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I wonder:

Median annual earnings of correctional officers and jailers were $35,760 in May 2006. The middle 50 percent earned between $28,320 and $46,500. The lowest 10 percent earned less than $23,600, and the highest 10 percent earned more than $58,580. Median annual earnings in the public sector were $47,750 in the Federal Government, $36,140 in State government, and $34,820 in local government. According to the Federal Bureau of Prisons, the starting salary for Federal correctional officers was $28,862 a year in 2007. Occupational Outlook Handbook 2008-2009: Correctional Officers

"They're hiring 18-year-olds two months out of high school. "We've got officers who are 70 years old, senior citizens. That's a security risk." Physical fitness standards have been lowered, with overweight, out-of-shape correctional officers in the system. Many Texans support keeping prisons as inhospitable as possible because they're supposed to be about punishment, but those same poor conditions (think double shifts with no air conditioning in the Texas summer heat) combine with low pay to make it nearly impossible to staff current prisons in their existing, mostly rural locations. Texas prison guard salary ranks 47th among states [Apr 7, 2008]

Trinity Services Group is the second food services company to tell the Department of Corrections it can't afford to keep feeding prisoners. The company said it's losing $100,000 a month on its contract to feed inmates in the north-central part of the state and at three prisons in South Florida. The company, which was paid $21-million last fiscal year, said it's losing money because food and fuel costs are rising at the rate of 9 percent, far in excess of the 2 percent inflation cushion allowed in its state contract. Trinity is paid 88 cents for every meal served. Oldsmar company opts out of prison food service [Sept 19, 2008]

This isn't an issue of preventing "the best & brightest" from immigrating to the US. These are stock jobs "sales, lending, and bank administration".

For each one of those positions, there is surely a US employee who has been busting his or her rear end to be given a chance to work in that position. Not to mention, many of those position mentioned are currently desperately seeking work. Our economy is crashing due to people out of work, receiving little or now pay raises, or in secure about their future income.

http://data.bls.gov/PDQ/servlet/SurveyOutputServlet?data_tool=latest_numbers&series_id=LNS14000000

None the less, I do find you opinion interesting & worthy of further discussion.

• 5000$ in 1980 = 12889.87$ in 2008
• 2500$ in 1990 = 4063.22$ in 2008
• 1000$ in 1997 = 1323.52$ in 2008

Now, let's take the Asus EEE PC (280$) in 1990. In 1990 you would have paid 172.28$ for that. That's a PC that would have beaten your top-of-the-line 2500$ 1990 PC to smithereens. (The i486 came out in 1989!))

So you actually think that unemployment compatible to ours is a good thing? Do you think our economy would not be impacted by a lose of 1.7 billion anally for every two bases closed? Do you understand exactly how many based we have in Germany? We currently have around 19 bases there with between 20,000-40,000 soldiers with disposable income and the immediate families of about one third of those solders living in Germany and contributing to the economy.

Now, do you think that would instill havoc on the US economy if all that vanished over night or within a year or so? Now compare the German economy to the US's. In 2007, Germany had a GDP of 2.8 trillion. The US had a GDP of 13.78 trillion. It's going to hurt Germany just like it would hurt the US but worse because it would be a lot larger impact.

Now, don't get too excited about your Wikipedia numbers. They don't tell you the entire story. Most of the unemployment reduction has to do with repositioning US troops to other based and their families moving back to the US opening up jobs for unemployed Germans. But look at the numbers, they are all way out of line with the US's and yes, they are already adjusted for differences in unemployment accounting systems.

Your fooling yourself if you think their economy is in good shape or that it is capable of surviving a complete US withdraw. Hell, the first link I gave showed protesters begging the US to keep a base open that it was moving to Turkey while they were bitching about our war in Iraq. Personally, I say Fuck Germany, let them suffer. But we will see them suffer no matter how you pretend to want to slice it.

I'm not an economist so I'll be right out there and say that my eyes glaze over a bit when I'm trying to dig through all of the info on the Bureau of Labor Statistics website about their methodology. Basically, they conduct a survey of 60,000 workers and poll them on their employment status. They then break that info up into six measures which they label as U1-U6.

The current chart that shows the breakdown can be found here: http://www.bls.gov/news.release/empsit.t12.htm

People who are no longer eligible for unemployment or who's benefits have expired are not counted.

"Discouraged workers" who aren't actively looking for work aren't counted, but if your unemployment benefits have expired and you're still looking, you are counted. Here is what the Bureau of Labor Statistics has to say.

Secondly, a person who is layed off from a $75,000 and regains employment at $50,000 is also not counted as "unemployed," BUT, he's making 1/3 less.

Yes, and that will show up in income statistics. It would be silly to consider him unemployed in any way.

It is a fact that automation creates jobs. It may create a loss in jobs in one sector, but it creates jobs in other sectors.

