From 1999 To 2016, America Lost 11.4 Million People From the Workforce (washingtonpost.com)

Andrew Van Dam, writing for the Washington Post: Where did all the jobs go? Well, we're finally starting to find some satisfactory answers to the granddaddy of all economic questions. The share of Americans with jobs dropped 4.5 percentage points from 1999 to 2016 -- amounting to about 11.4 million fewer workers in 2016. At least half of that decline probably was due to an aging population. Explaining the remainder has been the inspiration for much of the economic research published after the Great Recession.

Comments

One word:

[Anonymous Coward]

Disability

Re:One word:

[PlusFiveTroll]

What, increasing the obesity rate of the population by 33% has side effects?

Re:One word:

[edi_guy]

The AC means SSI and is likely correct. All the welfare reform that Bill Clinton and Newt Gingrich patted themselves on the back for, just got transferred to a different department...Social Security disability.

Newt, Bill, and their cronies didn't care that the money was still being spent, they just checked the box with their 'base' and went on, enjoying the very, very, shortlived economic cycle that gave them breathing room.

Effing Republicans are lying sacks of crap when it comes to budgets. They will happily roll over for any corporate interest to explode the deficit/debt while still crying about PBS and the EPA. See for instance Dubya and Medicare Part D, an entitlement which has cost $727.3 billion and counting. Look at Trump who is doubling and tripling down on the disaster that was the Obama budget. More planes, more bombs, more ships (for Lockeed/Northrup/Boeing) more infrastructure for cronies.

Re:One word:

[rickb928]

And they will be replaced.

These 11 million plus were not replaced.

Re:One word:

[Marxist Hacker 42]

Actually no, they aren't being replaced. We're within 15 years of demographic collapse because of it.

Re:One word:

[Plus1Entropy]

Look at Trump who is doubling and tripling down on the disaster that was the Obama budget.

CONGRESS PASSES BUDGETS NOT THE PRESIDENT.

Re: One word:

[Kopp]

Notice the sharp drop after 2008 ? Who 'eeds kid when prospects are bad ? No job, no money, no kid. Simple as that

Re: One word:

[Marxist Hacker 42]

That is partially correct, but it only accelerates the downturn that began in 1953. Capitalism has no room for kids.

Automation

[lgw]

Where did the jobs go? It's hardly a mystery: automation.

The real question is, why is it so hard for displaced workers to train for better jobs - skilled trades and skilled manufacturing are very hungry for workers right now. The labor demand is there, what's up with the supply?

America is shockingly bad at adult vocational training? Where are the public schools for this? Where's the corporate participation? Companies don't want to (pay to) train people because they'll just jump to another company once trained, but that's a solvable problem, and companies really need to be involved in the training.

We have scam votech schools that charge a lot, and make empty promises of jobs. We need votech schools directly entwined with employers so that if you pas the class, you get the job, and you only worry about the cost if you change jobs soon after.

Re:Automation

[E-Rock]

It's so obvious that people who track this stuff for a living aren't sure.

I'm not saying you're wrong, but do you have any data, or just your gut?

Where I work zero jobs were lost to automation. All of our cut jobs just had their duties dumped on someone else, who in 2009 was just happy to still have a job. Unfortunately after a decade, the company, and some employees, have forgotten that what they do used to be three jobs.

Re:Automation

[Anonymous Coward]

The answer is hardly as simple as automation alone. Many people are leaving the workforce altogether because they are able to live off of welfare (directly or indirectly), lack a proper education, or have any sort of criminal history which bars them from any sort of job, among other things. The book Men Without Work by Nicholas Eberstadt shows this and other cases as the reason for why 1/5th of men in the US today are not involved in the workforce whatsoever.

Many jobs are also outsourced to third-world countries which will perform those jobs for far cheaper than they would domestically, hence the recent attention around the H-1B visa abuse by US companies.

I think you have a great points, especially about these scam schooling systems (check out the book Fail U by Charlie Sykes if you want to see how badly colleges have become). But there is not one single area that is causing all of it, which makes solving it all the more difficult.

Re:Automation

[albeit unknown]

A portion of the people automated out of their job simply don't have the neurons to support anything more complex, no matter how much education and training they're exposed to. The low complexity allowing early automation is why they were in the positions to begin with.

I'd guess the fraction that permanently phased out of the work force is similar to that which cannot be educated further.

Re:Automation

[jellomizer]

The jobs didn't go to Automation so quickly. When there is a downturn in the economy, companies learn to tighten their belts and get rid of a lot of extra weight. As they move from a growth strategy to a survival strategy. This caused the companies to become very efficient, and as the economy rebounded these efficiencies are still in place. So they are hiring again back to a growth strategy, they are not hiring the same people anymore, as the dynamics have changed.

I agree that vocational training is a key part that American society has lost. Part of it is the Teachers (As education enthusiasts) fault. They live their lives around education They grew up going to school, then went to college, to work in the school. Their lives are based around the school, for them the year starts in September.
When going to school I got the impression that the kids taking vocational classes, were doing so because they were stupid. The teachers never directly stated that, but it was implied and we caught onto that. Warning to students if they want to be ditch diggers if they don't do better on the test, etc....
Vocational training really should be expanded for a lot of jobs even into more white collar "Smart People" jobs like Coding. Giving them the skills to do the jobs at hand, saving colleges and their resources to educate people for the real standout jobs, where getting a college education meant something, and colleges can up their requirements, and not just be a diploma mill. Because today people needs a Masters degree for the jobs that use to require a college degree in the past.

