Fixing America’s Unemployment Crisis
Trump was elected in part on the promise of creating jobs, but how about those who stopped looking for work?
By Stephen Gregory, Epoch Times | December 2, 2016 | Last Updated: December 2, 2016 4:29 pm
What has been called a “quiet catastrophe” has been unfolding in America: the collapse of work for millions of America’s men, and, more recently, for America’s women as well.
Nicholas Eberstadt, the Henry Wendt Chair in political economy at the American Enterprise Institute, estimates there are 10 million men who are jobless and no longer looking for work. According to calculations using 2014 data, an estimated 3.6 million women are in the same situation.
President-elect Donald Trump has announced a raft of policies meant to spur economic growth and create jobs, but thought needs to be given to what specific measures might help this urgent situation.
How to address this crisis depends on what one understands the problem to be. A graph showing the prime-age employment rate for men provides a kind of Rorschach test for possible responses.
Jared Bernstein, senior fellow at the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities, former economic adviser to Vice President Joe Biden, and author of, most recently, “The Reconnection Agenda: Reuniting Growth and Prosperity,” focuses on the cyclical upturns in the jagged line, on those periods of prosperity when workers regain jobs that had been lost.
Eberstadt focuses on the straight trend line, which has been going inexorably and disastrously downward for decades.
Bernstein and Eberstadt represent two typical and contrasting approaches to the unemployment problem.
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If you look at the employment rate for prime-age workers, they have actually clawed back two-thirds of their losses since the great recession.
— Jared Bernstein
Bernstein published the graph in a chapter he contributed to Eberstadt’s book “Men Without Work,” in which he critiques Eberstadt’s diagnosis of the employment crisis.
For Bernstein, the key is a missing demand for labor.
“If you look at the employment rate for prime-age workers, they have actually clawed back two-thirds of their losses since the Great Recession,” Bernstein said in an interview. “That doesn’t sound to me like a group that has given up. It sounds to me like a group that is not facing ample opportunity.”
For Eberstadt, the problem is a detachment from work.
Using various government databases, Eberstadt gives a composite portrait of those men who are out of the workforce and not looking for work.
They don’t read newspapers, seem to have few familial responsibilities, and tend not to be involved in a church or their communities. They spend most of their time entertaining themselves with TV or hand-held devices; 31 percent admitted to survey takers that they used illegal drugs.
Bernstein counters this portrait by noting that the causal connection may go from a lack of employment opportunities to suffering from depression, which then leads to these men planting themselves on the couch.
As to the individual motives of the non-working, Bernstein said, “We just don’t know.” His advice to Trump is to aggressively pursue full employment, which involves the federal government using a number of different tools.
An officer waits to escort Harvey Lesser, an unemployed software developer, from his apartment after serving him with a court order for eviction in Boulder, Colo., on Dec. 11, 2009.
Stimulus and Subsidies
Bernstein believes the key to the downward trend his graph shows is the disappearance of manufacturing jobs. He favors trade policies that will reduce America’s chronic trade imbalances, which will create more demand for domestic manufacturing.
Bernstein also favors an infrastructure program, with the caveat that “you have to do it right,” he said.
He would like to see the federal government get involved in communities that “don’t have enough businesses, child care slots, supermarkets, and stores—these are a classic market failure.”
The federal government could subsidize private employers in these neighborhoods, giving them an incentive to move their businesses there.
Bernstein also favors special efforts to help those with a criminal record, and Eberstadt agrees finding ways to help this population is key to addressing the problem of non-working adults. He estimates that, by the end of 2016, there will be 20 million with a felony conviction in their past.
Source: Jared Bernstein’s analysis of Bureau of Labor statistics in “Men Without Work” by Nicholas Eberstadt
Bernstein supports the Ban the Box initiative, which calls for removing the box on employment applications that must be ticked by anyone with a criminal record.
He also would like to see direct job creation. The federal government would offer a heavily subsidized wage, and at the local level there would be training for specific jobs that would be available in that area.
He would also like to see the federal government fund an apprenticeship program, which would involve recruiting local businesses.
Finally, Bernstein wants to see the federal government get the macro economic policies right to support full employment. This means using monetary policy—primarily interest rates set by the Federal Reserve—and fiscal policy to stimulate the economy. In Bernstein’s view, we took our foot off the pedal of fiscal stimulus too soon—the United States should have carried larger deficits in the years following the Great Recession.