Automation does create jobs, but probably not in the way you're thinking. It is not true that if computers replace 10,000 telephone operators, that more than 10,000 jobs are created to manage those computers; if that were the case, then there would be no cost savings and no reason for phone companies to switch. Instead, the same service that used to be provided by the operators can now be provided by fewer computer technicians. This leaves the former phone operators temporarily unemployed, but they will eventually find jobs producing other things. The end result is that we produce more with the same amount of labor, and the same thing happens with offshoring. Think of China as a black box where companies send money (less than they would pay for domestic labor) and get products back. The effect is the same as if they had saved money due to automation.

The numbers you quote seem pretty high to me...but I'd like to keep an open mind. Any studies to back that up?

There are a multitude of studies that are no doubt available on the web. An obvious one is the Bureau of Labor Statistics itself. While the "top line" number (the U3) is the one that always gets the publicity they also measure the one (the U6) that I and other were talking about. There is no shortage of economists who think this is really the important number. See this month's report.

I'm not trying to say everything is roses, but despite everything that's happened, most people I know can still house themselves and put food on the table, and, while nervous about the state of the economy, are still employed or otherwise earning a living.

That's equally true of everyone I know (or hang out with) and brings me back to my original point. We tend to move in circles of people who are like us and are in similar circumstances. But look around a bit beyond the circle. The signs (e.g. food banks begging for food almost weekly now) are all around.

The article says $1000 in 1999 dollars. So that'd be nearly $1500 today.

Not quite. Inflation from Jan 1999 to Nov 2008 (latest available) was about 29.3% (BLS CPI data). So $1000 in 1999 would be about $1293 today.

when you're an officer on duty, you put your life on the line every day and yet you are shown little gratitude for it.

According to the US Dept of Labor, Bureau of Labor being a cab driver is nearly twice as risky as being a police officer: CF AR 06/01/95 FATL-RELATIVE RISK, 1993 (pdf)

Police officers, unlike cab drivers, are lionized on television every night, and they frequently get to hear people go on about how they "put their life on the line every day".

Police officers certainly have my sympathies, but if you want to see a difficult job, take a look at the life of a San Francisco MUNI driver sometime.

Most of it is invested into other parts of the economy. Providing jobs and growth. It would be better if wealth were more evenly distributed but it's not that bad. In effect they are paying everyone elses wages at market rates, ie. supply and demand sets the price not them.

When you have most of the supply locked up, you call the tune. Wealthy individuals and companies don't operate in markets, they use their wealth to control markets.

The investment class doesn't "provide jobs and growth" so much as it skims wealth off of the top. The U.S. GDP is about $14 trillion, the workforce of about 150,000,000: the average American worker creates about $93,000 worth of value per year.

But the average annual wage is only about $39,000.

So where does the majority of that value created by workers go? GDP = rents + interests + profits + wages + some statistical fudge factors. Most of the value created by the average worker goes to the investing class in the form of "unearned" income - profits, interest, and rents.

This idea that we should be grateful to the wealthy for giving us jobs and growth is like beggars at the back door of the palace heaping praises on the nobility for passing out scraps from the banquet. I say fsck the nobility, time for a little peasant uprising.

Bureau of Labor Statistics has the information you seek. http://www.bls.gov/

If I had mod points, you'd have them now.

For what it's worth, here's the 2007 Bureau of Labor Statistics salary survey:
http://www.bls.gov/oes/current/oes_nat.htm#b25-0000

Mean annual salary across the class of "Education, Training, and Library" workers: $46,610
Kindergarten: $47,750
Elementary: $50,040
Middle school: $50,630
Secondary: $52,450

BLS has recently redesigned their site, so I'm having issues finding their by-industry breakdown of
hours worked by sector. I've seen it in the past, and if memory serves, the average number of hours in a year
for education was well below 2000.

It's easy to find the current table, but it lumps education in with health care. Average weekly hours for those
sectors is 32. The ER is open all night, your local elementary school is not: Draw your own conclusions.

Beginning 1994, I have added 2.7% per year to the government CPI number. This should better reflect the true inflation rate since the government number has not been accurate since around 1993

CPI/Inflation Data:( ftp://ftp.bls.gov/pub/special.requests/cpi/cpiai.txt )
1993: 3.0
1994: 2.6
1995: 2.8
1996: 3.0
1997: 2.3
1998: 1.6
1999: 2.2
2000: 3.4
So, the graph essentially doubles inflation for the timeframe, then concludes that the "Real Stock Market Returns" are awful. Talk about manipulating your data.

Also from the link:

The Dow has historically moved within well defined channel. The boundaries of the channel have been touched only 4 times since 1910. The top of the channel was last touched in 2000.

Hm. Channel stocks. I've seen people trying to sell me that garbage on CNN. If the DOW moves in a clearly defined channel, then it would be easy for big investors to make a TON of money by knowing where the bottoms are. What "Fred's Intelligent Bear Site" has really done is create a "line of best fit" for the peaks, and create one for the valleys. If there was such a tried-and-true predictor of the stock market, surely it would not need to be found on somebody's Earthlink page!

