Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

The irony of the US economy: no jobs and no one to hire

randfishkin.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

91–96 of 96 posts

Re: The irony of the US economy: no jobs and no one to hire

#91

Post by tbrownaw »

rbranson wrote: post #16
JSig wrote: post #12

The BLS does a TERRIBLE job of managing the unemployment stats. The birth/death model just does not work at cycle changes. For a detailed look at these issues check out Mish's many posts at http://bit.ly/9yjUjN Additionally, there is something going on beyond a flawed model. From zerohedge.com => http://bit.ly/b5AJsz "Readers may be surprised to discover that beginning in April, of 2010, continuing through today, the…

Disclaimer: zerohedge is a bunch of hysterical Austrian economist nutcases.

They're definitely nuts, but I hadn't noticed that they were any particular flavor (Austrian or otherwise).

Re: The irony of the US economy: no jobs and no one to hire

#92

Post by corprew »

wyclif wrote: post #46
enjo wrote: post #37

This is another great opportunity to point out something rather puzzling about this recession. If you have a college degree your unemployment rate is 4.7%, with a big chunk of that 4.7% in the building related fields (architects, civil engineers, etc... are having a tough go right now). http://www.bls.gov/cps/tables.htm#monthly It's a double digit unemployment rate if you just have a high school diploma. Meanwhile ma…

I hear you. I'm an unemployed land surveyor re-learning how to program with Python (I learned BASIC and C in high school). So far I'm loving it and wish I'd never been sidetracked into such a dead-end industry. One way of making lemonade from lemons for me is thinking that at least there is some engineering crossover between the two fields. That's what I tell myself on a good day.

actually, there's huge opportunity in GIS right now where your skills would probably be really handy.

Re: The irony of the US economy: no jobs and no one to hire

#93

Post by Charuru »

dhh wrote: post #75
IgorPartola wrote: post #49

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The problem is that our current economic system is not ready to deal with such a high productivity level. With technology advancements eliminating entire job classes virtually overnight, in our lifetime we will reach a point where there will be way more people than necessary jobs; and the economic system will have to adapt. Two simple (not easy) solutions that come to mind are artificial population control or a diffe…

I'm sure people thought like that when agriculture got automated and didn't need as many people any more. Higher productivity shifts people from industry to industry. There's often a lag between the death of one industry and the rise of another.

Just because it was true in the 19th and 20th century that human resources can reallocate from agriculture to manufacturing does not mean it will continue to be true in a future context.

Every day our R&D is chipping away at the necessity for a human labor force until we get to the day we have 0 percent employment.

Re: The irony of the US economy: no jobs and no one to hire

#94

Post by wyclif »

corprew wrote: post #92
wyclif wrote: post #46

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I hear you. I'm an unemployed land surveyor re-learning how to program with Python (I learned BASIC and C in high school). So far I'm loving it and wish I'd never been sidetracked into such a dead-end industry. One way of making lemonade from lemons for me is thinking that at least there is some engineering crossover between the two fields. That's what I tell myself on a good day.

actually, there's huge opportunity in GIS right now where your skills would probably be really handy.

Yeah, I'd love to be a part of some kind of development outside of the ESRI juggernaut.

Re: The irony of the US economy: no jobs and no one to hire

#95

Post by arethuza »

StrawberryFrog wrote: post #47
canterburry wrote: post #32

I think one of the fundamental flaws with American companies is that someone with "the right skills" means the person is a shoe-in at the time of hire. They are expected the walk onto the job with all the training, know-how, experience etc that the company needs at that very minute. Since trends are constantly changing and always towards something new and never before seen, there will simply never be a time when ther…

I think one of the fundamental flaws with American companies is that someone with "the right skills" means the person is a shoe-in at the time of hire. I don't think that it's a uniquely American problem. It's just like that in IT in London, UK.

It's endemic in a lot of companies in the UK - I keep having arguments with non-technical managers about their insistence that people have to "hit the ground running" with a very narrowly defined set of skills (which usually turn out to be wrong).

The same people who take this approach to hiring then complain when developers get stroppy about only working on specific skills that will get them their next, better-paid, job.

Re: The irony of the US economy: no jobs and no one to hire

#96

Post by rbranson »

SkyMarshal wrote: post #83
natrius wrote: post #69

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Pointing out biases isn't an ad hominem argument. Arguing that someone is wrong because of their biases is an ad hominem.

'Hysterical' + 'nutcases' = ad hominem. Personal attack intended to discredit the argument. I wasn't referring to the 'Austrian' part. If someone thinks Austrian economics is wrong or a flawed framework for understanding some phenomena or topic, just explain why. Also, I'm not sure that their Austrian favoritism has any bearing on this particular claim. Arguing that the BLS is intentionally fudging and later revising…

You're the only one taking it personally. It's worth taking into account the bias of the source for any material.
Post reply on HN