, the Delphi car looked pretty normal from the outside as it approached NYC.
Some aspects of self-driving are available now, like self-parking. An NBC online story about the Delphi trip includes a video of a Mercedes that can park itself when the driver pushes the park-assist button. So the smarter car is coming in pieces.
Proponents of the self-driving car like Brin emphasize that it will create safer roadway travel once all the tech issues are ironed out.
The chart below from Bloomberg estimated that 89 percent of taxi driver and chauffeur jobs are at risk from computerization.
In the very near future, America won’t need to import immigrant labor, because the machines will be doing much of the work. Therefore the correct number of immigrants now is Zero because the current systemic unemployment is partially due to businesses’ use of automation, computers and robots.
The latest chapter in the evolution of the self-driving, driverless automobile has been completed and proved successful with neither an accident or roadway incident during a cross-country trek that involved 15 states and traversed 3,400 miles.
And no, it wasn’t Tesla or Google or Mercedes or GM or Ford or even Apple (which is the latest tech company rumored to be building such a vehicle, as Tech Times has reported).
It was auto supplier Delphi Automotive, which apparently has been very quietly advancing driverless technology.
In just nine days Delphi’s blue 2014 Audi SQ5 traveled from San Francisco to New York City, only giving the wheel over to a human driver on city streets. The car, built within the past year, passed its big test with flying colors, according to Delphi.
“It was time to put it on the road and see how it performed,” says Delphi CTO Jeff Owens. “It was just tremendous.” The company noted that the vehicle did 99 percent of the trek in automated mode. Continue reading this article
Interestingly, Clifton noted, “At the recession, we lost 13 million jobs, only three million have come back.” He said that in the context of explaining misleading numbers, not the cause of the economy’s failure to create jobs. Certainly business people generally say that they survived the recession by implementing more efficiency, which is shorthand for computers, automation and robots.
One example: When was the last time you phoned an office and got a human receptionist?
In short, the jobs economy remains very bad, but the administration is awarding highly desired work permits (the real amnesty) to millions of foreigners to displace citizens.
Following is Clifton’s opinion piece that got some attention:
Here’s something that many Americans — including some of the smartest and most educated among us — don’t know: The official unemployment rate, as reported by the U.S. Department of Labor, is extremely misleading.
Right now, we’re hearing much celebrating from the media, the White House and Wall Street about how unemployment is “down” to 5.6%. The cheerleading for this number is deafening. The media loves a comeback story, the White House wants to score political points and Wall Street would like you to stay in the market.
None of them will tell you this: If you, a family member or anyone is unemployed and has subsequently given up on finding a job — if you are so hopelessly out of work that you’ve stopped looking over the past four weeks — the Department of Labor doesn’t count you as unemployed. That’s right. While you are as unemployed as one can possibly be, and tragically may never find work again, you are not counted in the figure we see relentlessly in the news — currently 5.6%. Right now, as many as 30 million Americans are either out of work or severely underemployed. Trust me, the vast majority of them aren’t throwing parties to toast “falling” unemployment.
There’s another reason why the official rate is misleading. Say you’re an out-of-work engineer or healthcare worker or construction worker or retail manager: If you perform a minimum of one hour of work in a week and are paid at least $20 — maybe someone pays you to mow their lawn — you’re not officially counted as unemployed in the much-reported 5.6%. Few Americans know this. Continue reading this article
Sunday’s Omaha Herald has a front-page article railing against worsening hispanic poverty in the state, with an appropriate sob story graphic of an adorable dark-eyed child with a bag of spuds. So subtle.
But wait. Nebraska had the second-lowest unemployment rate in the nation as of November, just 3.1 percent, compared with the national rate of 5.8 percent. What’s the problem here? A low-unemployment state shouldn’t have a lot of poverty, and Omaha has a hispanic poverty rate of 27.6 percent from the latest Census data.
In the article, hispanics have jobs but they have to stand in the snow (sniff!) in line for food pantries to obtain free chow. Wages in meatpacking have fallen and that is one reason given for the worsening poverty. Incidentally, meatpacking is twice characterized as “low-wage” employment, which is a devolutionary trend for an industry that once supplied middle-class lifestyles for American workers a few decades ago. Domestic companies later discovered that illegal alien foreigners were happy to work for peanuts, and wages in meat plants were lowered accordingly.