/rantoff

Well, I AM a book author and I can tell you writers do average about $5,000 per year.

The figures I posted were writers for TV shows. Anyway, the US Dept. of Labor disagrees with you.

Stephen King and Dean Koontz are hardly the average author, by the way.

I never claimed they were; they are exceptionally good writers. Which is my point; good writers will command a larger salary, just with any other profession. My point was that a lot of people try to be writers, but they really aren't. Sorry..

Half of all the money I earn goes right back to the government for taxes.

You must have another job, and make more at it that I do in my job. The government steals 33% of my income. But your tax burden is not relevent here.

Authors are also expected to do their own promotion. Only the really prominent authors get significant push from their publishers. The rest of us are strictly DIY.

Well, I'm sure Steven King had to start there too, don't you think? Its not an easy thing to do, make a living off of art. Again, sorry, but that's how it is. It's like movies. Ever see those made by SciFi movies? They're fun to watch, but because they're bad. I'm amazed people can keep affording to make such movies, yet they do.

And actually, most authors are in another line of work. I think it's something less than 5% of authors who are able to support themselves on their fiction. The rest of us have day jobs.

Which tells me most authors aren't really that good... at least if they never "make it." But I doubt King was handed a publishing contract the day he was born.

I haven't decided what to think about book piracy. I know my books have been pirated, but I don't know if those represent sales lost to me.

Perhaps you should try publishing yourself. Give a book away for free in pdf, see what the feedback is.

I do know that I was mighty P.O'd when Google decided it could scan and post books that were still in print and selling

As well you should be.

without asking question one to the person who held the copyright.

Well, wouldn't that be your publisher?

To my knowledge, they weren't offering to share the ad revenue with the authors.

Sounds like a problem with your publishing contract. That's what the TV writers strike was about, if you'll recall. They wanted a share of revenue from their work going online, and they got it. And good for them, they should.

The thing you should consider is whether your stock increases are out pacing inflation. If you have neither lost nor made anything in 10 years, your money that you invested has less value now. However, if you put that money in a high-yield savings account with no earning cap, chances are that the money will be worth more now than when you initially invested. For example, if you purchased $10,000 (US) in stock ten years ago, it would have to be worth $13,422.27 today to pace inflation according to http://www.bls.gov/data/inflation_calculator.htm. The savings account calculator at http://www.capitalone.com/directbanking/online-savings-account/calculator.php shows that, over 10 years (at today's APR of 3.55%) you would have approximately $14,169 in 10 years. You can imagine how that scales over the next 40 years. I say cash out your stocks now and put your money in a savings account if you want a sure thing.

She does all the work of raising her crop of tomatoes and getting it to market. No leeching there, she doesn't get government farm subsidies, she just works. But, whatever she makes for selling her crop, it depends in large part on having roads to transport it. It's not that she's a leech, nor lazy...

Using public goods, or other common resources, is not leaching off of others. I'm speaking of the parasitic nature of the "investment class", the absentee owners of capital, who do no productive work yet reap dividends.

Consider a worker on an assembly line. She assembles parts into a product worth (as valued by a free market) $10. Lets say that the parts that she starts with, plus the support services (the power and maintenance costs of the factory, the back office costs, and so on, again at a fair market value) come out to $7. Does she make $3 on the deal? No. Because the investors, who are not doing any work here, have to get their cut.

Let's look at some numbers. These are back-of-the-envelope calculations, but the U.S. GDP is about $14 trillion. With a workforce of about 150,000,000, that's about $93,000 per capita - $93,000 worth of value, created by the average American worker per year.

Does the average American worker make anything like $93,000 a year? Not even close. The average (which seems to be mean, here) annual wage is about $39,000; the median, about $26,000.

So where does the rest - the lion's share, indeed - of that value created by workers go? GDP is rents + interests + profits + wages + some statistical fudge factors; basically, about $50,000 of the value created by the average worker goes to the investing class in the form of profits, interest, and rents.

The dollar has been gaining strength recently, in direct response to the financial crisis. What does that do to your "theories"?

I would suggest you take a few finance courses and learn how things work. The world doesn't view economies or currency like a person's bank statement. It doesn't work like that. As you would imagine, it's more complex with many more variables.

You don't think PhD economists write dissertations for fun do you? No, they write them because it is a complex subject. Reducing it down to personal checking accounts will lead you to incorrect conclusions.


And yea, I do have some proof: see the GDP rates here.
While there is an exception here and there, you can plainly see the US tops almost all of the charts. Of course, it doesn't say anything about which is more "successful" because you haven't defined what success is. In worldview, global economic terms, success is measured by a) a country's current wealth and b) the level of output it achieves

Again, the US tops the charts in these areas too.

