How much UE is due to rising minimum skill levels?

[william the wie]

What I am wondering is how much of the un/underemployment that is being debated is due to rising minimum skill levels?

That's it. No political agenda, no talking points just trying to figure out the speed with which skills get antiquated or lost vs. the time and money it takes to get back up to speed and the net revenues of maintaining skill sets. I don't see debates on that and it does appear to be the major malfunction of our economy.

 

[KevinWestern]

What I am wondering is how much of the un/underemployment that is being debated is due to rising minimum skill levels?

That's it. No political agenda, no talking points just trying to figure out the speed with which skills get antiquated or lost vs. the time and money it takes to get back up to speed and the net revenues of maintaining skill sets. I don't see debates on that and it does appear to be the major malfunction of our economy.

I think there's some truth to that statement. I recall Steve Jobs talking about Chinese labor, and saying how it's hard to find folks with a mid-level manufacturing skillset in the USA.

However, it's also hard to find folks willing to work 12 hr days, live on site, and make $2/hr as well, lol.

.

 

[Moonglow]

I'm skilled in electronics repair and maint. in manufacturing. Yet they will not hire me because of my age.
The only thing new is PLC's, wow! How hard can binary gate programing be? It's either a 1 or a 0. 1 open, 0 closed. I even offer to explain in Boolean algebraic expressions for binary code, but they would rather hire a Mexican that can't speak English and doesn't know a damn thing about electronics, but they do get a tax credit for hiring him.

 

[william the wie]

I'm skilled in electronics repair and maint. in manufacturing. Yet they will not hire me because of my age.
The only thing new is PLC's, wow! How hard can binary gate programing be? It's either a 1 or a 0. 1 open, 0 closed. I even offer to explain in Boolean algebraic expressions for binary code, but they would rather hire a Mexican that can't speak English and doesn't know a damn thing about electronics, but they do get a tax credit for hiring him.

Yeah, I was reading a free McKinsey report on my Kindle that made KW''s point reverse and I was wondering if this can be and is tracked. Afterall the "So's ya Mudda" arguments on UE got old before I was born and I'm in my 60S.

 

[flacaltenn]

It's been my belief that higher skilled, higher tech VENTURES lead us out of the job stagnation.

BUT --- Those ventures will run on ALL LEVELS of job training. It's just that each new venture is a smaller labor pool than ever before.. Especially at the middle rungs of training..

If you think about it --- 30 yrs ago, there was a support staff for each high level professional in a start-up or small tech biz.. Purchasing, secretarial, drafting, library, standards, tech pubs, etc... Today -- the engineer does all that.

The lower skilled slots like transport, shipping/recv, testing will require a DESIRE to learn stuff. Like E-inventory/tracking systems. But we have a public that can now install routers and Wi-Fi -- so maybe that's not an issue.

I'm an optimist.. If an inner city kid who's barely making the grade in High School can assemble and use a modern DJ sound and synth effects system ---- there's a job still gonna be there for them. If there is no desire to learn and build stuff -- you are S.O.L.

 

[william the wie]

It's been my belief that higher skilled, higher tech VENTURES lead us out of the job stagnation.

BUT --- Those ventures will run on ALL LEVELS of job training. It's just that each new venture is a smaller labor pool than ever before.. Especially at the middle rungs of training..

If you think about it --- 30 yrs ago, there was a support staff for each high level professional in a start-up or small tech biz.. Purchasing, secretarial, drafting, library, standards, tech pubs, etc... Today -- the engineer does all that.

The lower skilled slots like transport, shipping/recv, testing will require a DESIRE to learn stuff. Like E-inventory/tracking systems. But we have a public that can now install routers and Wi-Fi -- so maybe that's not an issue.

I'm an optimist.. If an inner city kid who's barely making the grade in High School can assemble and use a modern DJ sound and synth effects system ---- there's a job still gonna be there for them. If there is no desire to learn and build stuff -- you are S.O.L.

While I largely agree with you that is because you are ignoring compound interest in skill level losses and the increasing use of social security disability as an out. Those cumulative losses add up.

 

[flacaltenn]

It's been my belief that higher skilled, higher tech VENTURES lead us out of the job stagnation.

BUT --- Those ventures will run on ALL LEVELS of job training. It's just that each new venture is a smaller labor pool than ever before.. Especially at the middle rungs of training..

If you think about it --- 30 yrs ago, there was a support staff for each high level professional in a start-up or small tech biz.. Purchasing, secretarial, drafting, library, standards, tech pubs, etc... Today -- the engineer does all that.

