Our jobs problem...we haven't been good at creating jobs for the last 20 years.

[dkf]

The problem before the country is more acute than people realize. It goes beyond the indebtedness issues that are surely depressing the recovery. In June, the McKinsey Global Institute published an eye-opening report called “An economy that works: Job creation and America’s future.” It points out that for 20 years, America has had huge difficulties creating jobs. After every recession since the Second World War, once gross domestic product recovered to pre-recession levels, employment also returned to pre-recession levels within about six months.

Until 1990. In the recession that began in 1990, it took 15 months for jobs to come back after GDP had recovered. In the recession of 2001, it took 39 months for jobs to come back.

And now? Since the start of this year, American GDP has returned to its pre-crisis levels — but with 6.8 million fewer workers. At the current rate of job creation, it will take 60 months — five years! — before employment returns to pre-recession levels.

Even these numbers mask the problem. The Nobel Prize-winning economist Michael Spence has found that of the 27 million jobs created between 1990 and 2008, 40 percent were in government and health care — sectors that can’t keep growing at their previous pace. Meanwhile, employment in the tradable sector of the U.S. economy, the sector that produces goods and services that can be consumed anywhere, such as manufactured products, engineering and consulting services — which accounted for more than 34 million jobs in 1990 — grew by just 600,000 jobs over the same 18-year period.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/obamas-job-no-1-create-jobs/2011/08/17/gIQAHXQ8LJ_story.html

[Rex]

1. Clinton created millions of jobs...GWB destroyed all that work

and then some.

[Fumesucker]

2. American companies have created tens of millions of jobs..

In China and other low wage countries.

And the US government encouraged them to do so.

That is the problem in a nutshell.

[MrTriumph]

3. You are right. It is as if the Chinese & American collaborators OWN our government.

x

[Fumesucker]

4. If you see a bunch of web footed animals walking by and they are quacking..

There's an excellent chance they are ducks..

[sarcasmo]

5. Billionaires and the Bankers own this country.

[Little Star]

7. +10000000000000000000000000

[OHdem10]

6. We haveen exporting them for the past 20 years.

[jtuck004]

8. "...five years! — before employment returns to pre-recession levels". Right...

Another optimist. :rofl:

A few more of these 0 months, or months where we don't create 2 to 3 times more jobs than we need to cover just the new people entering the job force (about 125,00 a month) and any such prediction will revealed as short-sighted, maybe even harmful for the false hope it offers. We have records of job creation that go back decades. A look at those averages tells us we will be waiting a minimum of at least a decade, likely more. With wealth represented by phony housing values and retirement funds ready to shrink by another third or more, 6% to 8% unemployment means a far different and harder world than most are predicting, assuming we don't crater before then. The author's suggestion that we look to tourism is nearly laughable, but mostly sad. Instead of training people as scientists, researchers, business owners, bridge builders, nuclear engineers, it is being suggested that we take jobs serving drinks to travelers. That's no recovery.

TPTB realize this, but they missed the opportunity to galvanize the country when we lost 9 million jobs just a few years ago. Now half of them are attempting to artificially inflate the economy, perhaps hoping that inflation begins to catch up with the debt that is slowing us, (nearly a trillion dollars in upside-down mortgages today alone, millions of foreclosures in various stages of completion with more coming, and trillions of debt on a national level), while the other half are intent on burning the country to the ground if they are not given control (and their goal if that should happen appears to be creating policies that will drive us further into the ground). Or maybe there is some thought that all will be long gone should the country wake up and realize that we don't have to continue down this path. We would to have to undergo considerable pain to change our direction, something most politicians could never survive in good shape, especially when it will affect the wealth and power of those that have the most.

The author doesn't adequately address demand, the only thing that has ever created a job. Barring the unknown, there is no possibility of enough demand to overcome this problem in 5 years. The sectors with real wealth-creating jobs are hollow, the growing low-wage service sector can't possibly support the economy that we seem to want, that we were used to. The government, which should be our ultimate tool and investor in the American people, the wrench that could open up our capability to thrive when other avenues fail, has not only thus far failed miserably at that task, regardless of the excuses, (ask the 50 million people without the money for health insurance, the 25 million now unemployed or underemployed, the 45 million+ that must now depend on food stamps to eat a lousy bowl of cereal if those excuses ease their pain), it hasn't even started a serious discussion with the people about the real changes that have to happen for the U.S. to survive in an increasingly global world. Worse, resources are being wasted pursuing a policy of harmful budget cuts, but cuts that throw the most vulnerable into the ditch are no longer palatable to a civilized culture, and our own history stands as living proof that creating and maintaing a safety net improves our security and increases our ability to generate wealth.

The only way - the ONLY way - out of this is to pursue a path of growth supplemented by the selfless sacrifice of people more interested in the future of their country than themselves. We have benefitted from such action in the past, as millions threw themselves into harms way in wars and work in large public utility projects, knowing full well that they would not profit, that they might even die, while others lived the life they wanted. That's the responsiblity that comes with growing into the strongest nation in the world. The alternative is a

This will mean investing and spending by government and business, and ordinary citizens, at a level not seen since earlier in the last century. Anything less is not going to fix this, at least not in the lifetime of many people reading the article.

[dkf]

9. The truth is our money is going to safety nets, not to investment.

We have no vision how we intend to grow the private sector economy. Does paving over roads and building bridges really lead to technological advances that transform our way of life?