From the New York Times online:
In general, the older the group, the more likely it has been to hold onto jobs through the recession and recovery.
In every age group above 62, the proportion of both men and women who are employed is higher than it was before the recession.
Much of that change probably does not involve people getting new jobs, but instead shows that those with jobs are more reluctant to retire than their predecessors were before the recession.
Such people may have greater fears about paying for retirement, reflecting both the fall in home prices during the downturn and the declining presence of defined-benefit pension plans.
Even those with substantial savings may be concerned, with interest rates so low, that they can earn little on their savings without taking on significant amounts of risk.
Those decisions collectively may be having a crowding-out effect on younger workers, by not freeing up jobs that could prompt promotions for some and new hiring to replace those who were promoted...
----
Link: http://www.nytimes.com/2014/05/10/business/economy/the-older-cling-to-jobs-crowding-out-the-younger.html?
Saturday, May 10, 2014
Thursday, May 8, 2014
Middle-Income Wage, Not The Minimum, Needs To Be Raised
From Rand Paul and Stephen Moore writing at Investors.com:
For the vast majority of workers, the problem isn't a flat minimum wage, it's a declining middle-class paycheck.
The minimum wage affects only, at most, 5% of workers — and almost half of them are in starter jobs or are teenagers. What about the other 95% — especially those working parents with children?
These are the people who desperately need a raise.
According to statistics from Sentier Research, based on monthly Census Bureau data, the median household income is still some $4,000 lower today than it was before the recession began in 2008, and about $2,000 lower than it was since the recovery began in June of 2009.
Usually periods of recovery from a financial meltdown are years when workers rapidly make up the lost ground in income and job opportunities surrendered during recession.
In this case, average workers have continued to lose ground. This explains why more than half of workers think the recession never ended. For them, it hasn't....
----
Link: http://news.investors.com/ibd-editorials-perspective/050714-700012-falling-middle-class-incomes-bigger-problem-than-minimum-wage.htm
For the vast majority of workers, the problem isn't a flat minimum wage, it's a declining middle-class paycheck.
The minimum wage affects only, at most, 5% of workers — and almost half of them are in starter jobs or are teenagers. What about the other 95% — especially those working parents with children?
These are the people who desperately need a raise.
According to statistics from Sentier Research, based on monthly Census Bureau data, the median household income is still some $4,000 lower today than it was before the recession began in 2008, and about $2,000 lower than it was since the recovery began in June of 2009.
Usually periods of recovery from a financial meltdown are years when workers rapidly make up the lost ground in income and job opportunities surrendered during recession.
In this case, average workers have continued to lose ground. This explains why more than half of workers think the recession never ended. For them, it hasn't....
----
Link: http://news.investors.com/ibd-editorials-perspective/050714-700012-falling-middle-class-incomes-bigger-problem-than-minimum-wage.htm
Amity Shlaes: The Minimum Wage Makes Depressions Worse
Amity Shlaes writing at the National Review online:
Joe Biden thinks it helped end the Great Depression. It actually extended it.
The vice president has it exactly backward.
Many of us have always suspected that upward pressure on wages in the 1930s can’t have made it easier to hire.
But only lately, in the last 10 or 15 years, has newer research formed a complete picture of what happened in the 1930s.
It seems that the policy of upward pressure on wages, which is the idea of the minimum wage, made the Depression worse.
Here’s what happened. Back in the teens and ’20s, an era of technocrats and progressives, employers dropped wages in downturns — heck, that was better than laying people off. But employers wondered aloud whether higher wages would be good for business.
The most famous of these was Henry Ford, who paid above market level on the theory that workers would use any extra money to “buy back the car.” In an individual business this can be true, especially when that business is simultaneously introducing technology, such as the Ford assembly line, that radically increases productivity...
President Herbert Hoover liked the idea enough that within months of the 1929 crash he hauled business leaders to Washington to browbeat them into sustaining higher wages...
Franklin Roosevelt codified the pressure further with the National Industrial Recovery Act, whose codes contained minimum wages for various trades. Now even private companies that were not government contractors had to pay more than they could afford.
...within months Roosevelt signed the Wagner Act, which gave labor the power to terrify closed-shop business and even carry out occupations of business premises (this latter action bearing the euphemism “sit-down strike”). Employers offered higher wages or paid for their refusal with violent strikes. John L. Lewis, the militant labor leader, terrified even Ford into accepting unionization.