Eric Gilliam, an unemployed coal miner, in his garage at his home in Lynch, Ky., on Oct. 18, 2014. (AP Photo/David Goldman)
Small Business
Eberstadt said it is “small not big business that employs most Americans.” Over the last eight years, he said, there has been only marginally more small business births compared to small business deaths. A healthy labor market will be one with “many, many new businesses being formed,” he said. Part of the solution? Undo regulatory strangulation and rationalize the tax code.
While Eberstadt agrees that manufacturing jobs are important, he would urge the Trump administration not to “fetishize” manufacturing jobs. The percentage of manufacturing jobs in developed economies around the world has steadily dropped. “Jobs that employ people are good,” Eberstadt said, “whether they have the word manufacturing in them or not.”
In order to protect the manufacturing jobs we do have, Eberstadt urges that we not get into a trade war with China, Mexico, or other countries, saying that trade wars lose jobs, they don’t create jobs.
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Clearly there has been a change in the way most people think about what is decent and appropriate for able-bodied, working-age men to do with their lives
— Nicholas Eberstadt, economist, American Enterprise Institute
Because our entitlement programs are administered locally, they tether people to the states in which they are receiving benefits. Finding a way to cut that tie will give people mobility, which will open up more job opportunities.
Eberstadt’s book is meant to initiate “a broad conversation on our ‘men without work’ problem, a conversation of many voices and differing perspectives.” One important solution is to bring this mostly invisible problem “into the public spotlight.”
Shortcomings in the data we have limit the kinds of conversations we have. The Bureau of Labor Statistics does not count the 13.6 million people who have stopped looking for work as unemployed. When the American public is given an unemployment rate of 4.9 percent, the crisis of the non-working is hidden from them.
The government surveys that are conducted do not reveal the mindsets of those men who are disconnected from work—vital information for anyone who wants to understand this crisis. The Social Security Disability Insurance program does not have an effective audit that would tell us whether it is being used as a substitute for employment insurance.
Butch Youshaw, an unemployed card dealer, with his girlfriend in Henderson, Nev., in 2008. (AP Photo/Jae C. Hong)
Stigma
Eberstadt notes that relevant context for the crisis of the non-working is a change in our society’s “mores, and viewpoints, and motivations.”
“Clearly there has been a change in the way most people think about what is decent and appropriate for able-bodied, working-age men to do with their lives in their prime working ages,” Eberstadt said.
Over half of non-working men in their prime years are getting money from at least one government disability program, according to Eberstadt. These funds, Eberstadt writes, finance the non-working’s decision not to work.
He would like to see these programs have a work requirement, as was done 20 years ago with single mothers on welfare. Requiring work stigmatizes non-work and so provides a moral incentive for individuals to move off the couch and back into the workaday world.
Bernstein writes he sees “no good for making these programs less generous or further conditioning them on work.”
Stigma, Eberstadt said, “is often a kinder and gentler way of achieving social objectives than police power.”
ttp://www.theepochtimes.com/n3/2191996-fixing-americas-unemployment-crisis/
WASHINGTON, DC (December 2, 2016) — In September the media reported that the Obama administration was sitting on a damning Department of Homeland Security (DHS) report that called into question the administration’s claim that as many as 81 percent of people attempting to cross the border illegally are apprehended.
This new report, whose full text the Center for Immigration Studies has now obtained, estimates that nearly half of illegal aliens slip through the southern border undetected.
The report was apparently completed in May, leading some to
suspect that the Obama administration did not want it released
for fear that it would bolster Donald Trump’s call for a border
wall.
Among other things, the report measures total level of illegal entry, the probability of apprehension, and the effect of law enforcement in deterring illegal entry. It relies on DHS databases of border apprehension records supplemented by Border Patrol observations, surveillance of illegal entries, and surveys of illegal aliens. The report was completed by the Institute for Defense Analyses, which played no role in the report’s release here.
For 2015, the estimated apprehension rate of illegal aliens between ports of entry on the southern border is only 54 percent. The report finds that although there has been a steep fall in total illegal entries over the past 15 years, there has not been a steep rise in the probability of apprehension over the same time period. Still, there has been some rise; shockingly, the report’s authors find that the estimated apprehension rate between ports of entry in 2005 was only 36 percent.
The report also notes that of illegal aliens crossing at ports of entry — for example, with fake IDs or hidden in vehicles — only 29 percent were estimated to have been apprehended in 2014, and only 39 percent in 2015.
Another interesting number highlighting the Central American influx and perhaps an increased effort on the part of immigration attorneys is the total requests for asylum. In 2009, Obama’s first year in office, there were 17,000 requests for asylum along the southern border; in 2014 there were 170,000 such requests.
