DJT promised lots of job creation, especially in manufacturing, while on the campaign trail. As much as I loathe the man, I think this is a good goal. But it seems impractical. Right now the traditional unemployment number is 4.8 % Bureau of Labor Statistics. Yes, I realize there are other statistics but this is the one people usually talk about. Often full employment is defined as 5% unemployment. Given that, shouldn’t job gains beyond the current percentage be difficult to come by?
Yes, I realize that one goal is for these to be better paying jobs, but I’m talking about sheer numbers of people going back to the workforce
Placed in GD because I figured this would invariably generate lots of debate because economic can rarely provide a GQ answer.
No one would argue that creating jobs in the US isn’t a desirable goal. As usual, the devil is in the details and this administration is unfailingly short on details. Their means of achieving their stated goals seems to consist of, “… <insert magic here> …”.
The issue, as I understand it, has never been as simple as the unemployment rate.
Trump’s story has been that middle America has seen a departure of “good” jobs (usually defined as good-paying blue-collar jobs, such as manufacturing jobs). People who live in towns where the factory has closed down, where the local coal mine may be closing down, feel that their standard of living has gone down. They may have jobs now, but those jobs don’t pay as well, or have the sorts of benefits, that those old factory jobs had.
The unemployment rate also doesn’t capture:
People who are currently working, but are “underemployed” – only working part-time when they want a full-time job, or are working at a job that pays much less than their previous jobs.
“Discouraged workers” – people who want to work, but have ceased to look for a job.
During his campaign, Trump would talk about how that unemployment rate vastly under-reported the actual situation. Now, the crazy numbers that he threw out were probably also wildly inaccurate, but many of the people who supported him agreed with him that “the government says that unemployment isn’t an issue any more, but it sure doesn’t feel that way to me.”
U-3 is(and has been for a looooong time) the official rate. This is the one that Trump, despite past criticism, will now use rather than the made up numbers he used before.
As noted, Trumps hook here is similar to what the Democrats used to say…that the unemployment numbers don’t measure the TRUE rate, as they don’t measure those people who have given up. It’s funny how this changes from administration to administration, depending on who is in power…and who thinks those numbers accurately reflect things or don’t.
Basically, what Trump is selling is that those numbers don’t reflect the true rate. In addition, he’s selling the notion that a large number of people who are counted as employed are actually underemployed…i.e. they have taken jobs for a lot less money than they ‘should’ be making. And he feels that he can simply bring back those good, high paying and good benefit low or no skill manufacturing jobs by just pointing out to those companies who have moved their manufacturing overseas that they should make them here.
He’s pretty much divorced from reality in a lot of ways, and this one is one of the big ones. Folks (on both sides of the aisle…it’s funny how conservatives AND liberals all think similarly on this) never seem to get the fact that it’s machines and automation that have taken and will continue to take those jobs in the future, and if we did make US flagged companies back to the US somehow (and before those companies either reflagged or went under) it would be machines doing the work. And it’s not just manufacturing either. A lot of service oriented jobs are being done and will continue to be done more in the future by automated systems, machines and expert systems. Trump is essentially trying to figure out how we can keep buggy whip manufacturers, teletype repair men and switchboard operators employed and expand their numbers, salaries and benefits in the future. He doesn’t seem to have a clue what the actual issues are or why things are the way they are…let alone what to do about it (if there is anything a US president COULD even do to ‘fix’ it).
The travel-ban issue has highlighted the masses of US companies that have to import workers from other nations because they can’t find US-educated people with the skills they need–beginning with lots of math and moving into engineering disciplines in a wide range.
So with today’s confirmation of Trump’s pick Betsy DeVos as Education Secretary, we are well on the way–given her apparent determination to divert public-school funding to fundamentalist Christian schools–to having an even more poorly-educated, more poorly-prepared workforce.
And the GOP just denies the problem and supports Trump’s “good-paying jobs” fairy tale-telling.
I hadn’t thought of the underemployment angle. And I really truly know the “divorced from reality” angle, but I sometimes fall into the trap of taking these things for real. I live in one of these dying cities. Not dead yet, but it ain’t pretty. I’m fine but I worry about the city and region a lot.
I wish people would/could retrain. I know Trade Adjustment Assistance has helped some people hear, but it’s not easy.
Anecdote: A guy I know works in a large tool and die shop that seems to always be hiring for decent pay. I asked why one day. He told me the biggest reason is that they can’t many people who can pass a drug screen. Sad on a lot of levels and from a lot of angles.
During Trump’s campaign, the unemployment rate was around five percent. Trump however claimed it was substantially higher (he claimed it was as high as forty-two percent - which would be astronomical).
Now that he’s President, I predict Trump will simply stop using his imaginary figures and use the actual ones. And he will take credit for “solving” a crisis that never existed.
