Jobs Are Not Coming Back

Unless we, as a Country, decide to “go Luddite.”  Contrary to claims by Unions and other pro-labor groups, “offshoring” is not the obvious and primary cause of job loss in the U.S; productivity improvements and shifting business dynamics are (among other things).  This chart, from the Atlanta Fed proves the Unions/labor wrong, rather conclusively:

Dean Baker On Unemployment, Other Recent Econ Data: Only in Washington would this be hailed as good news…

So goes Dean Baker’s comments on the most recent BLS jobs report.  While virtually every media outlet I follow (pretty much all of them that matter, and then some) hailed the report as positive for the economy, anyone who actually went through the numbers (Calculated Risk did this as well, sans the colorful rhetoric) can see that all is not nearly as rosy as politicians, the media, and the Fed would have us believe (emphasis mine, as usual):

Those who know arithmetic were a bit more sceptical. If the economy sustained March’s rate of job growth, it will be more than seven years before we get back to normal rates of unemployment. Furthermore, some of this growth likely reflected a bounceback from weaker growth the prior two months. The average rate of job growth over the last three months has been just 160,000. At that pace, we won’t get back to normal rates of unemployment until after 2022.

That’s a long time to make ordinary workers suffer because the folks who run the economy are not very good at their job.

The Anecdotal Economy, Part II: The Plight of “The Overqualified”

I’ve been awaiting this story for some time now (being formerly one of those about whom it speaks), and awaiting this opportunity to say, from personal experience, I think it’s still just too soon, with some exceptions of course.

Employers who snapped up top talent on the cheap in the depth of the recession should start worrying about defections, recruiters and management watchers say.

Companies that continued to hire during the slump found they were able to nab talented but recently laid-off workers at bargain salaries, or into jobs for which they were overqualified. Now, as the job market slowly loosens up—and those overqualified hires become more frustrated—some of them are considering greener pastures.

Indeed, it wasn’t rocket science to foresee such a trend eventually coming to pass, however, as the article mentions, it seems the vast majority of firms who hired overqualified candidates over the past 2-3 years largely haven’t done much, if anything, to address the inevitable talent exodus if/when(ever) the job market picks up.

I’d be remiss were I not to take this opportunity to point out that many of the “experts” cited in the aforecited WSJ article are inherently biased due to what should be obvious limits on their objectivity, namely recruiters, who get paid alot of money connecting people with jobs.  I think to a greater degree than they’ll let-on, its still more the exception than the rule, and if my experiences/conversations over the past few years are any indication, there are still ALOT of overqualified people all over Wall Street (metaphorically, not geographically) in every capacity and at every level.  There’s still plenty of people with years of experience, their CFA, MS or MBA working in retail brokerage or operations and at smaller, less-prestigious shops because they can’t get another gig on a trading desk or other front-office spot.  Unfortunately, I fear many of them will be stuck there for quite some time as alot of the job losses on Wall Street simply just won’t be coming back, at least not any time soon if ever as far as I can tell.

What have you seen/heard?  Do you know any overqualified people currently or who have been sweating it out until they can get back to their previous station?