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Millions of educated, experienced workers are tossed aside by a strong economy

washingtonpost.com

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Re: Millions of educated, experienced workers are tossed aside by a strong economy

#31

Post by makecheck »

jblow wrote: post #14
bambataa wrote: post #4

The waste of human potential is staggering. The purpose of the economy should be to enable making full use of it. Instead we focus on profit.

You have to work out a system, then, to figure out who pays to employ the people doing unprofitable work. Not as easy as it sounds.

Lots of things are profitable but never absurdly and increasingly profitable, which is the trap we are now in.

There’s no credit given for having a tidy business with steady profit. Instead you have to have “growth” and other this-quarter-must-be-better-than-last-quarter-or-else crap that “investors” want.

Re: Millions of educated, experienced workers are tossed aside by a strong economy

#32

Post by Endama »

bargl wrote: post #30

The economy and the education system are out of sync. We are turning out a TON of degrees for a few jobs and expecting people to be able to just succeed based on a 4 year degree program. All the while the economy does expect a 4 year degree for some jobs that really shouldn't. So you're expected to waste money on a degree you don't need to work a job that won't help you pay back your degree because they aren't paying…

Teacher friends of mine talk to me about how their job is next to impossible. The curriculum in the schools is basically perpetually 12 years behind, students today are just now being taught stuff that the market is now responding to but the fundamentals that are needed for those skills should have been introduced years prior.

Educators are effectively trying to project 12 years out and try and guess what the market will demand so that they can provide the minimum skills necessary to provide a modicum of middle-class life.

Re: Millions of educated, experienced workers are tossed aside by a strong economy

#33

Post by toomuchtodo »

Karishma1234 wrote: post #28
bambataa wrote: post #4

The waste of human potential is staggering. The purpose of the economy should be to enable making full use of it. Instead we focus on profit.

Human Potential is worthless if it is not profitable. A lot of third world countries have jobs programs where they pay one group to dig holes and another group to fill up those holes. What US currently lacks is the entrepreneurs who would come up with new products and services and then employe the unemployed, old people etc. But given the restrictions on immigration of highly skilled individual this is going to be to…

Immigrant entrepreneurs aren’t going to magically start hiring elderly and other under employed cohorts.

Re: Millions of educated, experienced workers are tossed aside by a strong economy

#34

Post by moduspol »

bargl wrote: post #30

The economy and the education system are out of sync. We are turning out a TON of degrees for a few jobs and expecting people to be able to just succeed based on a 4 year degree program. All the while the economy does expect a 4 year degree for some jobs that really shouldn't. So you're expected to waste money on a degree you don't need to work a job that won't help you pay back your degree because they aren't paying…

> Again, I don't know the solution. Regulate the number of graduates within a certain degree field?

Stop providing loan guarantees for all students regardless of the marketability of the degree they've chosen?

Re: Millions of educated, experienced workers are tossed aside by a strong economy

#35

Post by nradov »

makecheck wrote: post #31
jblow wrote: post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You have to work out a system, then, to figure out who pays to employ the people doing unprofitable work. Not as easy as it sounds.

Lots of things are profitable but never absurdly and increasingly profitable , which is the trap we are now in. There’s no credit given for having a tidy business with steady profit. Instead you have to have “growth” and other this-quarter-must-be-better-than-last-quarter-or-else crap that “investors” want.

What sort of credit are you looking for? There are millions of tidy small businesses with steady profit. Just because you don't see newspaper articles about them doesn't mean they don't exist. Look around.

Small businesses are often able to get credit in the form of bank loans once they have established a track record of profitability.

Re: Millions of educated, experienced workers are tossed aside by a strong economy

#36

Post by kamarg »

nradov wrote: post #27
jblow wrote: post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You have to work out a system, then, to figure out who pays to employ the people doing unprofitable work. Not as easy as it sounds.

The government should become a temporary employer of last resort for workers who have exhausted their unemployment benefits. They could clean up parks, tutor children, paint over graffiti, update public records, provide child care for other workers, etc. Stuff that would be of value to society but which we often can't afford to pay regular government workers to do. This would help to keep unemployed people in the wor…

All of the examples you gave of jobs that government should be paying people to do are jobs that are already done in the private sector. Tutoring and child care alone are very large industries.

The biggest issue with your proposal is that if those employees paid by the government to do these jobs are paid less than the private sector, you'll put the private sector out of business. If they're paid the same or better, you would need strong incentives to make them go find a different job instead of keeping a market rate job that is assured to never go away.

Re: Millions of educated, experienced workers are tossed aside by a strong economy

#37

Post by mikybee93 »

bargl wrote: post #30

The economy and the education system are out of sync. We are turning out a TON of degrees for a few jobs and expecting people to be able to just succeed based on a 4 year degree program. All the while the economy does expect a 4 year degree for some jobs that really shouldn't. So you're expected to waste money on a degree you don't need to work a job that won't help you pay back your degree because they aren't paying…

This is talked about by Scott Alexander of Slate Star Codex here: http://slatestarcodex.com/2015/06/06/against-tulip-subsidies...

The idea of there being too many jobs that require degrees (but really don't utilize them) is touched on, and the proposed solution is for positions to not be allowed to ask for degree status. Instead, they would have to test for aptitude. The whole article is worth a read.

Re: Millions of educated, experienced workers are tossed aside by a strong economy

#38

Post by fierarul »

JumpCrisscross wrote: post #23
fierarul wrote: post #15

I find it amazing how much US cares about employment rate. Then people start talking about U3 vs U*. I know they mean something... they always come up. What I'm curious about these statistics is: how do the statistics track the self-employed? Seems to me the gig-economy is not about part-time jobs but about part-time self-employment. So, if you are self-employed and you pay your taxes, from the government's point of…

> that doesn't mean you are profitable or making a living wage These statistics are tracked to a pedantic level of detail by the BLS. You can get numbers of people by industry and zip code and earnings bucket and quarter for most categories of self employment going back to the early 1980s. Moreover, unemployment isn’t mean to measure if people are getting a liveable wage. It measure if they’re getting any wage. The p…

I wasn't thinking only about the self-employed (as in S-corp) but also LLC owners that are employees at their own company and smaller ventures/startups(?).

Indeed, at some point the money runs out and that will become actual unemployment, but it will show up in statistics with a rather long delay or not at all.

In the mean time, you have people doing literally nothing while on paper the economy is overheating.

Of course, I'm sure it's a small percentage of the population... so probably not very relevant.

Re: Millions of educated, experienced workers are tossed aside by a strong economy

#39

Post by LanceH »

moduspol wrote: post #34
bargl wrote: post #30

The economy and the education system are out of sync. We are turning out a TON of degrees for a few jobs and expecting people to be able to just succeed based on a 4 year degree program. All the while the economy does expect a 4 year degree for some jobs that really shouldn't. So you're expected to waste money on a degree you don't need to work a job that won't help you pay back your degree because they aren't paying…

> Again, I don't know the solution. Regulate the number of graduates within a certain degree field? Stop providing loan guarantees for all students regardless of the marketability of the degree they've chosen?

And make loans dischargeable like any other loan.

Re: Millions of educated, experienced workers are tossed aside by a strong economy

#40

Post by pastor_elm »

>"She once had her own office, secretaries and assistants, along with titles like “director” that spoke to her decades of experience. Now, she’s a temp — one of many.

>Levi was laid off from her job at a law office during a merger in early 2015, and has struggled to find long-term work. In late 2016, she filed for bankruptcy."

How do you go from director at 59 to filing bankruptcy in fewer than two year after losing your job? Fiscal irresponsibility

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