The lower skilled slots like transport, shipping/recv, testing will require a DESIRE to learn stuff. Like E-inventory/tracking systems. But we have a public that can now install routers and Wi-Fi -- so maybe that's not an issue.

I'm an optimist.. If an inner city kid who's barely making the grade in High School can assemble and use a modern DJ sound and synth effects system ---- there's a job still gonna be there for them. If there is no desire to learn and build stuff -- you are S.O.L.

While I largely agree with you that is because you are ignoring compound interest in skill level losses and the increasing use of social security disability as an out. Those cumulative losses add up.

There have been cumulative losses.. We've lost damn near the entire supply chain for electronic development.. No piece parts, no skills to make them. Same in machining..

The survival game here is clear.. We either sign on to LEAP into new industries and raise the skill levels --- or we contract and become a beggar nation..

Instead of merely "modernizing" the machine shop -- we've got to wholeheartedly go for the lead in robotics, machine intellience, 3D printing, nanotech, biotech, and other 21 century techniques of manufacturing goods.

We won't survive if we don't do the stuff the rest of the world can't.. We were told that 30 years ago.. And we didn't listen.. We just got stupider....

Don't need another phone or coupon or movie server company on the stock market.. We need 400 new high tech ventures a year.. MINIMUM !!! And we need OUR KIDS to fill the math, science, and engineering grad schools --- not wealthy foreign students.

I'm beginning to think we're gonna blow this....

 

[Moonglow]

If you could stop the Asians from flooding the markets with cheap electronic components then more companies in the US would make it, but it's war in businesses across the globe.

 

[flacaltenn]

If you could stop the Asians from flooding the markets with cheap electronic components then more companies in the US would make it, but it's war in businesses across the globe.

We probably SHOULDN'T be building cheap electronics gadgets, basketballs, and tee shirts. We SHOULD be building 21st century automation products, medical screening kits, customized goods on 3D printers, spacecraft, airplanes, nanomaterials and advanced transport.

We should be solving the fuel cell issues, developing a hydrogen fuel infrastructure and improving food production. If we don't do the HARD STUFF --- we won't maintain our standard of living as a country...

 

[william the wie]

If you could stop the Asians from flooding the markets with cheap electronic components then more companies in the US would make it, but it's war in businesses across the globe.

We probably SHOULDN'T be building cheap electronics gadgets, basketballs, and tee shirts. We SHOULD be building 21st century automation products, medical screening kits, customized goods on 3D printers, spacecraft, airplanes, nanomaterials and advanced transport.

We should be solving the fuel cell issues, developing a hydrogen fuel infrastructure and improving food production. If we don't do the HARD STUFF --- we won't maintain our standard of living as a country...

All true and I agree with you but the problems are:

We are not in as high a growth mode as we used to be in because:

Our high skill workers are retiring or semi-retiring earlier.

Our education system emphasizes high graduation rates instead of trying to teach skills.

Our immigration policies are not focused on growth.

Therefore retail sales at the top end, Tiffany's or gourmet grocery stores, are exploding but Walmart and Dollar stores are hurting.

I was talking last night to a guy who took a transfer in order to become an assistant Deli manager at Publix. The opening existed because it is literal miles to the nearest trailer park or section 8 HUD housing that non-retirees can afford to live in at the new store. I did not know it until recently, but local trailer pad rent runs $10,000 and up, way up. the nearest actually affordable housing at minimum wage is more than 20 miles away.

 

[flacaltenn]

If you could stop the Asians from flooding the markets with cheap electronic components then more companies in the US would make it, but it's war in businesses across the globe.

We probably SHOULDN'T be building cheap electronics gadgets, basketballs, and tee shirts. We SHOULD be building 21st century automation products, medical screening kits, customized goods on 3D printers, spacecraft, airplanes, nanomaterials and advanced transport.

We should be solving the fuel cell issues, developing a hydrogen fuel infrastructure and improving food production. If we don't do the HARD STUFF --- we won't maintain our standard of living as a country...

All true and I agree with you but the problems are:

We are not in as high a growth mode as we used to be in because:

Our high skill workers are retiring or semi-retiring earlier.

Our education system emphasizes high graduation rates instead of trying to teach skills.

Our immigration policies are not focused on growth.

Therefore retail sales at the top end, Tiffany's or gourmet grocery stores, are exploding but Walmart and Dollar stores are hurting.

I was talking last night to a guy who took a transfer in order to become an assistant Deli manager at Publix. The opening existed because it is literal miles to the nearest trailer park or section 8 HUD housing that non-retirees can afford to live in at the new store. I did not know it until recently, but local trailer pad rent runs $10,000 and up, way up. the nearest actually affordable housing at minimum wage is more than 20 miles away.

