Because commerce and industry in general are so important this column carries information about jobs a couple times a year. This is an update on employment and unemployment and some of the implications regarding an important component of commerce and industry: jobs.
The first week of each month the Bureau of Labor Statistics of the U.S. Department of Labor publishes a wide array of statistics regarding the current status of workers and the unemployed. For April 2017, the unemployment rate fell to a low of 4.4%. This number is based on the size of our civilian workforce (160,213,000) and the number of unemployed (7,056,000). Those who heard about this low unemployment rate were pleased.
However, if we look at the national debt clock (real time) that source reports that 13,726,359 are actually unemployed for an 11% unemployment rate. A recent article in the Wall Street Journal mentions the shortage of workers in commercial construction. If the Trump policy of the trillion dollar infrastructure program becomes reality, the ‘Associated Builders and Contractors’ estimates the need for an additional 600,000 workers. The association states that the industry needs 500,000 more workers right now with increasing payrolls of 4% to 5% annually. Construction enterprises, exclusive of single-family home construction, employed 4.2 million workers in April, down from 4.4 million in February 2008.
Shortages are being noted among subcontractors who employ electricians, plumbers and carpenters and other construction skills. A recent survey indicated that 69.7% of 3.1million high school graduates (2.1 million) will be heading for college this fall. Although attendance at community colleges has been growing, many HS graduates are now opting for four-year colleges.
Do you remember when Trump spoke with President Gregory Hayes of United Technologies Corp. about moving the output of an Indiana factory to Mexico? The Indianapolis factory was saved by a state tax incentive and a commitment by UTC, saving 1,100 jobs for Indiana. CEO Hayes also mentioned that his company was launching an apprentice program that would develop training for HS and community college graduates who could earn more than $100,000 annually as jet engine mechanics and other higher income jobs.
Here are questions that government executives, leaders in private industry and all the rest of us should be asking ourselves. Why do we have 94 million able bodied workers (male and female) NOT in the current workforce? Government pays more than $131 billion annually to 10.5 million disability claimants, more than 40 million potential workers are on SNAP (supplemental nutrition assistance program) at a cost of $70 billion and more than $43 billion is doled out for SSI (Supplementary Security Income); how many of these claims are fraudulent?
The answers to some of these questions are straightforward: As the military is rebuilt, entice many HS and college graduates to enter one of the services, re-qualify all disability recipients and place able-bodied individuals in line for available jobs, hire handicapped workers, remove some of the incentives of welfare especially for able-bodied recipients, start training programs at all levels of government and industry for 21st century jobs and finally improve the economic environment by ridding ourselves of onerous regulations and repatriate the approximately $2.5 trillion in foreign capital by U.S. companies.
While jobs are important to humans, all around us is nature and its unremitting changes. Friday morning when I peeked out to see if our newspapers had arrived, a small songbird was lying on its side and shaking convulsively. After many convulsions its tail went straight up and slowly descended onto the now dead body of this little female bird that may have died from slamming into a window or a wall.
Retrieving the newspaper nearby, I decided to bury the small bird in my nearby flower garden. Looking out through the door before opening it again, I observed another bird sitting just a few inches away and looking directly at what probably had been his mate. This handsome little bird sat there for several hours, interrupting his grief periodically to visit one of the many bird feeders in our yard. The bird book tells me they may be ‘grosbeaks’. This is just a small but touching reminder of Nature in all its verity all around us. Blessings.
Dick Baynton