There are other problems, the biggest thing is companies are not taking their most talented individuals and putting them under their wings to make them more successful, causing the best employees to be the ones highest flight risk.

However for a lot of these displaced workers, they just decided not to go back into the workforce. They may have gotten married and are managing the household. Have gotten sick and in need of support. Or just retired early.

With the anger about minorities taking our jobs, we failed to remember that the baby boomers put a lot of people to grow the economy, with the birth rate of WASPs down we are finding ways to keep the minorities out the workforce. Thus slowly hindering our economy, Because it isn't they are taking the jobs away from people, but they are taking jobs they can get.

Re:Automation

[gfxguy]

I thought IQ was supposed to be scaled so that 100 was average.

Re:Automation

[XXongo]

Where did the jobs go? It's hardly a mystery: automation.

It's so obvious that people who track this stuff for a living aren't sure.

From the abstract cited: "Our review of the evidence leads us to conclude that labor demand factors, in particular trade and the penetration of robots into the labor market, are the most important drivers of observed within-group declines in employment. "

I'm not saying you're wrong, but do you have any data, or just your gut?

You mean, other than what was in the article being discussed? The first one is annoyingly paywalled, but the WP article linked in the summary isn't:

" Robots:
Automation also seems to have cost more jobs than it created. Guided by research showing that each robot takes the jobs of about 5.6 workers and that 250,475 robots had been added since 1999, the duo estimated that robots cost the economy another 1.4 million workers."

Where I work zero jobs were lost to automation. All of our cut jobs just had their duties dumped on someone else, who in 2009 was just happy to still have a job. Unfortunately after a decade, the company, and some employees, have forgotten that what they do used to be three jobs.

(my italics). Nice anecdote. You just told me that each person now does the work that used to be three jobs. Sounds like "jobs cut due to automation" to me.

Re:Automation

[E-Rock]

Not automation, just more work. No new tools, no new 'bots. We do 'more with less' with usually just ends up being you decide what isn't critical and that part doesn't happen. Training and documentation are the usual victims, which just makes a disaster in the future.

Re:Automation

[rickb928]

Where i work those jobs lost in 2009 were not replaced, nor were they shuffled onto someone else. We eliminated departments, functions, and nearly 2 layers of management. And so far they have not grown back. We still cut.

Re:Automation

[sgt_doom]

You remind me of this crackhead I did a job for several years back who believed the entire employment problem with America was that everyone wasn't trained in Computer Science --- except all those douchetards like him and yourself, simply don't appear to EVER FRIGGGING READ anything current, such as the extraordinary number of engineering, programming and other professional-level tech jobs which have been continuously offshored since Jack Welch went apeshit at GE back in the mid-1980s.

Re:Automation

[sgt_doom]

You said it most succinctly, E-Rock, excepting I would state that plenty of jobs are continuously offshored, while plenty of foreign visa replacement workers are continuously brought in to replace American workers.

Re:Automation

[jeff4747]

The labor demand is there, what's up with the supply?

The demand isn't there.

Employers have almost eliminated hiring of entry-level workers in the belief that they take too much time from the more senior workers. Then employers complain about "not being able to find employees" are talking about people with multiple years of experience.

A long time ago, some companies would get desperate enough to hire entry-level people, allowing them to get those 3 years on the resume. Those workers could then move up the ladder, and other new entry-level workers filled their old positions. That allowed some of those "retrained" people to switch careers.

Now, those companies import H1B visas or outsource to another country. So entry-level people barely trickle into the field.

And if you're an employer, you're going to pick the naive and exploitable 22-year-old with student loans, not the 37-year-old "retrained" person. The first one's going to believe all that unpaid overtime is totally going to pay off. The latter realizes it won't, and probably has a family they'd like to see.

Re:Automation

[nospam007]

"The reality is anyone with an IQ of 100 or less is effectively economically obsolete."

You are aware that 50% of the population have an IQ of 100 or less?

That's how it works.

Re:Automation

[lgw]

What you say is true, but that's a much harder problem. In the mean time, there are plenty of people who are smart enough to retrain, and we have a growing economy, but we completely dropped the ball on connecting those two.

Re:Automation

[lgw]

What does that have to do with someone becoming a plumber, or doing skilled manufacturing?

Re:Automation

[lgw]

You seem to be talking about tech. I was talking about plumbers, welders, skilled manufacturing workers, etc. Not gonna outsource those jobs to India.

Re:Automation

[liquid_schwartz]

Where did the jobs go? It's hardly a mystery: automation.

While automation played a role, outsourcing played an even bigger role. Media doublespeak blames automation and tries to ignore or play down the impact of trade and claims that only ~13% of the job losses are due to trade (mostly China). If that were true then we're to believe that a mere 13% of US manufacturing is single handedly powering China. The math doesn't add up for that to be accurate.

