I really like your very well done in-depth articles [Your money ... our money] and I would call your attention to a couple articles about jobs and unemployment that I think raise some interesting questions.

One thing which almost every writer fails to mention is the need for the nation to add 125,000 to 150,000 NEW jobs a month just to keep up with the increase in population and thus the increase in the number of new people in the job market.

A recent AP story in the Portland Press Herald puts it this way (and very well and very unusual for it to be mentioned at all when writing about employment):

“Economists fear the job market will take years to recover ... Shierholz said the economy faces a "jobs gap" of almost 10 million -- the 7.2 million jobs lost plus the roughly 125,000 per month that would have been needed since the recession began just to keep up with population growth.

To close that gap and get back to pre-recession levels in two years would require more than 500,000 new jobs per month, a pace of job creation that hasn't been seen since 1950-51, Shierholz said.”

The same AP story also noted: “Economists offer several reasons why companies aren't hiring. Many employers have laid off huge numbers of workers earlier this year but have since found that productivity jumped, enabling them to maintain output.” The story did not mention that for some 20 to 30 years or more corporations have kept a larger and larger slice of the growing  “production pie” to themselves and have given a smaller and smaller share of it to workers – keeping worker income largely flat for at least 20 years. Scoreboard - corporations 35 workers zero.

In a story about jobs for recent college graduates the New York Times reported: “Good kids who went to good schools, the brassy, effervescent Barry twins, 24, always envisioned their young adulthood in New York City as a lush time of stimulating work, picturesque travel and a rich social orbit. But they graduated into a downbeat nightmare of a job market. According to an analysis of government data by the Economic Policy Institute, the unemployment rate for college graduates under 27 so far this year averaged 7.1%, nearly double what it was in 2007 and the highest yearly average in the 30 years this data point has been tracked.

And so Kristy and Katie and most of their friends are forever hunting for jobs, both mundane interim work to sustain them and long-term positions that could mean a career. Many days, it is as if they are stalking something on the endangered species list.”

These twins reportedly have spent a year and a half not only applying for 150 jobs (without even one interview) but also playing softball and moving to a $2,900 a month apartment (all with each having $39,000 in student loans to pay off).

I certainly don’t know the answers but the questions in my mind are:

(1) Should schools and colleges be preparing students to find a job working for some existing business or organization or should they (at the very least) put some emphasis on training them to work for themselves in some fashion? This since it is becoming more and more obvious that it is likely  that the jobs will not be there. I say this as someone who started my own communications business in 1966 and found that being a college English-History major was no preparation at all for working for yourself. Education today seems almost entirely focused on preparing students to work for some company or organization.

(2) And a perhaps more significant question: economists all talk about “slow job recovery”; unemployment rising to more than 10%; and on and on. But the sentence above looks to me like it might be a warning – employers laid off workers and productivity jumped. Is it possible we are not only in a new century but in a new era of worldwide competition,  permanent high unemployment and decades of a steadily eroding job market?

Many years ago there was a lot of discussion about “automation” replacing workers and what then would ordinary people do for work.

Is it possible these jobs will never come back and we are facing a decades (or more) in which there will constantly be too many people and too few jobs?

Some of the factors, obviously, are things such as too many big title jobs in organizations where the people don’t actually do much and could be eliminated, technological advancement (computers, software, robots etc. etc.) that replace workers, the new world job market with both low and high tech jobs being done where labor costs are lowest (India, China etc.), fifty years or more of moving to an “information economy” (which Peter Drucker wrote about some 50 years  ago), huge decline in US manufacturing jobs (thousands in Maine alone), move toward lower paying service type jobs, strong move toward hiring temporary and part time employees, using overtime instead of hiring and training new workers – and more.

Hundreds in some cases a thousand or more people lining up to apply for just a few jobs is a common news story now as are the stories about more highly paid managers and technical people sending out endless resumes and attending self help groups with the result being long-term mentally depressing frustration and no employment.

Everyone everywhere looking for the job market to improve. Meanwhile the stock market is steadily rising toward a Dow Jones of 10,000 or more - companies continue to “downsize” by cutting thousands of jobs and still they make money. People who have given up looking for a job (not officially counted) and people who are working part time push the “real” unemployment rate much higher than nine percent.

It all makes me think somewhat of the very first settlers in the New World who arrived from England completely unprepared or the pioneers heading West in 1849-50 – many, even most of them, lacking the skills, the knowledge, the tools, the food supply and most of all the mind set to survive in what was really for them a completely new world. It seems we may well be facing a new world where the “real” unemployment rate will permanently be 15 or 20%(or more).

This may be a new world where a typical college education and the “find-a-job mind set” are of steadily declining value or as you might say not “cost effective.”  Success in college is accumulating 125 “credits” in what is often largely useless, incorrect or outdated information acquired to pass tests and graduate – Why four years? Why 125 credits not 100 or 200?  This along with a $40,000 or more student loan debt are probably not the best baggage to have in one’s covered wagon.

Information on home schooling at the lower grade levels advises parents not to worry too much about time involved since various studies indicate that grade students only spend about 20% of their time “on task” – the rest being spent in travel, recess, lunch, moving from room to room, just waiting and chatting etc. Can the time-task ratio in college be much better?

Where would the Barry twins be today if they had stayed home for two or three years, studied on the Internet, hired a few specialty tutors, taken some special workshops and classes, set their own “graduation” objectives with the realization that no one ever really “graduates”,  monitored courses without “credit”,  borrowed $40,000 (or much less) and started their own business or organization – Another Carbon Nanoprobes? Another Reny’s? Another Google? Another Microsoft?  At least they would arrive on a highly maneuverable motor bike or an all terrain vehicle with a different and more independent mind set and with some of the knowledge and tools for survival in what is beginning to look more and more like a new New Employment World (NEW).

Ed Schlick is a resident of Dresden, Maine.

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