You've got a good start on a "to-do" list there.. But the most vital element is to get risk capital back flowing to new ventures. There's a lot of over-comfortable stodgy corporations that need some prodding. They've gotten to the point where NEW COMPETITION is so rare -- they've forgotten how to run hard.

If we don't set an environment for NEW company creation -- this worker squeeze play is going to go to critical mass. All this horseshit about class warfare and "you didn't build that" is not condusive to innovation and risk.

You cannot build a middle class on mere service jobs. And you cannot elevate service jobs to the level of those middle class manufacturing jobs that we've shed. If we don't get some adults in charge of the economy soon --- a trailer pad is gonna be a status symbol for most American workers..

 

[william the wie]

Well, it depends on how you define service for example most use of additive manufacture can be classified as a service, all employment in construction is classified as a service or at least used to be. And while I believe I understand your meaning do keep in mind that modern monetary theory starts with the premise that borrowing in the bond market at 6% to lend overnight at 2% is good policy.

 

[editec]

What I am wondering is how much of the un/underemployment that is being debated is due to rising minimum skill levels?

That's it. No political agenda, no talking points just trying to figure out the speed with which skills get antiquated or lost vs. the time and money it takes to get back up to speed and the net revenues of maintaining skill sets. I don't see debates on that and it does appear to be the major malfunction of our economy.

A good point, William, but I think you are misleading yourself if you imagine that education is going to solve the aggregate unemployment problem.

Two reasons:

1. Not everyone is capable of being trained for tasks that aren't better/cheaper done by slave labor in Asia or machines in the USA

2. The percentage of human being workers needed is declining because of technology and NO -- technology is not creating more jobs than it is destroying.

This is NOT the 1850 employment/industrial revolution where unemployed farmers can easily be plugged into factory jobs .

This is the 21st century where machine are replacing human labor regardless of how complex the tasks are.

In 50 years, doctors will be redundant, folks.

Damned few humans will be smart enough to be worth hiring for any economically viable tasks at all.

 

[william the wie]

What I am wondering is how much of the un/underemployment that is being debated is due to rising minimum skill levels?

That's it. No political agenda, no talking points just trying to figure out the speed with which skills get antiquated or lost vs. the time and money it takes to get back up to speed and the net revenues of maintaining skill sets. I don't see debates on that and it does appear to be the major malfunction of our economy.

A good point, William, but I think you are misleading yourself if you imagine that education is going to solve the aggregate unemployment problem.

Two reasons:

1. Not everyone is capable of being trained for tasks that aren't better/cheaper done by slave labor in Asia or machines in the USA

2. The percentage of human being workers needed is declining because of technology and NO -- technology is not creating more jobs than it is destroying.

This is NOT the 1850 employment/industrial revolution where unemployed farmers can easily be plugged into factory jobs .

This is the 21st century where machine are replacing human labor regardless of how complex the tasks are.

In 50 years, doctors will be redundant, folks.

Damned few humans will be smart enough to be worth hiring for any economically viable tasks at all.

I agree. Innovation per capita is guesstimated differently according to quantity (1875 more or less) or impact (peaking roughly 1915) leading to a step that wasn't there in the 1930s. However once recorded video, music, the electronic amplifier and flight hit by 1920 mass production by automation was here to stay.

 

[flacaltenn]

What I am wondering is how much of the un/underemployment that is being debated is due to rising minimum skill levels?

That's it. No political agenda, no talking points just trying to figure out the speed with which skills get antiquated or lost vs. the time and money it takes to get back up to speed and the net revenues of maintaining skill sets. I don't see debates on that and it does appear to be the major malfunction of our economy.

A good point, William, but I think you are misleading yourself if you imagine that education is going to solve the aggregate unemployment problem.

Two reasons:

1. Not everyone is capable of being trained for tasks that aren't better/cheaper done by slave labor in Asia or machines in the USA

2. The percentage of human being workers needed is declining because of technology and NO -- technology is not creating more jobs than it is destroying.

This is NOT the 1850 employment/industrial revolution where unemployed farmers can easily be plugged into factory jobs .

This is the 21st century where machine are replacing human labor regardless of how complex the tasks are.

In 50 years, doctors will be redundant, folks.

Damned few humans will be smart enough to be worth hiring for any economically viable tasks at all.

Labor saving tech does reduce jobs.. That would be stuff like "self-check-out" Point of sale.
But witness what's happened to your supermarket in the past 15 years. You now have pharmacies, florists, coffee shops, bakeries and delis with the labor that USED to be there to check-out and bag..