Another relevant aspect is that every time the Obama administration tried to introduce legislation that would support infrastructure development, retraining, and other job creation measures, the Republican Congress blocked it because they didn’t want Obama to appear successful.
It is very true that the decline of good blue-collar jobs is largely due to irreversible, and in many ways beneficial, technological developments. However, it should be borne in mind that there are a lot of things government could do to offset the impact of those developments and help workers adjust to them, if only government weren’t so largely controlled by avowedly anti-government ideologues.
The factories such as Carrier and Ford that Trump has dissuaded from relocating to Mexico are modern and automated not sweat shops with labor intensive and tedious tasks. Trump is not stopping an American company from upgrading and becoming more productive. If so, please provide the cite.
Why would I provide a cite for a claim I didn’t make? What Trump is peddling is that his policies will bring back manufacturing jobs in sufficient numbers to put people back to work. Apple bringing back a manufacturing plant to the US that is currently in China would bring a handful of jobs back BECAUSE any such plant in the US would be heavily automated, much more so than one in China which relies on cheaper labor instead of a large capital investment in heavy automation.
Not sure why you were confused by this seemingly obvious quote if you put it in the context of the rest of my post, as opposed to simply clipping it out of context…
IAN XT and cannot speak for him, but I think that his point wasn’t about working conditions but rather about denial of obsolescence.
In other words, the analogy with buggy whips, etc., isn’t alleging that modern manufacturers are running Modern Times-style inhumane sweatshops in the US. It’s saying that the days when high-paying, high-benefits manufacturing jobs could comfortably support the bulk of the US unskilled labor force are gone. A couple thousand jobs here and there in a few domestic assembly plants won’t bring them back.
[ETA: ninja’d by the one poster who can speak for XT. :p)
Uh, huh. You wrote it. And I acknowledged that automation would eliminate jobs also. What’s the problem?
You’re putting forth a narrative that white working class are smart enough to see what’s going on. Liberals only see the cartoonish version of Trump. Trump can’t create all of the jobs himself. He’s eliminating the barriers and incentives to offshore and use illegal immigrant labor. We, Americans unshackled, will take it from there.
I’m putting forth a narrative that ‘white working class are smart enough to see what’s going on’? Trump IS a cartoonish version…you don’t have to be liberal (which asserting that I’m one probably made a bunch of 'dopers spray their monitors with whatever they were drinking at the time :p) to see that.
Trump is in the process of erecting barriers to trade. He’s into trade protectionism, not free trade. His policies will hurt American companies and American competitiveness, and aren’t going to do a damned thing with creating jobs because Trump’s vision of bringing jobs back to the US is bringing back manufacturing jobs that don’t exist anymore and never will again. We can’t go back to the 50’s…or even the 70’s. You aren’t going to bring outsourced manufacturing jobs back to the US because we can’t compete against China wrt cheap labor. Forcing US companies to come back means forcing them to pay the larger capital costs for advanced automation, putting them at a disadvantage in the short and medium term…and won’t bring very many jobs to the US either. Lose/lose. His policies wrt Mexico are lose/lose as well. The US exports over a hundred billion dollars worth of goods and services to Mexico, and many products and supply chains are reliant on Mexican manufacturer or services. In the short term especially it’s going to disrupt a lot of those supply chains, hurting US businesses. In the long term, maybe it will help US manufacturing to incentivize companies to bring it back here…but that’s not going to translate into masses of jobs. It’s similar to agriculture. at the turn of the 19th century over 90% of the US workforce was involved in agriculture. Less than 100 years later it was less than 5%…at the same time, US agriculture produced many, many times more goods for far less labor. Manufacture is in the same boat. The US has never been more productive, manufacturing wise. We produce far more goods and services than at any time in our history. And we do it with a fraction of the labor. That’s the reality. Trump doesn’t get it. You don’t seem to either. And you aren’t alone…a lot of folks don’t seem to grasp this on both sides of the political aisle. Populist politicians are popular because it sounds so good and seems so right. Common sense and all that. Reality is dirty, messy and definitely less popular.
(Emphasis added.) So no high school graduates :eek:, no full-time university students, no stay-at-home parents, no early retirees, no disabled people. I could comment on what can be inferred about the political goals and worldview of a person who starts with such implicit presumptions, except the [del]housewives[/del] stay-at-home-parents don’t fit the usual suspects.
Trump beat Clinton in counties where more jobs are at risk because of technology or globalization. Specifically, counties with the most “routine” jobs — those in manufacturing, sales, clerical work and related occupations that are easier to automate or send offshore — were far more likely to vote for Trump.
I also saw an article (can’t remember where I read it, unfortunately) that said Trump voters had about the same employment rates and income as Clinton voters, but they were more likely to say that their children would earn less than they do. That is, Trump voters were worried for the future.