The middle class is shrinking due to a combination of mass legal immigration, mass illegal immigration, trade policies that favor outsourcing, and automation. Of these only automation is a plus for US citizens. Automation holds the promise of 30 hour work weeks and the like. Mass immigration (legal and illegal) and outsourcing don't help the US citizen who still works. Even if you note that your job can't be outsourced more people will be competing for it thus lowering wages and working conditions. This is why the 1% favors mass immigration - they get cheaper labor and have already made their fortunes.

Re:Automation

[lgw]

... if you pas the class, you get the job ...

Being a good student does not mean you are a good sheep that a boss can herd. Businesses don't want to pay the cost of training but that has other effects; a shortage of qualified people, people who recognize an absence of commitment from that businesses.

Germany has solved this problem. Part of the class is actually working in the actual factory doing the actual job under supervision. It's a votech internship, and the company is taking no risks when they employ the guy (or not) later on.

The government has stepped-in, providing a form of corporate welfare. This has allowed businesses to enact more cost-cutting by demanding experience.

Yes. We should demand better from our government, or fire them. You may have noticed that non-establishment populist candidates, left and right, did OK in the recent election (Bernie wuz robbed, but he got a shocking amount of the popular vote). No reason to keep any incumbent who doesn't care about US workers.

Re:Automation

[jeff4747]

Those are being hurt by automation and technology.

For example, CNC machines cut down on skilled manufacturing jobs. Advances in plumbing tech means you need fewer plumbers to do the same work (ie. PEX is faster to install than copper). And so on.

Re:Automation

[lgw]

When going to school I got the impression that the kids taking vocational classes, were doing so because they were stupid. The teachers never directly stated that, but it was implied and we caught onto that. Warning to students if they want to be ditch diggers if they don't do better on the test, etc....

The punchline is that if you compare the lifetime earnings of a plumber and a dentist, the dentist doesn't pull ahead until around 40 (net of education costs). And if the plumber owns a small plumbing business (a "two truck shop"), just as the dentist must to be successful, the dentist may never pull ahead.

Vocational training really should be expanded for a lot of jobs even into more white collar "Smart People" jobs like Coding.

I couldn't agree more, though it would be a very different sort of school as there's a lot of abstract stuff to master, and you need reasonable written communications skills in English as well. But I do think it could be a 2-year program.

Re:Automation

[lgw]

Unskilled manufacturing had entirely gone to China etc. by the 90s. It has nothing to do with the wage stagnation in this century. Heck, those jobs have been leaving China this century, mostly because robots finally got cheaper.

Mass immigration doesn't help, but if you can do skilled work you're not really competing with the tide of migrant agricultural workers.

Unskilled and semi-skilled jobs are slowly going away, and never coming back. Some people just aren't smart enough to do skilled labor, and that's a huge problem for the world as a whole. But those who just need training? It's clearly in society's interest to provide it.

Re:Automation

[lgw]

The skilled trades are starving for workers in the US right now. Skilled manufacturing is starving for workers in the US right now. Efficiency doesn't always displace people, if the demand remains unsaturated.

Re:Automation

[luis_a_espinal]

Where did the jobs go? It's hardly a mystery: automation.

The real question is, why is it so hard for displaced workers to train for better jobs - skilled trades and skilled manufacturing are very hungry for workers right now. The labor demand is there, what's up with the supply?

A lot of it is geography-based structural unemployment. There are more jobs in the big cities than in small town America. The former has been heavily service-oriented (but still with a good % of manufacturing) since the early 1900's, the later have been predominantly manufacturing. Big city has been able to re-absorb people, whereas small town America has not (quite unfortunately obviously.)

People that need jobs the most are not living where the jobs are. There's been a shift in the geography of jobs (read Enrico Moretti "The New Geography of Jobs", good book) since the 70's. The shift is heavily tilted towards automation, services and serviceable products, in particular IT, all of which do much better in demographically dense metropolitan areas.

America is shockingly bad at adult vocational training?

Effectively, there's no adult vocational training in America. Most of it is via private 3-6 months schools that are expensive. There's the option with community colleges (cheaper and better, but lengthier) which is also limited to areas that have community colleges within reasonable driving distance.

Where are the public schools for this?

Shop class is not substitute for adult vocational education. Several HSs have vocational adult education, but again, this is limited by geography. We should have a model of vocational education post-middle school as in Japan or Germany, but we do not.

Where's the corporate participation?

Corporate sponsorship is gone dude. Been dead since the early 90's. You only get corporate sponsorship in companies that are wealthy and big, and only for people that are already educated (say, IT training.)

Companies don't want to (pay to) train people because they'll just jump to another company once trained, but that's a solvable problem,

No. That's not it. Everything has been outsourced to somewhere else. Janitors used to be employees, and they could hope to get training in clerical work or IT to climb the ladder, while having health benefits. Then they got outsourced to companies that only give them multiple part time gigs with no benefits. Same with security guards, sometimes IT and certainly health care.

It's one of the features of "shareholder economy". As a colleague of mine reminded me once: the shift started when "personnel department" was renamed "human resources." The shift might appear just semantics, but it had yuuuge implications, which we see today.