As if the Wagner Act were not enough, a new law, the Fair Labor Standards Act of 1938, re-codified the minimum wage across trades.
The result, as scholars Lee Ohanian, Harold Cole, and others have discovered, is a tragic perversity.
In a depression, when employers were losing money, wages were too high... Reducing wages, the old lesser evil chosen by employers in troubled times, would not be sanctioned by the powerful New Dealers in Washington.
So employers often laid people off — hence the mostly double-digit unemployment of the 1930s.
Vice President Biden’s choice of 1938 as subject is no accident. In the very late 1930s, unemployment did drop, though not down to anywhere near acceptable levels. If you want, you can tell yourself this drop was caused by the 1938 Fair Labor Standards Act. But this drop came in good part because the New Deal was running out of steam.
...the record from the Great Depression suggests that upward pressure on wages really can hurt the country. Seriously.
— Amity Shlaes chairs the board of the Calvin Coolidge Presidential Foundation.
----
Link: http://www.nationalreview.com/article/377435/minimum-wage-makes-depressions-worse-amity-shlaes
Joe Biden thinks it helped end the Great Depression. It actually extended it.
The vice president has it exactly backward.
Many of us have always suspected that upward pressure on wages in the 1930s can’t have made it easier to hire.
But only lately, in the last 10 or 15 years, has newer research formed a complete picture of what happened in the 1930s.
It seems that the policy of upward pressure on wages, which is the idea of the minimum wage, made the Depression worse.
Here’s what happened. Back in the teens and ’20s, an era of technocrats and progressives, employers dropped wages in downturns — heck, that was better than laying people off. But employers wondered aloud whether higher wages would be good for business.
The most famous of these was Henry Ford, who paid above market level on the theory that workers would use any extra money to “buy back the car.” In an individual business this can be true, especially when that business is simultaneously introducing technology, such as the Ford assembly line, that radically increases productivity...
President Herbert Hoover liked the idea enough that within months of the 1929 crash he hauled business leaders to Washington to browbeat them into sustaining higher wages...
Franklin Roosevelt codified the pressure further with the National Industrial Recovery Act, whose codes contained minimum wages for various trades. Now even private companies that were not government contractors had to pay more than they could afford.
...within months Roosevelt signed the Wagner Act, which gave labor the power to terrify closed-shop business and even carry out occupations of business premises (this latter action bearing the euphemism “sit-down strike”). Employers offered higher wages or paid for their refusal with violent strikes. John L. Lewis, the militant labor leader, terrified even Ford into accepting unionization.
As if the Wagner Act were not enough, a new law, the Fair Labor Standards Act of 1938, re-codified the minimum wage across trades.
The result, as scholars Lee Ohanian, Harold Cole, and others have discovered, is a tragic perversity.
In a depression, when employers were losing money, wages were too high... Reducing wages, the old lesser evil chosen by employers in troubled times, would not be sanctioned by the powerful New Dealers in Washington.
So employers often laid people off — hence the mostly double-digit unemployment of the 1930s.
Vice President Biden’s choice of 1938 as subject is no accident. In the very late 1930s, unemployment did drop, though not down to anywhere near acceptable levels. If you want, you can tell yourself this drop was caused by the 1938 Fair Labor Standards Act. But this drop came in good part because the New Deal was running out of steam.
...the record from the Great Depression suggests that upward pressure on wages really can hurt the country. Seriously.
— Amity Shlaes chairs the board of the Calvin Coolidge Presidential Foundation.
----
Link: http://www.nationalreview.com/article/377435/minimum-wage-makes-depressions-worse-amity-shlaes
Tuesday, May 6, 2014
3 signs the economy's still hurting
From MSN Money online:
#1: Where are the jobs?
The drop in the unemployment rate was overwhelmingly driven by a whopping 806,000 decline in the labor force. That put the labor force participation rate at just 62.8 percent, a 35-year low. The employment-to-population ratio stood at 58.9 percent last month -- 0.5 percent below where it was when the recession ended in the summer of 2009.
#2: Global growth
Monday, we learned that the Global Manufacturing PMI measure of factory activity fell to a six-month low of 51.9 on a drop in new orders and production.
#3: Wage growth (or lack thereof)
And finally, and most importantly for beleaguered middle-class families, wage growth continues to lose momentum and remains well below the rates reached in the late 1990s and the mid-2000s.
----
Link: http://money.msn.com/top-stocks/post--3-signs-the-economys-still-hurting
#1: Where are the jobs?