Keying the end of the Depression to the return of the DJIA to 1929 levels is wrong, in my opinion. The only reason that the market of 1929 was as high as it was in the first place was that everyone was buying stock on margin, which resulted in hilariously large P/E ratios and absurd market caps. In 1929, as now, the market crashed because the "wealth" was really just debt and didn't really exist . So I don't think it's fair to say that the Depression didn't end until the market legitimately achieved the level that it had artificially achieved thirty years earlier.

A better mark--and why most people do consider that WWII ended the depression--is that the unemployment rate all but evaporated. In the Depression, unemployment was as high as 25-30%. By 1948--the first year in which we started properly tracking unemployment in the Federal Government--it was about 3.5%--a level it held relatively consistently until the 1970s oil crisis.

If you don't like the unemployment rate, let's look at the GDP. In 1929, the GDP was $103.6 billion. By 1933, it had declined to $56.4 billion. It had crawled back up to $92.2 billion by 1939.

By 1945, the end of WWII, it was $223.1 billion.

So, although you're correct that the Dow didn't return to its 1929 levels until 1960, I think trying to make the argument that the Depression didn't end until then is weak, and, ultimately, simply wrong.

But you have to put up with higher unemployment rates.

-l

By the way, according to the 2007 data from the Bureau of Labor Statistics, the mean wage for CEO's was about $150,000/year. The mean wage for human resource managers was about $100,000/year. The mean wage for public relations officers was about $100,000/year The mean wage for purchasing managers (I would love to be a purchasing manager) was $90,000/year. The mean wage for financial managers was about $80,000/year.

Even if all of those wages were cut in half by the time I hit the job market in 5 years, I'd still be doing quite, quite well.

Hm, what are wages like in YOUR sector?

Face it, being a manager is a position that requires people skills and if you hire some cookie-cutter foreign guy with a poor grasp of english to head up your company, he's going to have issues communicating with everyone in your organization effectively and charismatically. However, if he's just a code monkey, you can stuff him in some boiler room, tell him to write this-or-that in Java, and it works out just fine.

And this is all besides the bubble in the technical field. Nobody is out there studying Economics right now. It's unpopular, intimidating, and to many people, boring. But with everybody fucking and making new unskilled laborers like misguided horny bunnies, going into a field that tasks you with managing laborers is the logical choice.

Once wages for unskilled jobs really hit rock-bottom, my job will be easy!

According to the Bureau of Labor Statistics, there were 383,000 people employed in the Motion picture and sound recording industries in September 2008.

My money is on the idea that they took the amount the industries estimate they lose from piracy and then divided that by some moderate wage.

Here, enjoy.

If you don't believe me, run the numbers yourself. The Green Party wants a minimum wage for a single adult of $42,250 in year 2000 dollars (or $53,753.68 in 2008 when adjusted for inflation). This is for a 30-hour workweek. If I am factually incorrect, please show me how.

here's the link for the U6

http://www.bls.gov/webapps/legacy/cpsatab12.htm

should have posted it to begin with.

I make a little over $15.00 an hour and that's pretty good for San Antonio.

http://www.bls.gov/ro6/fax/oes_sa.htm

That fails to adjust for inflation. This is the point Ron Paul is making when he talks about fiat currency stealing from savers.

Going from public inflation calculators (such as this one), $1,000,000 after 45 years has about $140,000 worth of purchasing power.

This is the real reason why people are having to work longer.

say you get a measly 5% return on your investment and you have an investment that calculates it's interest once per month.

do the math.

So let's see: 5% nominal interest, annually ... 5.6% annual inflation ...

Well sir, "the math" says your real interest rate is -0.6%. Good luck hitting your $1 million goal.

Funeral. Home. Director. (or Owner if you can get the seed capital together).

http://www.bls.gov/oco/ocos011.htm

Median annual earnings for wage and salary funeral directors were $49,620 in May 2006. The middle 50 percent earned between $37,200 and $65,260. The lowest 10 percent earned less than $28,410 and the top 10 percent earned more than $91,800.

Salaries of funeral directors depend on the number of years of experience in funeral service, the number of services performed, the number of facilities operated, the area of the country, and the director's level of formal education. Funeral directors in large cities usually earn more than their counterparts in small towns and rural areas.

There will always be people dying......

Layne

The U1 is the most commonly reported number. But there is a U6 number which counts people who do not show up at employment centers (most of which are a joke BTW), are working temporary jobs, pasting together 2-3 part-times jobs or discouraged and not looking. The U6 is now at about 10.3%. Anecdotally I have met EE's and programmers working temp jobs to try to get by.
http://www.bls.gov/webapps/legacy/cpsatab12.htm

Also, companies whine and bitch about not being able to find qualified workers. But due to ageism, workers over 40 often have a hard time finding work, regardless of education, certs, experience etc. This is do that companies do not have to pay more salary and benefits for skilled workers.

http://management.silicon.com/careers/0,39024671,39168214,00.htm

... unless I'm reading something wrong (which can't possibly be!).