Re:Automation

[superdave80]

Where did the jobs go? It's hardly a mystery: automation.

That wasn't the question. Where did the workers go? is the question being asked here.

Re: Automation

[nnull]

This has been actually quite challenging for me to deal with as an employer. Skilled workforce is becoming thinner and thinner. I do provide training and I don't care if they jump ship.

More companies need to offer training and educational support for their employees or it's going to get worse, for all of us. I've also resorted to hiring retired people to train others or be kind of a second pair of eyes for others so they can tell them "We've tried that before, it won't work".

All I hear from other companies now is millennial this, millennial that, but none of them offer any solution to it, any educational programs or any sort of guidance. They want a PHD to be a maintenance guy for slightly above minimum wage. Instant gratification. They expect miracle workers now. I don't see many companies building much of an infrastructure to grow on. They just ride on the backs of specific employees, lose them and the company dies.

Re:Automation

[fluffernutter]

If large companies allow the game to be about growth, then small companies may be able to push them out of business.

Re: Automation

[ErichTheRed]

What jobs are you trying to recruit for? And more importantly, how much are you willing to pay?

The problem is that all employers are engaged in a race to the bottom, and every one of them is afraid to stop trying to strip every single cost out of their business. I see this in IT all the time -- regardless of how much more it costs in terms of change orders and lost productivity, businesses are falling all over themselves to offshore their IT departments. The main reason is that all their competitors are doing it and on the golf course it seems like a quick win.

Businesses have to realize that labor is not a free resource and that there is an advantage to paying more for better workers. Well-paid workers will stick around, work harder and be more engaged. Again from my world, most IT contractors I've dealt with just don't care about their jobs because they know they'll be somewhere else 3 or 6 months later.

Re:Automation

[Harvey Manfrenjenson]

You are aware that 50% of the population have an IQ of 100 or less?

That's how it works.

That was my first thought as well-- of course, IQ scores are normed and his statement is incorrect. But in fairness to the OP, I *think* what he was trying to say is this: If you measure people's IQ using the norms derived from developed countries, then significantly more than half of the world's population will fall below 100. (I have no idea whether the 60% figure is accurate).

We know that if you look at IQs by country there are very significant differences. Frankly, it's interesting to look at these differences. (Did you know that the USA is tied for ninth place? Did you know that the average IQ in China is 105? I didn't.) The one fairly consistent pattern is that wealthier countries, and countries with a good medical system, get much higher scores. (That being said, there are some remarkable outliers, the biggest one being China-- they're ranked only #105 in per capita income, but tied for #3 in IQ!)

I don't think there is any need to invoke racial/genetic factors to explain these differences in IQ, since there are so many good explanations we can come up which involve nurture rather than nature. We know that IQ is strongly affected by prenatal care, by childhood disease, by malnutrition, by factors such as endemic parasite infections, and by access to early education. Do a literature search on Pubmed and you'll find a ton of painstakingly-done research which backs me up. The fact is that our brains are fragile, and it doesn't take much to stunt their growth.

Re:Automation

[edgedmurasame]

The real question is, why is it so hard for displaced workers to train for better jobs

Employers are too picky about requirements. Tech or vocational.

Re:Automation

[liquid_schwartz]

Unskilled manufacturing had entirely gone to China etc. by the 90s. It has nothing to do with the wage stagnation in this century.

Are you suggesting that supply and demand does not in fact apply? When you move a large chunk of stuff offshore the remaining people then are in competition for what remains. This lowers wages for everyone, even if they don't start off in your field some of them will re-train and enter your field.

Mass immigration doesn't help, but if you can do skilled work you're not really competing with the tide of migrant agricultural workers.

Which is why H1B visas and the like exist, to bring down wages for more than just unskilled labor. Still part of mass immigration, just the legal variety, and still screwing over US workers. Perhaps you recall boom times, for example 1999 or earlier booms. Wages actually went up, people got signing bonuses, business was not dying in fact business was great because when consumers are 70% of your customers then anytime consumers are doing well then business is doing well. Mass immigration allows the 1% to never share the pie. You can force them to share under threat of guillotines, or you can force them by limiting options on labor so that they will choose to share by necessity. This is why both the Koch brothers as well as the left leaning tech types like Zuckerberg et al both support mass immigration.

Re:Automation

[lgw]

Are you suggesting that supply and demand does not in fact apply?

I'm suggesting you're fighting the last war - last century's war. Those jobs that "went to China" are, for the most part, no longer in China. This century the jobs are "lost to robots", and that genie isn't going back in the bottle. As the man said: it's gonna steam engine, come steam engine time.

Which is why H1B visas and the like exist, to bring down wages for more than just unskilled labor.

Only if you believe the work can only be done in this country, which clearly isn't the case for IT work - that H1B guy is making a higher salary than he was before, and the work was getting outsourced to him either way. H1Bs don't much affect software developer salaries, BTW, it's the "IT" sector that's affected by all the abuse. But, let's face it, most IT is only barely skilled labor to begin with.

In any case, the total number of H1Bs is tiny in comparison to the unnumbered millions of migrant agricultural workers, and those that stay in the US and pay taxes on 6-figure salaries are certainly welcome.

perhaps you recall boom times, for example 1999

Don't confuse an unsustainable bubble with "boom times". Bubbles happen in a variety of industries, and the long term effect is always nasty.

