I just finished scouring some reports on economic gains and pushes as we muddle our way out of the worst recession since The Great Depression. It is no iambic pentameter that I have a sinking feeling the Obama administration is pulling my leg that the grass will be greener early next year.
How much the government and its vast bureaucracies are dishing out BS to paint a happy face on the upcoming November midterm elections is almost comical. The Republicans are in the driver’s seat to retake the House and close the gap in the Senate as long as they don’t drive their foreign-made SUVs into the ditch.
Although encouraging, I didn’t take much stock that 162,000 jobs were added to the ranks of the employed last month. Too large of a percentage were part-time Census trackers and jobs created by the federal stimulus package and not from private enterprise. Still, a total of 123,000 private sector jobs were created, the U.S. Labor Department reported. So much for kicking a dead horse.
What did attract my attention was the service industries sector grew at the fastest pace since May 2006 based on a complicated measuring index.
That’s important because America is not a producer but a servicer economy. Manufacturing is second fiddle where it is reduced to U.S. car manufacturing with sales lagging behind Toyota despite its safety reputation shattered, technical stuff out of Silicon Valley and exports denied our best customer in China because of the artificially devalued yuan which makes it too expensive for Chinese to purchase.
Boomberg News reports the Institute for Supply Management’s index of non-manufacturing businesses, which make up almost 90% of the economy, claimed 82,000 new jobs. The index showed new orders for non-manufacturing products increased the highest rate since August 2005. Exports and prices paid also rose modestly in the survey that includes utilities, healthcare, housing, transportation and finance and insurance.
Among the winners was Best Buy, the nation’s largest electronics retailer, and Carnival, the nation’s largest cruise ship line. “We returned to top line revenue growth after a challenging 2009,” Carnival’s Chief Executive Officer Micky Arison said.
Maybe we are making headway.
But the greatest yardstick of all the Obama administration can do nothing about because it is historically the last indicator to fall into place — is unemployment. It continued at a 9.7% rate. That’s what voters weigh in terms of economic progress.
“We’ve got a long way to go,” said Lawrence Summers, director of the National Economic Council, on one of the plethora of Sunday talk shows. More than 11 million people are drawing unemployment benefits, millions of others have used up their benefits and millions have stopped looking.
After 15 months in office, the Obama administration continues to blame the Bush administration for 8 million unemployed and the fall of the housing and financial markets. Whether voters are that forgiving seven months from now as a frightening small percentage (think 30%) cast ballots in November — I don’t think so.
Fear of losing one’s job and home clouds one’s ability to think clearly.
The encouraging economic data reports was reflected in one of the worst indicators of judging present day economic conditions — the Dow Industrial Averages on the New York Stock Exchange. Early Monday trading drove the index towards mythical 11,000 mark for the first time since Sept. 29, 2008. The broader Standard & Poor’s 500-stock index rose 8.94 points, or 0.45 percent, while the Nasdaq rose 23.78 points, or 0.99 percent.
While investors are placing their bucks with there mouth is, thousands of unemployed workers are taking advantage of stimulus funds gaining an education and learning a new trade simultaneously.
Msnbc.com reports federal stimulus funds, trade schools and union apprentice programs note substantial increases in applicants desiring to get their hands dirty as plumbers, carpenters, welders, electricians and solar panel installers.
These people are eschewing college, the story suggests, because trade jobs may be coming back into vogue thanks in part to promised infrastructure investments, tax incentives to boost home energy efficiency and the prospects of union journeymen wages and benefits.
“Many adults are seeking to improve their technical skills to gain a labor market advantage,” said Clyde Hornberger, executive director for Lehigh Career and Technical Institute, located near Allentown, Pa. Adult enrollment at the school has jumped to 1,057 this year from 855 three years ago, he said.
David Montano, Plumbing and Pipefitting Training Coordinator at Local 412 in Albuquerque, N.M., said the union has a waiting list of 200 people who want to get into the program and a total of 250 apprentices in the program now, compared to 55 apprentices 10 years ago. Among apprenticeship applications, he gets about 20 percent more from adults today than he did a decade ago.
“A lot of them have gone to college and find out all they have is debt and not much to show for it. … Even the jobs they’re getting don’t pay that much,” he said. “People are noticing the trades is a noble way to make a living.”Many of the people in the trades right now will be retiring in the next five to 10 years, said Fred Humphreys, president and CEO of the Home Builders Institute, the work force development arm of the National Association of Home Builders.
“We do not have enough workers coming into the industry to replace them,” he added.
He’s also convinced initiatives by President Barack Obama’s administration will lead to more jobs. The American Recovery and Reinvestment Act of 2009 earmarked $5 billion for home weatherization, Humphreys said. And estimates show that every $100 million worth of residential remodeling activity creates over 1,000 jobs, according to the National Association of Home Builders.
The Department of Labor projects jobs such as plumbers will jump 15% through 2018; electricians by 12% and carpenters by nearly 13%
I don’t know what to believe. One thing that keeps punching me on the head is that there are only two sure-fire ways to get filthy rich in our service-burdened, un-innovated, minimal manufacturing sectors:
Sports and entertainment superstars, M.I.T. math geeks who create models for quick riches or losses in the financial services community and uncanny hedge funds investors who produce zilch.
Cross posted on
Posted comments are welcome and automatically go to my email address at [email protected] in which I will reply when appropriate.
Jerry Remmers worked 26 years in the newspaper business. His last 23 years was with the Evening Tribune in San Diego where assignments included reporter, assistant city editor, county and politics editor.