The drop in the unemployment rate was overwhelmingly driven by a whopping 806,000 decline in the labor force. That put the labor force participation rate at just 62.8 percent, a 35-year low. The employment-to-population ratio stood at 58.9 percent last month -- 0.5 percent below where it was when the recession ended in the summer of 2009.
#2: Global growth
Monday, we learned that the Global Manufacturing PMI measure of factory activity fell to a six-month low of 51.9 on a drop in new orders and production.
#3: Wage growth (or lack thereof)
And finally, and most importantly for beleaguered middle-class families, wage growth continues to lose momentum and remains well below the rates reached in the late 1990s and the mid-2000s.
----
Link: http://money.msn.com/top-stocks/post--3-signs-the-economys-still-hurting
Saturday, May 3, 2014
A Nation of Temps and Burger Flippers?
From Bloomberg View:
Is the U.S. turning into a nation of temps, burger flippers and retail sales associates?
Not quite, but the quality of the jobs being created does leave much to be desired.
Today's employment report offered an encouraging sign that the recovery is shaking off a slow winter. Nonfarm payrolls grew by an estimated 288,000 jobs in April, bringing the one-year total to 2.4 million jobs...
That said, some sectors stand out: ...temporary help services, food services and drinking places, retail trade, and professional and technical services. Also notable are home health-care services (think taking care of Grandpa) and mining (the shale boom):
The prominence of temporary employment almost five years into the recovery isn’t a great sign.
It suggests that companies are hiring through employment services rather than putting new workers on their payrolls -- a practice that makes firing easier and reflects their caution about the economic outlook.
Promising as the gains in professional and technical services might sound, they might not bode well for employment elsewhere. A lot of the growth is in the areas of computer and management consultants -- that is, people who help businesses figure out how to make do with fewer workers.
All told, the data suggest employers are still hesitant to hire and are looking for ways to cut costs, while many employees are settling for whatever jobs are available. That's hardly the recovery we've all been waiting for.
----
Link: http://www.bloombergview.com/articles/2014-05-02/a-nation-of-temps-and-burger-flippers
Is the U.S. turning into a nation of temps, burger flippers and retail sales associates?
Not quite, but the quality of the jobs being created does leave much to be desired.
Today's employment report offered an encouraging sign that the recovery is shaking off a slow winter. Nonfarm payrolls grew by an estimated 288,000 jobs in April, bringing the one-year total to 2.4 million jobs...
That said, some sectors stand out: ...temporary help services, food services and drinking places, retail trade, and professional and technical services. Also notable are home health-care services (think taking care of Grandpa) and mining (the shale boom):
The prominence of temporary employment almost five years into the recovery isn’t a great sign.
It suggests that companies are hiring through employment services rather than putting new workers on their payrolls -- a practice that makes firing easier and reflects their caution about the economic outlook.
Promising as the gains in professional and technical services might sound, they might not bode well for employment elsewhere. A lot of the growth is in the areas of computer and management consultants -- that is, people who help businesses figure out how to make do with fewer workers.
All told, the data suggest employers are still hesitant to hire and are looking for ways to cut costs, while many employees are settling for whatever jobs are available. That's hardly the recovery we've all been waiting for.
----
Link: http://www.bloombergview.com/articles/2014-05-02/a-nation-of-temps-and-burger-flippers
Tuesday, April 29, 2014
LIBERAL BILLIONAIRE BIGOTS: Silicon Valley’s Giants Are Just Gilded Age Tycoons in Techno-Utopian Clothes
From Joel Kotkin writing at the Daily Beast online:
The $300 million payout from tech giants like Google and Apple to settle a lawsuit brought by employees makes it clear that Silicon Valley is out for profit, not to change the world....
But the collusion case amply proves what has been clear to those watching the industry: greed and the desire to control drives tech entrepreneurs as much as any other business group.
The Valley is great at talking progressive but not so much in practice.
In the very place where private opposition to gay marriage is enough to get a tech executive fired, the big firms have shown a very weak record of hiring minorities and women.
And not surprisingly, firms also are notoriously skittish about revealing their diversity data.
A San Jose Mercury report found that the numbers of Hispanics and African Americans employees in Silicon Valley tech companies, already far below their percentage in the population, has actually been declining in recent years.
Hispanics, roughly one quarter of the local labor force, account for barely five percent of those working at the Valley’s ten largest companies.
The share of women working at the big tech companies - despite the rise of high profile figures in management—has also showed declines...
