Jobless Recovery: ‘Routine’ Jobs Disappear and Don't Come Back

The headline at the Wall Street Journal blog post is about 'routine' jobs disappearing.

Are these 'routine' jobs the same as 'middle class' jobs?

That's the assumption based on a report published by Third Way, the Democrat think tank, which is honest enough to call our current employment situation a "jobless recovery."

However, their prescription is predictable: more training programs.

But the WSJ blog post nor the report from Third Way point to the real solution: a complete overhaul of K-12 education.

The seeds of monopoly control over education sown across decades continue to sprout poorly educated citizens today.

Our fundamental problem is that the basic K-12 education - delivered by governments and controlled by unions - cheats our country and hurts are students.

When poorly educated students enter the work force they are ill prepared.  Whatever 'routine' job they did have is lost in a downturn and that job disappears.

Where do poorly educated, unemployed workers go when they can't find work after their 'routine' jobs disappear?

In large numbers, they drop out of the work force.  PB
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From the Real Time Economics blog at WSJ.com:

The American labor market and middle class was once built on the routine job–workers showed up at factories and offices, took their places on the assembly line or the paper-pushing chain, did the same task over and over, and then went home.

New research ... shows just how much the world of routine work has collapsed...

The economists released a paper today, published by the centrist Democratic think tank Third Way, showing that over the course of the last two recessions and recoveries, a period beginning in 2001, the economy’s job growth has come entirely from nonroutine work...

In the most recent recession, routine jobs collapsed and simply have not recovered, with employment in both cognitive and manual jobs down by more than 5% if the tasks are mostly routine...

In recessions of the 1960s and 1970s, routine jobs would fall during the recession but quickly snap back.

But after the recession in 1990, something changed.

Routine jobs fell and, as a share of the population, never recovered.

In the recessions in 2001 and in 2007-09 they fell even further.

The snapback never occurred, suggesting that many firms began coping with recessions by scrapping tasks that could be automated or more easily outsourced...
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Link: http://blogs.wsj.com/economics/2015/04/08/is-your-job-routine-if-so-its-probably-disappearing/