Table B-1 linked to from the original article (and at http://www.bls.gov/news.release/empsit.t14.htm for those wanting to go directly there) shows that "Computer System Design and Related" (under "Professional and Business Services") increased by 52K jobs over the last year. "Management and Technical Consulting Services" jobs increased by 72K jobs over the last year. There were also increases in both of these categories for the month of July.

So while overall IT jobs may have decreased, the high value (and high salary!) jobs that are difficult to offshore have increased.

Am I reading this correctly?

Those elected officials want to spend their August kicking up their shoes when unemployment is at an all-time high?

While I agree that our elected officials shouldn't be going on vacation I have to disagree that unemployment is at an all-time high. Unemployment as of today is 5.7%. Over the past 50 years the median has been 5.5% and the mean has been 5.6% so hardly an all-time high. Below are a list of years sorted from highest to lowest in which unemployment was higher.

1982 - 9.7%
1983 - 9.6%
1975 - 8.5%
1976 - 7.7%
1981 - 7.6%
1984 - 7.5%
1992 - 7.5%
1985 - 7.2%
1977 - 7.1%
1980 - 7.1%
1986 - 7.0%
1993 - 6.9%
1958 - 6.8%
1991 - 6.8%
1961 - 6.7%
1987 - 6.2%
1978 - 6.1%
1994 - 6.1%
2003 - 6.0%
1949 - 5.9%
1971 - 5.9%
1979 - 5.8%
2002 - 5.8%

Data was taken from the Bureau of Labor Statistics if you don't believe me.

All those reports that complain about IT job losses since 2001 are reflecting the dot-com implosion. I know hundreds of IT workers laid off during that time, none were laid off because of outsourcing, they were all laid off because of bad business decisions in a time of easy of capital.

Most IT folks I know have been re-employed since 2001. Currently across all unemployed, long-term unemployment is only 8% of unemployed.

I find it difficult to believe that there are currently 656,000 unemployed IT workers in the U.S - there are only 1.4 million unemployed Management, professional, and related occupations. I would not be surprised that short-term unemployment of IT workers is higher than others because of the rapidly shifting technological landscape, but I doubt they represent half of all office workers unemployed.

As of 2003, only 3% and the short-term unemployed and 4.2% of the long-term unemployed were in the Information sector.

At the same time, I know several recent Indian immigrants who started a company which created many new IT jobs in the US.

I agree that H1-B is silly. Anyone with a college education should be allowed to immigrate to the US and become citizens. They should come to the US where they can make use of our state of high economic freedom to generate wealth for all.

Please note: that bls statistic only refers to the demand side of the equation. To see the whole picture, you also have to consider the supply side. India has 4X the US population, and India alone is cranking out 495,000 BSCS graduates every year.

Furthermore, according the BLS:

"As with other information technology jobs, outsourcing of software development to other countries may temper somewhat employment growth of computer software engineers. Firms may look to cut costs by shifting operations to foreign countries with lower prevailing wages and highly educated workers."

Also, I have to wonder where the BLS gets it's information:

"According to Robert Half Technology, starting salaries for software engineers in software development ranged from $66,500 to $99,750 in 2007. For network engineers, starting salaries ranged from $65,750 to $90,250."

Robert Half! Asking Robert Half if it's a good time to go into IT is like asking Century 21 if it's a good to sell your home.

http://www.bls.gov/oco/ocos267.htm

Here are some more numbers:

"H-1B Visa Numbers: No Relationship with Economic Need"

According to a new study from the Center for Immigration Studies: the number of H-1B visas approved in the computers and engineering fields greatly exceeds any reasonable number reflected by economic demand.

http://www.cis.org/node/222

"High Tech Industry Laying Off American Workers While Seeking Huge Increase in Guest Workers"

"Currently, the Department of Labor estimates that there are about 656,000 unemployed IT workers in the U.S. In addition, the slowing economy has led to a loss of jobs across the board including in IT. The Denver-based Rocky Mountain News reports that Colorado -- the state with the third highest concentration of IT workers -- has lost 47,200 technology jobs since 2001."

http://www.fairus.org/site/PageServer?pagename=research_may08nl02

Gains in US high tech employment more than offset by off-shore worker visas

"According to the AeA Cyberstates yearly reports, "High Tech" employment experienced job losses of 945,000 in the 2001 recession. Since this drop in employment, the "High Tech" sector has recovered about 300,000 jobs, but during the period in question, a probable 669,681 H-1B and L-1 computer-related workers were added to the workforce."

http://tinyurl.com/3pj2c3

IT job security plummets five times faster than nationwide average

"Job security for IT professionals plummeted more than 10% from January to February of this year, far surpassing the average job security declines seen nationwide in a rigorous analysis of U.S. employment patterns."