Mass immigration allows the 1% to never share the pie. You can force them to share under threat of guillotines

The geniuses in the French revolution instituted price controls which led to mass starvation, and then the original revolutionaries meeting the guillotine themselves. Maybe you should

Re:Automation

[lgw]

... should choose a different example. Oddly, the only revolution in the past few centuries I can think of that ended well for the revolutionaries was the one that started with an attempt to confiscate guns from the people - that one's probably an outlier though,. Maybe go with an anti-globalism example instead, like India tossing the British out. Hmm, why do all the good examples involve tossing the British out?

So my wages are going to go up

[rsilvergun]

right? Supply and demand, right?

Re:So my wages are going to go up

[hey!]

Now here's the slightly confusing bit about supply and demand in this context: you, as a worker, are a supplier. So supply and demand actually suggests the opposite effect of what you seem think. If wages were going up in the short term, then more people would enter the labor market.

That said, supply and demand curves only tell you this in the very short term; if there's an underlying change in the economy then the supply and demand curves shift, which is why market prices change.

Now to my very rudimentary Econ 101 level understanding, there are at least four possible explanations for reduced labor participation over a long period, none of which are mutually exclusive:
  (1) effective wages have fallen;
  (2) the supply curve has shifted because it costs workers more to participate;
  (3) the demand curve has shifted because employers have got more efficient;
  (4) regional/structural unemployment -- the jobs and wages are there but the right people aren't in the right place.

The only thing you can be certain of is that if participation rates have dropped at least one of these things is true. Any number from 0-3 of them could be false.

I'm not an economist, but I suspect we're seeing at least some increased efficiency in labor use by employers, particularly in the retail sector, which has adopted computerized scheduling rather than the traditional fixed-hour employment. I think we may also be seeing structural unemployment, where there are workers who can't find jobs and employers who can't find workers because the details don't match up (wrong place, wrong skill set).

Re:So my wages are going to go up

[jeff4747]

Of course not. The H1B visa cap is going to go up.

Re:So my wages are going to go up

[jeff4747]

Now to my very rudimentary Econ 101 level understanding

The hole in your thinking is a high employment-population ratio is not necessarily a good thing. Because that means there are zero disabled people, zero early-retired people, zero stay-at-home-parents, and so on.

In the "glory days" of the 1950s, the employment-population ratio was about 54%. So you can have a good economy with a low E-P ratio.

Also, wages are not a simple line in the real world. My wife is a stay at home parent. If she were to work, she'd increase the employment-population ratio, but more than her entire paycheck would go to pay for daycare.

Re:So my wages are going to go up

[hey!]

I never said it was a good thing. I'm just saying you can't make conclusions about the relationship of wages to labor participation rates.

Your example makes my point. Back in the 1950s "glory days" stay at home moms were the overwhelming norm. Today about 2/3s of women work as breadwinners. This makes it hard to compare participation rates from the 50s to today.

Re: So my wages are going to go up

[nnull]

They are when you need employees. Driver wages have sky rocketed due to the drive shortage, at least in my area. LTL prices exploded because of it. The lack of people is having a huge impact on productivity in a lot places. Doesn't matter if you automated either, as operators and maintenance people for those types of equipment are in huge demand right now, but there are still companies trying to pretend supply and demand doesn't exist and think hiring a high school dropout that doesn't know how to read is sufficient.

welfare

[fluffernutter]

I wonder how this relates to the increase of people relying on social services? I mean, if you are on welfare and you only have shitty options for jobs I really can't blame people for staying on welfare.

Re:welfare

[PolygamousRanchKid]

I mean, if you are on welfare and you only have shitty options for jobs I really can't blame people for staying on welfare.

It's my personal impression, as someone in the Get-Off-My-Lawn age, that there is less stigma about being unemployed these day, as way back when.

When I was growing up, if someone in my town was unemployed, it was a scandal. But now, after the Dot.Com bust, and the Sub-Prime recession, being unemployed is more of a "Hey, shit happens!" bagatelle.

During the Sub-Prime recession I saw a spot on CNN reporting that more middle-class folks were applying for Food Stamps . . . something that they would have been embarrassed to do earlier. But folks now figure, "Hey, the government is picking up the tab, and I am entitled to it!"

Re:welfare

[jellomizer]

The Welfare system unfortunately has so many crazy rules to prevent abuse, that it also creates a system which is difficult to get out.

Re:welfare

[liquid_schwartz]

The Welfare system unfortunately has so many crazy rules to prevent abuse, that it also creates a system which is difficult to get out.

The real question is if that's a bug or a feature. Maybe I'm a cynic but I think it's the latter.

Re:welfare

[rahvin112]

The grad ol attack on social services when 80% of all food stamp and temporary assistance recipients are CHILDREN whose parents are underemployed and/or paid an unsupportable wage. The remaining are almost entirely disabled and elderly.

I love how people blame the mystical government when congress deliberately set this up with rules that exempted employers from benefit requirements and allowed them to pay unlivable minimum wages. Congress off loaded the expense of all those low skill jobs onto the tax payer deliberately to help their wealthy business owning friends make more money.