----
Link: http://www.thedailybeast.com/articles/2014/04/25/silicon-valley-s-giants-are-just-gilded-age-tycoons-in-techno-utopian-clothes.html
The $300 million payout from tech giants like Google and Apple to settle a lawsuit brought by employees makes it clear that Silicon Valley is out for profit, not to change the world....
But the collusion case amply proves what has been clear to those watching the industry: greed and the desire to control drives tech entrepreneurs as much as any other business group.
The Valley is great at talking progressive but not so much in practice.
In the very place where private opposition to gay marriage is enough to get a tech executive fired, the big firms have shown a very weak record of hiring minorities and women.
And not surprisingly, firms also are notoriously skittish about revealing their diversity data.
A San Jose Mercury report found that the numbers of Hispanics and African Americans employees in Silicon Valley tech companies, already far below their percentage in the population, has actually been declining in recent years.
Hispanics, roughly one quarter of the local labor force, account for barely five percent of those working at the Valley’s ten largest companies.
The share of women working at the big tech companies - despite the rise of high profile figures in management—has also showed declines...
----
Link: http://www.thedailybeast.com/articles/2014/04/25/silicon-valley-s-giants-are-just-gilded-age-tycoons-in-techno-utopian-clothes.html
Monday, April 28, 2014
Obama’s low-wage jobs recovery
From James Pethokoukis at the American Enterprise Institute:
The current job market recovery has been an historically slow one...
But the problem isn’t just the quantity of jobs created,
but the quality, too.
...during the recovery (measured from February 2010 to February 2014), employment gains have been concentrated in lower-wage industries.
Specifically:
– Lower-wage industries constituted 22 percent of recession losses, but 44 percent of recovery growth.
– Mid-wage industries constituted 37 percent of recession losses, but only 26 percent of recovery growth.
– Higher-wage industries constituted 41 percent of recession losses, and 30 percent of recovery growth...
----
Link: http://www.aei-ideas.org/2014/04/obamas-low-wage-jobs-recovery/
The current job market recovery has been an historically slow one...
But the problem isn’t just the quantity of jobs created,
but the quality, too.
...during the recovery (measured from February 2010 to February 2014), employment gains have been concentrated in lower-wage industries.
Specifically:
– Lower-wage industries constituted 22 percent of recession losses, but 44 percent of recovery growth.
– Mid-wage industries constituted 37 percent of recession losses, but only 26 percent of recovery growth.
– Higher-wage industries constituted 41 percent of recession losses, and 30 percent of recovery growth...
----
Link: http://www.aei-ideas.org/2014/04/obamas-low-wage-jobs-recovery/
Sunday, April 27, 2014
The World's Resources Aren't Running Out
From Matt Ridley writing in the Wall Street Journal:
How many times have you heard that we humans are "using up" the world's resources, "running out" of oil, "reaching the limits" of the atmosphere's capacity to cope with pollution or "approaching the carrying capacity" of the land's ability to support a greater population?
The assumption behind all such statements is that there is a fixed amount of stuff—metals, oil, clean air, land—and that we risk exhausting it through our consumption.
"We are using 50% more resources than the Earth can sustainably produce, and unless we change course, that number will grow fast—by 2030, even two planets will not be enough," says Jim Leape, director general of the World Wide Fund for Nature International (formerly the World Wildlife Fund).
But here's a peculiar feature of human history: We burst through such limits again and again.
After all, as a Saudi oil minister once said, the Stone Age didn't end for lack of stone.
... people (and indeed some other animals) can create new opportunities for themselves by making their habitats more productive in some way. Agriculture is the classic example of niche construction: We stopped relying on nature's bounty and substituted an artificial and much larger bounty.
Economists call the same phenomenon innovation. What frustrates them about ecologists is the latter's tendency to think in terms of static limits.
Ecologists can't seem to see that when whale oil starts to run out, petroleum is discovered, or that when farm yields flatten, fertilizer comes along, or that when glass fiber is invented, demand for copper falls....
----
Link: http://online.wsj.com/news/articles/SB10001424052702304279904579517862612287156?
How many times have you heard that we humans are "using up" the world's resources, "running out" of oil, "reaching the limits" of the atmosphere's capacity to cope with pollution or "approaching the carrying capacity" of the land's ability to support a greater population?
The assumption behind all such statements is that there is a fixed amount of stuff—metals, oil, clean air, land—and that we risk exhausting it through our consumption.