Contact: Marguerite Telford
AMERICA: One paycheck
and two illegals
away from homelessness.
"The economists found that the pre-tax share of
national income received by the bottom half of
the US population has been cut nearly
in half
since 1980, from 20 percent to 12 percent, while
the income share of the
top one percent has nearly
doubled, from 12 percent to 20 percent."
TRUMP
FOLDS TO LA RAZA MEX FASCIST MOVEMENT
Says
the “WALL” will now be only “NO TRESSPASSING” signs posted every hundred miles!
“He's showing more empathy for illegal aliens than he is
for American citizens. Shouldn't it be the concerns of Americans he
should be considering first, before the feelings of illegals? These
people are taking taxpayer money and American jobs, some committing crimes, and
many are not assimilating and speaking English, and Trump wants them to stay?”
FIXING
AMERICA’S UNEMPLOYMENT CRISIS:
How
many jobs in your community are held by foreign born?
MILLIONS of JOBS and BILLIONS in
WELFARE and they commit most of the MURDERS
SANCTUARY CITIES AND STATES: AMERICA FALLS TO LA RAZA SUPREMACY!
“What we're seeing is our Congress and
national leadership dismantling our laws by not enforcing them.
Lawlessness becomes the norm, just like Third World corruption.
Illegal aliens now have more rights and privileges than Americans. If
you are an illegal alien, you can drive a car without a driver's license
or insurance. You may obtain medical care without paying. You may work
without paying taxes. Your children enjoy free education at the expense of
taxpaying Americans.”
CHELSEA CLINTON DECLARES OBAMA-CLINTONOMICS FOR THE
SUPER RICH MADE HER A RICH BITCH!
Her parents phony Clinton Foundation helped!
"This offers cold comfort to millions of college students saddled
with massive debt and workers confronting the prospect of dead-
end, low-wage
and part-time jobs. The economic legacy of the
Obama administration has been a
bonanza for Wall Street, with
huge income gains for the top 1 percent and
falling and stagnating
wages for the vast majority. The main beneficiaries have
been
wealthy individuals like Chelsea Clinton herself, who is married to a hedge fund
manager."
THE DEMOCRAT PARTY:
HELL BENT ON FINISHING OFF THE AMERICAN WORKER!
"At one point she
hailed the “record profits” of the auto companies. She did not mention that
these profits came at the expense of the jobs, wages and retirement benefits of
thousands of auto workers, decimated under the terms of the auto bailout organized
by the Obama administration."
THE
TWISTED ROAD TO REVOLUTION CAME DOWN WALL STREET
FIRST
OBAMA
–CLINTONOMICS FOR THE SUPER RICH
"Between 2002 and 2015 annual
earnings for the bottom 90 percent of Americans rose by
only 4.5 percent, while earnings for the top 1 percent grew by 22.7
percent, according to the
Economic Policy Institute. Under the Obama administration, more than 90
percent of
income gains since the so-called “recovery” began have gone to the top one
percent."
“Our entire crony capitalist system, Democrat and Republican
alike,
has become a kleptocracy approaching par with third-world
hell-holes.
This is the way a great country is raided by its elite.” ---
- Karen
McQuillan THEAMERICAN THINKER.com
THE GIG JOB ECONOMY…. To keep wages DEPRESSED
As Barack Obama invites hordes to jump our borders jobs, welfare
offices and voting booths…. WHAT IS LEFT FOR THE AMERICAN MIDDLE CLASS HE HATES
SO MUCH?
SERGIO RAMSES MUCINO HIRED
ILLEGALS.
ICE ROUNDED THEM UP AND TOOK
HIS PORSCHE AND CADILLAC.
40 MILION MEX FLAG WAVERS TO GO!
FROSTY WOOLDRIDGE:
MEXICO’S STAGGERING LOOTING IN OUR OPEN BORDERS….
ARIZONA…. MEXICAN
WORLD CAPITAL FOR LA RAZA CAR THEFT
Here did those vehicles go? Who stole them? Take a guess. Arizona is the
temporary home of 500,000 illegal aliens. They cost Arizona taxpayers over $1
billion annually in services for schools, medical care, welfare anchor babies,
loss of tax base and prisons. Illegals use those vehicles for smuggling more
people and drugs from around the world into our country. When the vehicles are
recovered, they are smashed-up wrecks in the desert. If not found, they have
new owners south of the border as thieves drive the cars through the desert and
into Mexico as easily as you drive your kids to soccer practice. THAT’S how
porous our borders are!