A $15 minimum wage and a requirement that health benefits must be offered for ALL part time workers would do much to eliminate all the people on food stamps and temporary assistance including medicaid. This is a problem created entirely by a system that's favored wealthy employers over the employed.

Re:welfare

[jeff4747]

When I was growing up, if someone in my town was unemployed, it was a scandal. But now, after the Dot.Com bust, and the Sub-Prime recession, being unemployed is more of a "Hey, shit happens!" bagatelle.

The fact that there is less stigma also means you hear about people receiving benefits, instead of them trying to hide it.

Also, keep in mind you can only get "welfare" for 5 years now. And that 5 years covers your entire life. So no, it's not people settling in to live on the dole for the rest of their lives.

Re:welfare

[liquid_schwartz]

After enacting the welfare system president Lyndon B. Johnson was heard saying in triumph "I'll have those ni**ers voting Democratic for 200 years." So far, it's working.

Indeed. Despite African-Americans being probably the most hurt by mass immigration they continue to support it. In reality the working class gets shafted by both parties, they just say it differently. The African Americans are shafted by the Democrats just as the white working class has been shafted by both the Democrats and the Republicans. An astute person would observe that the working class gets shafted by both parties. An astute observant person might even try and organize along economic lines instead of racial ones. Good thing colleges don't train observant people or the 1% might have to worry.

Re:welfare

[mjwx]

I mean, if you are on welfare and you only have shitty options for jobs I really can't blame people for staying on welfare.

It's my personal impression, as someone in the Get-Off-My-Lawn age, that there is less stigma about being unemployed these day, as way back when.

When I was growing up, if someone in my town was unemployed, it was a scandal. But now, after the Dot.Com bust, and the Sub-Prime recession, being unemployed is more of a "Hey, shit happens!" bagatelle.

During the Sub-Prime recession I saw a spot on CNN reporting that more middle-class folks were applying for Food Stamps . . . something that they would have been embarrassed to do earlier. But folks now figure, "Hey, the government is picking up the tab, and I am entitled to it!"

I'm not quite in the Get-Orf-My-Land age but back when I was a lad if you were a long term unemployed, it usually meant turning to petty crime. I'm pretty sure it still does.

Middle class and corporate welfare is costing the US (as well as the UK and Australia) many more times that of unemployment, stud and disability benefits put together.

Depends on who you ask if it even matters

[bluefoxlucid]

People look at employment and treat it as a measure of poverty. When that doesn't satisfy, they look at things like number of employed and the labor force participation rate. The dialogue goes in the direction of "why isn't everyone working?"

A comprehensive economic report would include income distribution, standard of living, number in poverty, number receiving aid, percent of GDP of aid disbursed, number homeless, number hungry, number in college, number retired, and so forth.

With a labor participation rate above 50%, excluding those in college and those in retirement, you've got single-adult households and multi-worker households: men and women are working. Single-adult households suggest labor force participation rate should be higher; whereas multi-worker households suggest wealth (to pay nurses, day cares, and the cost of appliances to do housework, freeing one householder to pursue a career for self-fulfillment) or poverty (to keep the household financially-solvent). Multi-adult, single-worker households tend to suggest wealth as well (non-workers can pursue non-work efforts for self-fulfillment).

This gets even more-complicated when you realize traditional family values don't describe today's world: not everyone wants kids and, while there are roughly an equal number of men and women, not every two-adult household is a male-female pairing. A single-worker lesbian household is still a woman working and a woman not-working; a single-worker gay male household is a man working and a man not-working. Which is more likely? How far does our workforce currently lean toward male workers and female non-workers? For that matter, how many households are now female-breadwinner households where the man doesn't work?

Unemployment isn't a flat descriptor of economy.

Re:Depends on who you ask if it even matters

[Anonymous Coward]

I think a lot of us want that 1960 brand American Dream. Work a job, own a house, raise a family.

That shit is getting so hard to actually do now it may as well stay a dream.

Re:Depends on who you ask if it even matters

[liquid_schwartz]

I think a lot of us want that 1960 brand American Dream. Work a job, own a house, raise a family.

That shit is getting so hard to actually do now it may as well stay a dream.

I think the hardest part of that dream is finding a woman willing to cook, clean, and be a decent mother and wife. But I'm in CA, maybe it's easier in the midwest.

Re:Depends on who you ask if it even matters

[jeff4747]

With a labor participation rate above 50%, excluding those in college and those in retirement

As an aside, the statistic does not exclude students or people in early retirement. It's all people 15-64. It also includes disabled people who can't work because they are disabled.

Re:Depends on who you ask if it even matters

[Anonymous Coward]

It is no unethical thing to want a woman that wants to be a good mother in the same vein that it is not unethical to want a man that isn't an unemployed leech.

Re:Depends on who you ask if it even matters

[bluefoxlucid]

I thought it included people 16-64, with many people retiring around 70.

Still, it was more of a theoretical discussion rather than one of our BLS measures and the implications for our economy. The point is unemployment is a trend number that suggests things about our economy, most strongly in the context of its own history; it doesn't magically describe large and complex economic concepts such as poverty.