"We are using 50% more resources than the Earth can sustainably produce, and unless we change course, that number will grow fast—by 2030, even two planets will not be enough," says Jim Leape, director general of the World Wide Fund for Nature International (formerly the World Wildlife Fund).
But here's a peculiar feature of human history: We burst through such limits again and again.
After all, as a Saudi oil minister once said, the Stone Age didn't end for lack of stone.
... people (and indeed some other animals) can create new opportunities for themselves by making their habitats more productive in some way. Agriculture is the classic example of niche construction: We stopped relying on nature's bounty and substituted an artificial and much larger bounty.
Economists call the same phenomenon innovation. What frustrates them about ecologists is the latter's tendency to think in terms of static limits.
Ecologists can't seem to see that when whale oil starts to run out, petroleum is discovered, or that when farm yields flatten, fertilizer comes along, or that when glass fiber is invented, demand for copper falls....
----
Link: http://online.wsj.com/news/articles/SB10001424052702304279904579517862612287156?
Saturday, April 19, 2014
Can’t say this to voters about the economy: "recovery"
From Yahoo Finance:
You can point out how rich the 1% are, or pound home how hard it is to keep up these days. But whatever you do, don’t act like there’s a “recovery.”
That’s the advice from a prominent public-policy firm to Democratic politicians running for reelection this year...
By some measures, the economy is getting back to normal....
But the various pieces of the economy don’t fit together now the same way they did before the recession hit at the end of 2007, with fewer people taking part in economic gains.
Total employment is still about 400,000 jobs short of the 2008 peak, and that’s with a larger population now.
The stock market has regained all its losses and hit record highs, which benefits people with big investments, but homes are still below the peak values of 2006, leaving many middle-class homeowners underwater.
And it seems clear top earners are now capturing a greater portion of all income, while the middle class is shrinking.
That makes aggregate wealth and income numbers look better than they really are.
A lot of ordinary people know this intuitively, which is why politicians risk alienating voters by touting a recovery many people don’t feel....
----
Link: http://finance.yahoo.com/blogs/the-exchange/one-thing-you-can-t-say-to-voters-about-the-economy-183830377
You can point out how rich the 1% are, or pound home how hard it is to keep up these days. But whatever you do, don’t act like there’s a “recovery.”
That’s the advice from a prominent public-policy firm to Democratic politicians running for reelection this year...
By some measures, the economy is getting back to normal....
But the various pieces of the economy don’t fit together now the same way they did before the recession hit at the end of 2007, with fewer people taking part in economic gains.
Total employment is still about 400,000 jobs short of the 2008 peak, and that’s with a larger population now.
The stock market has regained all its losses and hit record highs, which benefits people with big investments, but homes are still below the peak values of 2006, leaving many middle-class homeowners underwater.
And it seems clear top earners are now capturing a greater portion of all income, while the middle class is shrinking.
That makes aggregate wealth and income numbers look better than they really are.
A lot of ordinary people know this intuitively, which is why politicians risk alienating voters by touting a recovery many people don’t feel....
----
Link: http://finance.yahoo.com/blogs/the-exchange/one-thing-you-can-t-say-to-voters-about-the-economy-183830377
Friday, April 18, 2014
Gallup Poll: Record low for Obama, Democratic and Republican leaders in Congress
From Gallup.com:
WASHINGTON, D.C. -- Less than half of Americans (42%) have confidence in President Barack Obama on doing or recommending the right thing for the economy -- the lowest figure Gallup has on record for him.
New lows in confidence were also found for Democratic leaders (35%), while Republican leaders in Congress received the lowest mark on record for either party (24%).
Americans have more confidence in business leaders and state governors than federal political leaders.
----
Link: http://www.gallup.com/poll/168560/economy-americans-less-confident-federal-leaders.aspx
WASHINGTON, D.C. -- Less than half of Americans (42%) have confidence in President Barack Obama on doing or recommending the right thing for the economy -- the lowest figure Gallup has on record for him.
New lows in confidence were also found for Democratic leaders (35%), while Republican leaders in Congress received the lowest mark on record for either party (24%).
Americans have more confidence in business leaders and state governors than federal political leaders.
Link: http://www.gallup.com/poll/168560/economy-americans-less-confident-federal-leaders.aspx
Sunday, April 13, 2014
Outrageous Pay Gaps Need Fixing Now!