THE FINAL DAYS OF HILLARY CLINTON
BEFORE SENTENCING
THE GIG JOB ECONOMY…. To keep wages DEPRESSED
As Barack Obama invites hordes to jump our borders jobs, welfare
offices and voting booths…. WHAT IS LEFT FOR THE AMERICAN MIDDLE CLASS HE HATES
SO MUCH?
The Disunited States of America
The election of Donald Trump to the presidency has shed a spotlight on our divisiveness. We are in the throes of a nonviolent civil war where members of families no longer speak to each other and long held friendships have been discarded. Although the Left would like to point the finger at Trump as the reason for the division, it actually began decades earlier with the takeover of the Democratic Party by socialists, communists, and multiculturalists. Their emphasis on what divides us instead of what unites us took root and blossomed at our universities, public school systems, unions, the media, and our universities. The election of Trump is a culmination bred from years of quiet resentment and silent frustration experienced by mainstream Middle America. In Trump, they saw a man who was willing to fight for their representation.
With no identity politics to cling to and no
advocacy groups to lobby for them, white
working/middle class stiffs who make up the
masses, needed a leader who would take on the
system that no longer included them.
As the Left and their Democratic cohorts made race, gender, illegals, Hispanics, Muslims, and the Gay lobby the cornerstone of their political ideology and policy, mainstream white Christian working men and women began to question who was looking out for them and where was their voice in policy making decisions affecting their governance.
The emphasis on class warfare, open borders,
secularism, and multiculturalism at the expense of
Americanism by not only the Democratic Party,
but by their cohorts in the media and
universities has led to a very divided America with
each having a separate vision for the United
States. The Left as represented by the Democratic
Party seeks an open-border stateless America
where anyone who sets foot on our soil is free to
practice their branch of identity within our borders
and with no allegiance to American sovereignty.
They seek an America where equality reigns supreme and a statism
to ensure it. They view socialism as noble and resent free market
capitalism as potentially damaging their quest for equality.
While the French were motivated by egalitarianism, our founding fathers had a different vision for America. They sought an America defined by three principles. Liberty, Faith, and E Pluribus Unum, the motto that shaped our republic and is responsible for its greatness. There are still Americans who cling to these principles and they are the people who reside in the vast territory that elitists on both coasts view as “flyover country”. It is they who cast their votes for Donald Trump. These free market capitalist Americans have a radically different vision for America than those of Socialist Egalitarian Democrats.
They seek an America where everyone has equal opportunities, but not necessarily equal outcomes. They seek an America where faith in G-d is restored in our schools and public sphere, and an America governed by our Constitution and not the rule of man. They seek an America where our sovereignty is restored and respected while the opportunity to immigrate is granted only to those who share our values and respect our customs.
On the other hand, the Left seeks a borderless
America without boundaries. Social taboos that were
once considered the norm and that held personal conduct in check
are relegated as ancient and irrelevant by elitists in the media and
in our universities. Be it the murder of the unborn, out-of-wedlock
pregnancy, recreational drugs, alternative sexual lifestyles, illicit
language, all is desired and permissible for the Left. They
are defined by their feelings while conservatives on the right are
defined by reason. They emote while we on the right think.
Because they are guided by their feelings, they view conservatives
as mean-spirited and lacking compassion for the common man
while conservatives correctly view the Left as foolish,
irrational and immature.
The election of Trump has led Californians to
threaten to leave the union, and there are
many Americans who are eager to see them
leave. Their secession would end the flow of
illegals from that state and the millions in
federal grants they now receive. They would be
free to run that state as a haven for criminals
and entitlement seekers. Strict corporate
regulations and high taxes will ensure the
continuation of corporations fleeing a socialist
bureaucracy, and in the end, California will
become a morally and financially bankrupt
state. "Let's see how long they will last" and "build a wall
around them" is the sentiment expressed by the rest of America
caught living between the Leftist East and West Coasts. With no
funds and no defense, California would most likely shrivel and it
wouldn't take long before regret set in.
It is difficult to fathom that a country so divided can unite for the common good when what is considered "good" is radically different for both camps. We have become a Disunited States and no amount of cajoling can unite us. It is time to admit that the differences are perhaps greater than the commonalities. Today, in these Disunited States, many view the enemy is not only from without, but from within.
Shari Goodman, educator and political activist, has written for World Net Daily, Israel Today, Family Security Matters, and Eagle Rising. She is a red dot in the blue state of California.
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