http://www.networkworld.com/newsletters/edu/2008/033108ed1.html

Studies Indicate IT Labor Shortage is a Myth

"These studies done at Duke aren't alone in their assessment that there is in fact no skills shortage. They're backed up by other studies conducted by RAND Corporation, The Urban Institute and Stanford University, among others, all of which settle upon the same conclusion: There is no shortage of educated IT workers."

http://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=1081923#PaperDownload

This according to a well researched article at baselinemag.com:

http://tinyurl.com/yoy2rw

Everyone in America will eventually be too poor to buy anything,

Given that has been growing continuously since 1991 (and basically growing since 1960 with the exception of brief blips during the mid-70's), when exactly is this going to occur?

Besides, imports help Americans (especially the poor) save billions of dollars per year by dropping prices of many good by 25%-50%. Even if our income was to come down, we still end up spending our money more efficiently.

But I think it's fair to say that IT is the field that is getting slaughtered now.

Where at your numbers on this?

The BLS has Computer and Mathematical Science Occupations at 3.1 million jobs in the US right now with a mean annual wage of $72,190.

I hear a lot of "the sky is falling" stuff, but no real data.

Interesting...what part of the US do you live in?

Midwest.

I know that works for a Hospital (VA), but, most other physicians I know are in their own private practice.

Don't get me wrong, small practices are still quite common - just less so than they once were and the numbers are shrinking. Apparently about 15% of physicians are self employed. The move to larger practices is a relatively recent trend driven largely by increased specialization, lifestyle concerns, and economies of scale.

Being good at coding is a lot different from knowing enough to pass a class.

The last time I was looking for work, I was invited through some networking contacts to interview for a job title I had never heard of before: an operations research analyst. They didn't care whether you processed the data in excel, matlab, or assembly language, as long as your results were good. It's not the typical thing one does with a computer science degree, but it sounds like it would be right up your alley. For myself, I thought the job was a great fit, but botched the interview by showing up sick as a dog because I had flown 1600 miles and didn't want to reschedule.

By the way, that BLS web site is great if you want to find out salary information, qualifications, and job outlook information for different areas of the country.

They're doomed in the same way IBM was doomed back in the late 80's./blockquote> In the late 80's IBM stock was in the mid $20s. Now it is 6X higher at $120. As a Microsoft stockholder, I sure hope you are right!

Of course you need to consider inflation.
According to the Consumer Price Index (Cf. http://www.bls.gov/cpi/ ), $120 in 2008 has the same buying power as $45.64 in 1980.
So basically you are not 6 times higher, but something like twice ;)

From another point of view if you put the $20 in 1980 on a placement giving you 6.9% per year you would have had around $120 today as well.
So it is not really an impressive performance from a purely financial point of view (on 28 years).

What difference does it make to a dirt farmer if he's decended from monkeys?

Careful about your stereotypes. Us 'dirt farmers' in Louisiana know quite a bit more about genetics and evolution from first-hand experience with our crops and herds than you'll ever learn.

If you look at the US Census data, however, we only make up about 0.26% of the employed population. Sadly, our votes don't count for much.

Feel free to bitch about ignorant city dwellers, however, if it makes you feel like more of a man.

You haven't addressed my point, which is that some people can use less oil by telecommuting part of the time.

Sure, some can. But my point was that not all can and it seems to be less productive when they do. Now, this some is a small portion of the puzzle. The amount of people who can telecommute who aren't already doing so is probably not going to be very significant.

However, you have successfully and concisely refuted the assertion that all people can telecommute all of the time. Strong work. Who made that assertion?

Wel, to be honest, I took it as implied with your statement:

Here's a substitute for oil: tell your boss you have to work from home 2 days a week.

If I did so incorrectly, I apologize. But I'm not sure how else to understand that. Maybe it is because I know that we get roughly 19 gallons of gas from a barrel and most people could live within 50 miles of their work. There will be people who live further either by choice of neccesity and that it ok too. But at 25 miles to a gallon of gas, if the full 50 miles was considered, we would only save 4 gallons a person (100 mile round trip). This 4 gallons also depends on the worker not driving and having to goto some place that they would have already went by and stopped on their way to and from work. That means we would need around 4-5 people like that to save one barrel of oil per day. It would be halved(2-3 people) for 2 days. Now, If we can imagine (I'm making this up so don't ask for sources) that at least 30% of workers could work from home 2 days a week and of those 75% already do, that leaves around 8% of the workforce left to do something not already being done.

If we take that 8% and assume the best possible scenario of 100 miles round trip with 2 people saving one barrel in 2 days and look at some real numbers, it isn't going to mean that much. There was around 146.0 million employed workers in the US during May 2008. In June ( I can't find the may report) we produced about 9.1 million barrels of gasoline per day. In two days this would be 18.2 million barrels. A barrel of gasoline would be 42 US gallons so 18.2 times 42 would be around 764 million gallons of gas a day.