From Kyle Smith writing at Forbes.com:
...yet, the more laws we pass to remedy these various disparities, the more obvious it becomes that we haven’t gotten to the cruelest and most sordid pay anomalies.
... front line, entry-level fast-food workers are paid only 51 cents on the dollar compared to their managers. Are these two jobs really that different?
Did you know that
the median wage for aerospace engineers is $1,645 a week?
For lawyers $1,909 a week?
For architectural and engineering managers $2,122 a week?
Compared to these workers, food preparation and serving workers are getting paid only 23 cents on the dollar, 20 cents on the dollar and an unseemly and brutally unfair 18 cents on the dollar.
Are any of these Americans more or less deserving than any others?
...President Obama, you’re thinking far too small.
Forget all of the above legislation. Don’t bother with meaningless executive orders that solve the nonexistent problem of workers being forbidden to discuss their pay with one another.
The Equal Pay for Everyone Act would mandate that employers stop discriminating on the basis of economic value, and pay all working Americans exactly the same wage every week, forever.
----
Link: http://www.forbes.com/sites/kylesmith/2014/04/10/the-gender-pay-gap-is-just-the-beginning-of-americas-pay-inequity-problem/
...yet, the more laws we pass to remedy these various disparities, the more obvious it becomes that we haven’t gotten to the cruelest and most sordid pay anomalies.
... front line, entry-level fast-food workers are paid only 51 cents on the dollar compared to their managers. Are these two jobs really that different?
Did you know that
the median wage for aerospace engineers is $1,645 a week?
For lawyers $1,909 a week?
For architectural and engineering managers $2,122 a week?
Compared to these workers, food preparation and serving workers are getting paid only 23 cents on the dollar, 20 cents on the dollar and an unseemly and brutally unfair 18 cents on the dollar.
Are any of these Americans more or less deserving than any others?
...President Obama, you’re thinking far too small.
Forget all of the above legislation. Don’t bother with meaningless executive orders that solve the nonexistent problem of workers being forbidden to discuss their pay with one another.
The Equal Pay for Everyone Act would mandate that employers stop discriminating on the basis of economic value, and pay all working Americans exactly the same wage every week, forever.
----
Link: http://www.forbes.com/sites/kylesmith/2014/04/10/the-gender-pay-gap-is-just-the-beginning-of-americas-pay-inequity-problem/
Sunday, April 6, 2014
WSJ: Where Have All the Workers Gone?
Glenn Hubbard writing in the Wall Street Journal online:
A big puzzle looms over the U.S. economy: Friday's jobs report tells us that the unemployment rate has fallen to 6.7% from a peak of 10% at the height of the Great Recession.
But at the same time, only 63.2% of Americans 16 or older are participating in the labor force, which, while up a bit in March, is down substantially since 2000.
As recently as the late 1990s, the U.S. was a nation in which employment, job creation and labor force participation went hand in hand.
That is no longer the case....
...the policy response to our disturbing doldrums in the labor market has indeed struck the wrong balance.
Whatever can be said for shorter-term measures to jump-start job creation and business activity, it seems clear by this late date that our problems are in no small part structural...
The fierce debate now going on in Washington about extending unemployment insurance and raising the minimum wage largely ignores these issues.
Such policies may affect the incomes of some Americans, but they won't do much to expand opportunity and bring more people back into the labor force. Sparking a broad-based return to the labor force demands a more ambitious agenda....
----
Link: http://online.wsj.com/news/articles/SB10001424052702304441304579477341062142388?
A big puzzle looms over the U.S. economy: Friday's jobs report tells us that the unemployment rate has fallen to 6.7% from a peak of 10% at the height of the Great Recession.
But at the same time, only 63.2% of Americans 16 or older are participating in the labor force, which, while up a bit in March, is down substantially since 2000.
As recently as the late 1990s, the U.S. was a nation in which employment, job creation and labor force participation went hand in hand.
That is no longer the case....
...the policy response to our disturbing doldrums in the labor market has indeed struck the wrong balance.
Whatever can be said for shorter-term measures to jump-start job creation and business activity, it seems clear by this late date that our problems are in no small part structural...
The fierce debate now going on in Washington about extending unemployment insurance and raising the minimum wage largely ignores these issues.
Such policies may affect the incomes of some Americans, but they won't do much to expand opportunity and bring more people back into the labor force. Sparking a broad-based return to the labor force demands a more ambitious agenda....
----
Link: http://online.wsj.com/news/articles/SB10001424052702304441304579477341062142388?
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