Sorry,
not too much on castings today... but I hope you can get into these topics.
Really?
I love Bloomberg Businessweek magazine because it provides some outstanding food for thought, packaged nicely. On July 24 there was a graphic (below) about The Great Shrinking Workforce. The accompanying verbiage was:
“In 2007, 66 percent of American adults were either working or looking for work. This year that number dropped to 63 percent. The White House’s Council of Economic Advisers estimates that about two-thirds of this decline comes from baby boomers retiring and the recession. The rest? It’s not completely clear.”
Where to begin to parse such a thing? As Inigo Montoya would say, “Let me explain. No, there is too much – let me sum up.”
The
graphic shows what many of us already know: People are not working!
The White House’s Council of Economic Advisers is “not completely clear” on what is causing this besides the retirement of the boomers. Let me enlighten them: Too many have given up finding work or have been reduced to part-time because of overall economic uncertainty, some of which is government-related.
Specifically, nobody hires full-time people … or starts a family … or opens a factory … or buys a house … or makes any big decision when they don’t know what’s coming next. Decision makers simply cannot answer questions like these:
Will another state open up land to fracking development? What will that do to my job?
Will sequester legislation hold? What will that do to my company?
Will the stock market crash again due to excess liquidity? What will the dollar be worth in five years?
What will happen to support for ethanol? Will climate change flood my cottage on the oceanfront?
Should I train the employees in my body shop to make repairs on aluminum auto bodies?
You do not need to be an economist to know these things. You just have to be awake. Just look at the chart below that I compiled from the CDC. Births drop off in 2008, right when the recession hit.