8% of the workforce would equal about 12 million people. That would be a savings of 48 million (12 million times 4 gallon savings) gallons or 2.5 million barrels of oil (48 million divided by the 19 gallons from crude). From the same PDF (June), we find that we put 15.3 million barrels of crude a day into the refineries which would be around 30.5 million per two day period. The actual number presented in the PDF is 15,374 thousand gallons per day. I converted it to millions to keep the math easy. But as you can see, this is only around an 8.1% savings. Now this all hinges on the idea that everyone drives 100 miles round trip and they wouldn't drive those days to do things like going to the store or something that they would have been able to do on their way to and from works normally.

It actually seems to get a little worse. According to this http://abcnews.go.com/Technology/Traffic/Story?id=485098&page=1 >news article from ABC news, they listed the average commute as being 16 miles but it talks about the time the commute lasts so it might be just a wash. However, 16 miles is about 16% of the original 100 miles which could mean around six times less of an impact. If we used the 16 miles average (32 round trip) each person would only save around 1.28 gallons instead of the 4. So instead of 2-3 people saving a barrel, we are looking at something like every 14 people. Instead of saving 48 million gallons or 2.4 million barrels of crude, we would only be saving 15.3 million gallons or

$30,000 isn't really the absurd low-ball estimate you apologize for. The median US wage for workers above the age of 16 for 2007 was $36,140. This disregards discrepancies for sex, age, and occupation. source.

On the contrary, offshoring has been part of the steady erosion of the middle class, and it doesn't receive enough attention. During the post-war boom, it was common to graduate high school and make $20 an hour at a unionized manufacturing job. Good luck doing that today; many struggle to make that much with a college degree.

First went the unions, then went the manufacturing, and now the white collar jobs are leaving, and all so the top 1% can see their annual 15% increase in income. Smashing, yea capitalism.

In the same way right-to-work laws free workers from having to pay a thousand dollars a year in union dues AND making another five dollars an hour with twice as much vacation time. It's a penny wise, pound stupid decision, because the vast majority of all cost reductions are not passed down to the consumer, they just go straight into the executives' pockets.

But you said "Stay-at-home parents, for example, are unemployed under that thought process," which are workers not actively looking for work. That number is captured in the labor participation rate.
The 5.5% unemployment rate is the number of people in the civilian workforce actively looking for work but are not employed.
If you want to extend it by including those who want a job but aren't searching the unemployment rate is 9% though the majority of those workers aren't looking because of reasons other than being discouraged.

No. You need to look at the employment report to understand it. That link goes to whatever is the current version of the report at the time (it's issued monthly), though archives are available.

There's a population of about 300 million people in the country. Many of them are retired or too young to be able to work. Some are infirm, others do not need to work. Others simply aren't looking for work. All of these are not counted in the statistics. Everyone else -- those working and those actively looking for work -- are considered the civilian work force. Of them, 5.5% are not employed. That works out to about 8.4 million people. Of these, about 38% have been unemployed for fewer than five weeks. Another 29% have been unemployed for 5-14 weeks, and the remaining have been unemployed for longer than 14 weeks.

The unemployment rate in the Europe Union is even worse than in Canada, at 7%.

Full employment is reached at about 4% unemployment. Anything lower than that, and inflation starts to set in because it becomes a sellers' market. Employers have to come up with exorbitant salaries to hold onto their workers, and it becomes an arms race among the employers, who then have to raise their own prices to avoid taking financial losses. This happened in the last couple of years under Clinton, when the unemployment rate dropped under 4% and things started to get messy.

I find that really hard to believe. From the same site,

Median annual earnings of wage-and-salary network and computer systems administrators were $62,130 in May 2006.

If you look at the breakdown, even public schools pay more than what you say your salary is.

At any rate, that's not the point. The point is that a lot of people in the tech sector think they have an entitlement to a cushy job that makes >80k/yr with great benefits, vacation time, and 40 hour work weeks. Well, you don't. In the real world you are just another trained professional offering a service, and you will probably only ever make an average wage with average benefits--which isn't necessarily very much. If you were lobbying for better pay and working conditions in general for all trained professionals, I would sympathize. But people in the CS field don't deserve special treatment "just 'cause they know them computrons."

I find that really hard to believe. From the same site,

Median annual earnings of wage-and-salary network and computer systems administrators were $62,130 in May 2006.

If you look at the breakdown, even public schools pay more than what you say your salary is.

At any rate, that's not the point. The point is that a lot of people in the tech sector think they have an entitlement to a cushy job that makes >80k/yr with great benefits, vacation time, and 40 hour work weeks. Well, you don't. In the real world you are just another trained professional offering a service, and you will probably only ever make an average wage with average benefits--which isn't necessarily very much. If you were lobbying for better pay and working conditions in general for all trained professionals, I would sympathize. But people in the CS field don't deserve special treatment "just 'cause they know them computrons."