The article is a curious mix: it quotes Heritage’s welfare and immigration scholar Robert Rector saying, “If you have an increase in illegal immigration to a community, poverty rates will go up.” But the piece also suggests that more rights for illegal aliens (like driver’s licenses and work permits) would be a big help for the foreigners.
Bottom line: if a low-unemployment state cannot generate adequate wages to keep immigrants and aliens out of free-food charities, then perhaps America has imported enough poverty.
Maria Benitez’s husband brings home $80 a day from his job painting houses. She supplements that by selling Mexican candies in South Omaha from a cart she pushes down the street.
But after paying rent and other bills, there’s often not much money left to feed the couple and their three children.
That’s why the 50-year-old Benitez recently stood in a light snow outside Our Lady of Guadalupe Church accepting free sack lunches handed out by James Parsons, who runs a street ministry assisting Omaha’s needy.
While Benitez and the two dozen others accepting the charity that day expressed their thanks, she also gratefully offered Parsons something in return: homemade tortillas from her kitchen.
Benitez and her family are part of a fast-growing population of Hispanics in South Omaha who know the hardships of living en la pobreza: “in poverty.” Recent Census Bureau figures show that the poverty rate among the Hispanic population in Nebraska as well as in Omaha has been dramatically on the rise.
Poverty for Hispanic households in the Omaha metro area climbed steadily from 16.9 percent in 2000 to 27.6 percent in the most recent census data.
For the first time, the Omaha’s Hispanic poverty rate now is higher than the national Hispanic average. Just as alarming, Hispanic poverty now approaches the levels seen in Omaha’s black community, which at times in recent years has suffered from one of the highest poverty rates in the nation.
“The attention in Omaha has been on black poverty, given the disparity in black versus white,” said David Drozd, a University of Nebraska at Omaha demographer who identified the new trend in the census data. “But now it’s obvious Hispanic poverty is becoming a bigger problem.”
Rep. Luis Gutierrez (D-Chicago) has been an enthusiastic amnesty cheerleader for a long time. He appeared on MSNBC on Thursday and responded to Joe Scarborough’s question about what would be the “sensible middle” on Obama’s unconstitutional amnesty (aka the work permit holy grail) for millions of foreign lawbreakers:
GUTIERREZ: The President should act in a bold manner, in a generous manner, and he should act quickly and swiftly. I’ve always said the blessings of Thanksgiving should be bountiful this year for millions of immigrants who have been waiting for the Congress to act.
Like all liberals, Gutierrez is generous with things that don’t belong to him, like other people’s jobs. The Thanksgiving mention is a swell sicko touch, given the continuing high level of unemployment among Americans and the fact that many new jobs tend to go to foreigners because they work cheap. (See CIS’ June report, All Employment Growth Since 2000 Went to Immigrants.)
Below, Marxist foreign lawbreakers demand amnesty in Spanish.
As an example of the jobless recovery, on Thursday the Wall Street Journal had a front-page story about the growing number of Americans who struggle with getting by on part-time jobs because they can’t find full-time work. There are various reasons for the dismal job growth, including increased regulation, ObamaCare and automation, but whatever the cause, America certainly doesn’t need millions of illegal aliens instantly transformed into legal workers to compete with citizens.
Economists Puzzle Over Trend’s Roots—Cyclical or Structural—as 7 Million Remain Stuck in Jobs They Don’t Want
Nearly 7 million Americans are stuck in part-time jobs that they don’t want.
The unemployment rate has fallen sharply over the past year, but that improvement is masking a still-bleak picture for millions of workers who say they can’t find full-time jobs.
Martina Morgan is deciding which bills to skip after her hours fell at Ikea in Renton, Wash. Sandra Sok says she’s been unable to consistently get full-time hours after she transferred to a Wal-Mart in Arizona from one in Colorado.
In Chicago, Jessica Davis is frustrated by her schedule dwindling to 23 hours a week at a McDonald’s even though her location has been hiring. “How can you not get people more hours but you hire more employees?” the 26-year-old Ms. Davis said.
The situation of these so-called involuntary part-time workers—those who would prefer to work more than 34 hours a week—has economists puzzling over whether a higher level of part-time employment might be a permanent legacy of the great recession. If so, it could force more workers to choose between underemployment or working multiple jobs to make ends meet, leading to less income growth and weaker discretionary spending.
Employers added some 3.3 million full-time workers over the past year, but the number of full-time workers in the U.S. is still around 2 million shy of the level before the recession began in 2007. Meanwhile, the ranks of workers who are part time for economic reasons has fallen by 740,000 this year to around 4.5% of the civilian workforce. That is down from a high of 5.9% in 2010 but remains well above the 2.7% average in the decade preceding the recession.