There is also opportunity creating tech --- this would be like 3D printers, which give access to tools for individuals that USED to require massive capital and investment. So anyone with a PC and the CAD tools can create CUSTOM products that wouldn't justify a "factory scale" operation in the past.

Jobs are giving way to OPPORTUNITIES to innovate. Take the music biz that you mentioned. LARGE pressing plants and industry scale infrastructure is NOT REQUIRED to write and produce music. You can hit "the tails of the distribution" with new technology that were unaccessable before. If RCA didn't like it and it wasn't mainstream -- forgitaboutit. You can exploit that 0.5% interested in Irish Folk Music. Today -- all those "tails of the distribution" are now wide open opportunities. NOW -- you can publish and deliver music with a small room full of equipment.

MOST of the training to take advantage of this democratization of commerce is not much different from poking at your tablet or smart phone. So I have confidence that a LARGE FRACTION of folks can be participants.

Couple other points.

1) Service industry is very capital inefficient. To double a retail operation, you might need 40 or 50 new locations in 35 different markets with real estate, compliance, legal and brick/mortar. This is a lot different than doubling your manufacturing by building ONE new factory. From that one place -- you serve the world.
Stock VALUE in service companies grows much slower than in goods and manufacturing.

2) A 21st century manufacturer is NOT the Chinese model of cheap labor. Even the Chinese know this. THEY are investing in MILLIONS of factory robots to replace cheap labor. The company that makes the Apple stuff is already OPENING highly automated factories and plans to replace 1 MILLION workers in the next 3 years.

It's a model that we COULD GRAB and implement here.. In fact --- we should have been doing this all along. Cheap labor is a passing fad. And YES --- tech is gonna doom it to hell in a short period of time.. The labor boost IN the factory is not the prize.. It's the SUPPLY CHAIN and outside vendors and services that add back the missing jobs..

 

[william the wie]

Labor saving tech does reduce jobs.. That would be stuff like "self-check-out" Point of sale.
But witness what's happened to your supermarket in the past 15 years. You now have pharmacies, florists, coffee shops, bakeries and delis with the labor that USED to be there to check-out and bag..

There is also opportunity creating tech --- this would be like 3D printers, which give access to tools for individuals that USED to require massive capital and investment. So anyone with a PC and the CAD tools can create CUSTOM products that wouldn't justify a "factory scale" operation in the past.

Jobs are giving way to OPPORTUNITIES to innovate. Take the music biz that you mentioned. LARGE pressing plants and industry scale infrastructure is NOT REQUIRED to write and produce music. You can hit "the tails of the distribution" with new technology that were unaccessable before. If RCA didn't like it and it wasn't mainstream -- forgitaboutit. You can exploit that 0.5% interested in Irish Folk Music. Today -- all those "tails of the distribution" are now wide open opportunities. NOW -- you can publish and deliver music with a small room full of equipment.

MOST of the training to take advantage of this democratization of commerce is not much different from poking at your tablet or smart phone. So I have confidence that a LARGE FRACTION of folks can be participants.

Couple other points.

1) Service industry is very capital inefficient. To double a retail operation, you might need 40 or 50 new locations in 35 different markets with real estate, compliance, legal and brick/mortar. This is a lot different than doubling your manufacturing by building ONE new factory. From that one place -- you serve the world.
Stock VALUE in service companies grows much slower than in goods and manufacturing.

2) A 21st century manufacturer is NOT the Chinese model of cheap labor. Even the Chinese know this. THEY are investing in MILLIONS of factory robots to replace cheap labor. The company that makes the Apple stuff is already OPENING highly automated factories and plans to replace 1 MILLION workers in the next 3 years.

It's a model that we COULD GRAB and implement here.. In fact --- we should have been doing this all along. Cheap labor is a passing fad. And YES --- tech is gonna doom it to hell in a short period of time.. The labor boost IN the factory is not the prize.. It's the SUPPLY CHAIN and outside vendors and services that add back the missing jobs..

The problem with your vision of the future is not economic but political.

A more entrepreneurial economy is an eat what you kill economy. Most current economic policies do not work effectively in such an economy

Also additive manufacture to take one of your own examples has as one of its major appealing features the ability to distribute manufacturing to avoid inventory investment. This reduces non-cash profits and therefore effective tax rates.

So, there are a bunch of transitional political problems that I would prefer to see in another thread. If you want to set up such a thread please do so and set up a link so that you, not I, can deal with the verbal nuclear exchange that will result.