They can't get americans to buy their crappy pay, benefits, and job security, so they want to farm out slave labor they can have deported at their whim.

Oh cry me a river!

From the US Dept. of Labor:
In May 2006, median annual earnings of wage-and-salary computer applications software engineers were $79,780.

In May 2006, median annual earnings of wage-and-salary computer systems software engineers were $85,370.

How can you possibly suggest that a salary like that qualifies as "slave labor?" That's well above the median income of $46,326 in the U.S. per the U.S. Census. Are you aware that there are real cases of slave labor in the U.S? Such as those where a person has to work 2-3 jobs, gets no benefits, vacation, or job security, and still makes less than the poverty line?

The whiney upper-middle classers need to wake up and stop crying about their employers. As long as corporate abuse doesn't happen to them, they are ok with it. Well, guess what? India, China, and Japan are training top notch computer scientists and they are willing to work for less than Americans. That's called competition, and since that is what our capitalist economy thrives on (or so the Republicans/Libertarians keep saying), deal with it.

The American Medical Association restricts the supply of MDs, and by law you can't get most medical care from anyone who isn't an MD.

AC is correct: you cannot be a "realtor." You can be a "REALTOR" (Registered trademark) if the National Association of Realtors permits it.

Both restrict capacity of the labor in their industries. This is known to create at best Cournot competition. Meanwhile, a market that is not capacity constrained has Betrand competition - where the mere threat of entry can keep prices near their minimum. Cournot competition reduces economic efficiency (id est, screws you out of money).

I'd estimate the average working American is getting "screwed" (how much he pays less what a competitive market would cost) by about $6,000 per year (of the approximately $16,000/yr of medical expense he and his company pay). Your paycheck is probably light by $500 per month due to the AMA tax.

It is also worth noting that a supply shortage of saved lives is equivalent to preventable deaths. This artificial shortage raises prices of having your life saved while simultaneously reducing your odds of having your life saved.

The AMA and NAR are de facto monopsonists, restricting the ease of health care and real estate purchase respectively, and using your medical bills and need for housing to make their members artificially richer.

Don't believe that doctors are getting paid "too much"? See if you can find the trend in the Forbes best paying jobs in America:
1. Anesthesiologist
2. Surgeon
3. Obstetrician
4. Orthodontist
5. Oral Surgeon
6. Internist
7. Prosthodontist
8. Psychiatrist
9. General Practitioner
10. Chief Executive Officer
11. Physician and Surgeon, Other
12. Pediatrician
13. Dentist
14. Airline Pilot
15. Podiatrist
16. Lawyer

Productivity in the US has been going up steadily over the last decade, but real median income has gone down. Where does all that extra money go that you're not getting paid? Your company spends it on health insurance, most of which ends up in the hands of MDs.

OPEC dominates the trillion dollar global petroleum industry. The AMA dominates the two trillion dollar national medical industry. Politicians blame OPEC for our economy because doctors write big checks.

I don't think lala has much of a chance to become successful, but who knows, maybe. But, if it did become popular, the price of a song wouldn't remain a dime. I remember people plunking 25c into jukeboxes in the 80's to play a song ONCE. Given inflation, that's like 65c today (according to the U.S. Dept. of Labor). I've never heard of an industry that willingly reduced prices. Forces have forced them to, for now, but you can bet they are trying to figure out how to get song prices back up to where you pay 75c to just listen to a song once, and 3-5 bucks to buy a perpetual (non-transferable, if they can help it) license.

Honestly, I'm happy with a buck a song. When you consider the jukebox, you are getting to keep the song for the price of 4 plays at 1980-prices. I think Lala is a stupid idea, but I love Amazon MP3s, Walmart MP3s, and iTunes+ (that is, the unencrypted songs). The only problem I have with Amazon, Walmart, and iTunes is that it's hard to actually find new music, because you only get to hear like 15 seconds of a song. It's awefully hard to tell if you actually like a song in 15 seconds. Sometimes it's hard to tell even if you are getting the recording you've heard before and like, or some funky recording that just doesn't sound right.

Something like Lala might be a good way to find music that you intend on purchasing higher-quality tracks from other stores, but gives you a cheap way to hear new music. Still, for that, there's plenty of Internet radio, and places like last.fm.

http://www.bls.gov/eag/eag.us.htm

A useful place for statistics-
Unemployment is BAD right now...you are correct its not as bad as right after 9/11 but its still fairly ugly compared to Clinton's time in office.

Inflation 4%? While it appears that US currency no longer reacts strongly to the market(something about Shock theory) if Gas is $4 a gallon and food prices have leapt 100-300%, other countries no longer buy our currency in huge ammounts we got a pretty serious problem on our hands.

Truly I think we are looking the same data and getting very different predictive outcomes.