“There’s just less full-time jobs available than there used to be,” said Michelle Girard, chief economist at RBS Securities Inc. Continue reading this article
The front page of Sunday’s Los Angeles Times headlined with “Laboring in the shadow of recession,” which is actually a story about freelancing out of necessity in the bleak job market. Individual cases of human struggles to survive economically are told along with the some of the societal changes which contribute.
There are a few statistics but for an economics article, the piece is surprisingly vague. Perhaps the haziness indicates the LA Times has no clue what’s wrong. It mentions “automation and outsourcing” in one sentence to explain business’ lack of hiring but with no further analysis. Immigration and the surplus of unskilled foreign workers are not discussed at all, even though Los Angeles County (which is jammed with non-Americans) has nearly two million discouraged, somewhat employed persons, 17.8 percent.
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Historically small business hire the most. I owned a small business for over 30 years. I sold it 3 years ago and I’m now happily retired. My company had around 50 employees; sometimes more, sometimes less. It was primarily a blue collar type operation. Dealing with employees is never easy. For a small company without a sophisticated HR department it has become incredibly difficult and stressful.
New regulations are constantly piled on. The lawyers are always coming up with news ways of blackmailing you and making your life miserable. A few years ago it was ADA suits. The latest is time issues; breaks, OT, etc.
The worst thing to deal with is probably workers’ compensation issues. A claim may start out with a legitimate injury. Once the doctors, clinics and lawyers get involved, a minor injury can easily balloon to over a $100,000 claim. Soon your workers’ comp insurance becomes unaffordable.
My company always paid 100% of our employees medical insurance. If an employee goes to the doctor or visits emergency, the first question they are asked is often if the reason for the visit is work related. Language issues may mistakenly cause a non-work related problem become one. Once it is classified work related, it is difficult to undo. Before the company becomes aware of the “injury”, thousands of dollars may have been spent on tests, etc. One or two if such erroneous claims in a year will cause your insurance to skyrocket.
My point is why have employees if you can use contractors or off the books help?
Or illegal aliens.
California once again seems to be the periscope to the dysfunctional future. Nobody in the political class knows or cares that automation and robotics are quietly taking jobs that were earlier performed by humans. From milking cows to turning speech into text, the need of business for humans is shrinking.
Certainly, over-regulation, growing use of smart machines and a huge surplus of alien or immigrant workers have combined to create a terrible job climate for American workers in California. Near the end, the piece quotes an estimate that by the end of the decade, half the American workforce could be freelance. They might be the lucky ones in the increasingly post-human economy.
A short gig doing security for the True Blood television show. A stint driving for a rental car company. A week as a customer service representative at a retail store.
This is how Delvontaie Antwine, 34, makes do in California’s economic recovery — earning a few scattered paychecks a month from odd temp jobs while living with relatives in Silver Lake.
Each week, he goes to a career center, where recently he was looking into positions transporting patients for Kaiser Permanente.
“I just need something consistent; otherwise, I’m like a puppy chasing its tail,” he said. “I’m at the bottom of the totem pole right now.”
It’s a purgatory sometimes called the gray economy. Although the official state unemployment rate dropped to 7.4% in June, 16.2% of Californians — or about 6.2 million — were either jobless, too discouraged to seek work, working less than they’d like or in off-the-books jobs.
That’s the highest rate in the country, tied with Nevada. The rate is higher, at 17.8%, in Los Angeles County, where nearly 2 million people aren’t fully employed.
It’s hard to track the growth of the gray economy because so many employers hide workers for tax purposes. Experts generally agree, however, that the ranks of the underemployed swelled during the recession — more than in past downturns — and have remained substantial in an unsteady recovery.
“This segment of the labor market is a barometer for the economy as a whole,” said Nik Theodore, an urban planning professor at the University of Illinois at Chicago. “As employment insecurity spreads across the economy, more and more workers are being forced to turn to the street, to odd jobs, to becoming on-call workers. The question is whether this is a cyclical change, a blip or a signal of something much more fundamental.” Continue reading this article
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The front page of Sunday’s Los Angeles Times headlined with “Laboring in the shadow of recession,” which is actually a story about freelancing out of necessity in the bleak job market. Individual cases of human struggles to survive economically are told along with the some of the societal changes which contribute.