A commenter was confused about my objection to this graphic from the WSJ
I was probably a little to technical just saying its stocks vs. flows.
Think about it this way, investment in Equipment and Software is nearly 30% since the recession ended. This is very strong but not wildly unusual for a bounce back from a recession.
Think about what it would mean in payrolls were up 30% since the recession ended. At the bottom of the recession the US had roughly 130 million people on payroll. A 30% increase would have meant that the US now 169 million people on payroll or an increase in jobs of 39 million over 2 years. Note there are only about 14 million unemployed people in the US.
Does that sound even remotely realistic?
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Saturday ~ October 1st, 2011 at 6:29 am
jpersonna
Thanks for the return to this.
There have been a flurry of related articles, including Will Robots Steal Your Job? at Slate. I think What Barack Obama Could Learn From Maker Faire at HuffPo comes at it from a slight angle.
Is there fire to go with the smoke? At this point I think so, that between globalization and automation companies have become less US-jobs dependent.
I’ve been trying to integrate the themes, the unemployment on one hand, and the creative intensity of “makers” on the other.
I think I’ve worked it out, and it isn’t that happy a solution. I think that on one hand we will have “non-adapters” who live off their savings first, and public support second. On the other hand we’ll have “scramblers” who innovate and find gigs. Technology will advance, cognitive surplus will grow, robots and pseudo-intelligent computers will take on more tasks.
But there will not be “full employment” in the old sense, ever again.
Saturday ~ October 1st, 2011 at 3:03 pm
spencer
If you compare either capital spending or employment this cycle to what they were in the prior two cycles you will see that there is not much difference.
Of course that would not fit their biases or political objectives.
For example, you will never learn from the WSJ Editorials that employment is actually stronger this cycle than it was at the same point in the cycle during the Bush years.