Why do we even have poverty, anyway?

So many friends can't even get an interview

[Maxo-Texas]

And we are only in our 50s.

Good jobs until one day the job was gone and then they were unhirable.

We need to stop companies from being the primary source for health care. It pushes them into laying people off and not hiring people over 50.

I saw this coming when I was 32 and was able to retire at 51 but I doubt I could get more than a minwage job even tho I was a manager of over a dozen developers in multiple countries on multi-billion dollar projects.

Re:So many friends can't even get an interview

[drinkypoo]

I saw this coming when I was 32 and was able to retire at 51 but I doubt I could get more than a minwage job even tho I was a manager of over a dozen developers in multiple countries on multi-billion dollar projects.

There are some surprisingly non-minimum-wage jobs out there, but none of them pay what you used to get paid. I recently interviewed at a camp resort which has a fat wifi network because it hosts big corporate events, and all their positions pay $15/hr or more — even housekeeping.

Re:So many friends can't even get an interview

[Maxo-Texas]

Well, I don't need to work personally. But I know several house husbands and about the same number of suddenly new house wives.

Employers saying they need workers but not hiring people who are old.

Re:So many friends can't even get an interview

[thomn8r]

It pushes them into laying people off and not hiring people over 50.

s/50/40/g

Impossible to answer

[Comboman]

There's so many variables that are poorly tracked. Some people retire willingly at 55; others are still working (willingly or otherwise) at 75. Some people quit temporarily to look after children or aging parents. Some are physically or mentally unable to work. Some go back to school or try to start their own businesses. Some work for cash in the underground economy. Then there's underemployment where people work one (or more) part-time or "gig" jobs when they would rather be working full-time. A single percentage number cannot capture everything that's going on in the workforce.

Correction 11.4m moochers joined the welfare rolls

[Anonymous Coward]

It has nothing to do with automation or anything else. The lazy moochers essentially gave those up by demanding living wages to flip burgers or stand at a counter asking "Do you want fries with that". Those jobs are nothing more than a first step for HS students entering into the workforce, not for lazy moochers wanting all the luxuries for doing next to nothing 20 hours a week. Even then they wouldn't be satisfied, take a look at the auto industry and the unions. They forced the big three to relocate across the border due to the ultra high wage demands for even something as simple as janitorial work. Today all 11.4m moochers are just being lazy by getting food stamps, Obamaphone, free internet, medicaid, pell grants for college and loans, etc. Then they turn around and sell their food stamps for drug money all the while going to countless soup kitchens, food pantries, clothing pantries, etc. Yes, they sell the food stamps for drug money and then go to the commie "churches" that continue to enable their drug habits. Time to end the welfare state, time to end the entitlements, time to #MAGA!!!

Re:Seems to me the answer is...

[ThurstonMoore]

This is a choice?

Re:Government playing with the Unemployment Number

[PlusFiveTroll]

>meant that "unemployment" numbers were being fudged and misreported.

I'm pretty sure you're correct, as today a report was released showing "over-employment" by the jobs numbers, along with very low increases in wages. If real over-employment were occurring wages would inflate rather rapidly. Now we are seeing the lie behind the number of unemployment.

Only half of the equation

[tomhath]

They counted what caused people who had jobs to stop working. It shouldn't surprise anyone that over an almost twenty year time period some jobs disappeared.

But what I don't see is why more new jobs weren't created and filled by the people who left the workforce.

Re:Only half of the equation

[jeff4747]

What if those "11 million" had had to come in the country legally and our borders were secure?

I'm pretty sure #1: Low end menial jobs would pay much better

So....supply and demand is suddenly suspended if workers have green cards?

Um....no. If those people are making their labor available, it drives down wages. Whether or not they are here legally.

Brighter future since the last election

[Glock9mm]

Thank goodness we now have a president who is pulling business, money and opportunity back into our country instead of raising the cost of doing business here to the point that many companies had to move overseas or consider selling out or shutting down. Unemployment down, more jobs created, offshore money is being transferred back to the states, businesses are looking to relocate here. All of this is great for us. Trump does in fact have a magic wand: An understanding of business and economics.

Re:Brighter future since the last election

[Jhon]

"All of this is great for us. Trump does in fact have a magic wand: An understanding of business and economics."

I dont like Trump. I didn't vote for Trump. I just wish people would realize that just because he's at LEAST a narcissistic a-hole and worst a psychotic with poor impulse control (traits which can be a PLUS in business) doesn't mean everything he says or support is instantly wrong.

There have been some serious "good" to come out of his election. Immigration is now a real dialog, for example.

The tax reform we've seen has already brought in more tax revenue -- much as it did under Reagan. Lets hope we don't outspend those increasing tax-collected dollars faster than they come in -- also as it did under Reagan.

Re:Brighter future since the last election

[jeff4747]

Not sure if Poe's Law applies or not.....

Coincidence not

[thunderclees]

Its no coincidence that the tax incentives for outsourcing labor, the lifting of tariffs on businesses manufacturing abroad and wholesale work visa abuse fall nicely into this window.

and the trade / tech schools do not need degrees

[Joe_Dragon]

and the trade / tech schools do not need degrees but they where roped into the that system.
So we get some Vocational that get's padded out to 2-4 years with high cost and an degree that does not transfer to the full college system.
Also other Vocational things that end up being nice but not an degree.

Now what do we want some who went 2 4 years of college + 1-2 years of tech schools who is 80-150K in the hole?

Jobs Moved Out of the USA

[Zorro]

Jobs moved to Mexico or other lower cost country's.

Disney Animation...Made in South Korea for one.

Age and retraining dificulties

[ErichTheRed]

Definitely, most of the decrease in employment is due to automation and aging population. On the automation front, think of how many _thousands_ of clerical workers had to be employed at large corporations in the 1950s. There was a massive corporate "clean out" in the early to mid 1990s, and it has only continued since then. For one of my first IT jobs, I was a contractor for a large life insurer in NYC. Their headquarters took up 2 Manhattan blocks, was filled to capacity a few years before I showed up, and was only one of several offices around the country. When I got there, whole floors were empty.

Another thing that might explain the loss is the trend for companies to fire people in their late 40s/early 50s. I'm 43 and know it's going to be a hard road if I end up on the wrong end of a layoff a few years from now. A lot of these "end-career" professionals are stuck in limbo before the age where they're allowed to draw their retirement savings penalty-free (59.5.) Most aren't going to get hired for anything like the job they had before, and I think a lot of them are going on SS disability. How else would they survive with no income? Being on disability means you're not working, because you can't do that legally.

Re:Seems to me the answer is...

[tsqr]

Sure, if you limit your lifestyle and do not buy into consumerism.

Too bad a lot more people don't recognize that as a choice. It really is a great one.

Re:Correction 11.4m moochers joined the welfare ro

[Anonymous Coward]

Ha ha, wow, great parody, you should wear a costume while you do it, applauding above my keyboard.

Re:Automation Q Q-ANON QANON

[rickb928]

That's not a Trump supporter.

Probably ??????

[sgt_doom]

"At least half of that decline probably was due to an aging population."
Sorry, Kemosabe, but "probably" just don't cut it!!!!!!
You see, between 1997 to 2007, $23 trillion in securitized debt was sold, and between 2007 to 2009, American households lost $17 trillion in assets, while another $6 trillion was lost overseas - - which had purchased $6 trillion of that $23 trillion in securitized debt --- get it????
"Probably" not . . .
The tremendous upsurge in automating jobs out of existence began in 2012 [although admittedly it has been occurring for quite some time], while many were simply laid off as the new onslaught of jobs were offshored to India, China, Bangladesh, etc., and more and more foreign replacement workers were brought in.
"Probably" a major reason why Trump got elected is personified by a story from NPR this week, and a local Seattle Weekly story, both seeming to promote the use of foreign visa replacement workers from India.
http://www.seattleweekly.com/n...

Baby Boomers

[hhawk]

Does the study control for Baby Boomers who were retiring on schedule or early?

Count is flawed - Dark Matter Jobs

[pubwvj]

The counts of employment and unemployment are flawed because there are a lot of jobs they can't see.

I am self employed. I farm. My job doesn't show up in the rolls of the employed or unemployed because I'm not counted either way.

My son works with me on our farm. Similarly he does not show up as either unemployed or employed.

We still pay taxes. We're not on disability. We're not on welfare. We're not retired. We're not unemployed. We are both part of the dark matter jobs that just don't show in the statistics. There are a LOT of these jobs.

One Reason of Many

[imperious_rex]

Early retirement. The FIRE (Financial Independence Retire Early) movement is a very tiny but growing portion of the jobless, People in their 20s, after just a few years of working and observing their seniors, realize just what the next 40+ years gets them. Between laughably little vacation time, wage stagnation, corporate bullshit, and the whole time (which is irreplaceable) for money thing it's no wonder more and more people want to get off the hamster wheel.

Once I started earning non-trivial passive income a few years ago, my perspective on jobs would never be the same again. I'm a long ways from achieving FI, but simply being on the path of FI has put me on a much stronger financial footing and has given me many more options. And having options is real power.

No way!

[helpfulcorn]

Surely all these people found tech jobs in the booming tech industry after the start of rise of automation? I mean that's what has always been promised: that tons of new jobs and doors will open up for the former secretaries, drivers, grave diggers, etc so long as they get retrained. So surely this is mistaken!

Carefully picked data points to exaggerate

[misnohmer]

Picking 1999 as your start, when the unemployment was at a record all time low (peak of dot-com boom) and comparing to 2016 is like picking a record low and record high price of a mutual fund and calculating an average annual return. In 1999 anyone with a heartbeat could get a job. A 3 or 4 month course in computer programming landed most people a 6 digit salary. Why not show the actual workforce numbers per year from 1990 through today and show a trend, rather than pick a large difference and focus on that? Oh yea, because it doesn't make for as good of a headline.

Re:Every American must watch this

[Marxist Hacker 42]

We know what the war over oil is really about. If this had been a real war on terror, the answer would have been obvious: Isolationism.

Thanks to offshoring

[edgedmurasame]

Given rampant guest worker fraud and abuse, it shouldn't be a surprise to see a good chunk removed.