A Pessimistic View of the U.S. Job Market

Observers such as Harvard's Tammy Erickson argue that, at least long-term, U.S. job seekers especially the educated, will find it easier to find employment.

I strongly disagree. While the Obama stimulus plan may short-term create some government and government-mandated jobs, I predict that the U.S. unemployment rate will, over the coming decade at least, continue to increase.

The following factors will dramatically reduce the need for U.S. employees:

Ever-accelerating automation fueled by dramatic increases in the cost of employing people. Most of these costs will come as the result of the already large but likely to grow still larger government-imposed mandates on employers. Here's just one example. The Family And Marriage Leave Act, because of its heavy fraudulent use by employees wreaks havoc on workplace. That burden will become even more onerous if it becomes paid family leave, which the Obama administration advocates. In addition, wrongful termination, sexual harassment, and racial discrimination grievances and suits grow as do demands for "accommodations" for everything from depression to hyperactivity (to conform to the Americans with Disabilities Act.) Health care costs will continue to grow and be cost-shifted to employers under Obama's plan--those costs will include paying for the 45 million uninsured, who are low-income or unemployed and thus would pay little or nothing into the system, leaving the employer and taxpayer to foot their health care costs.

Globalization. Ever more work product can be transmitted over the Internet, which increases the possibility of offshoring. And while offshoring 1.0 was only modestly successful, it is being re-pursued with a vengeance because companies are now armed with the knowledge it takes to do it successfully. A net saving of 35% is now standard and Accenture, for example, has a large and growing business in helping companies to offshore employees. The public is unaware of the extent of offshoring because companies saw the anger it engendered among the public even when unemployment was low. So, now offshoring is done with as little publicity as possible.

In addition, other countries, notably China, India, Russia, and Brazil, are producing ever more and better products and services, at a much lower cost that U.S. products and services.

The continued elimination of the 52-week-a-year/lifetime employee. Workers are becoming fungible work units, used only as needed. That will mean a dramatic reduction in the number of U.S. full-time-equivalent employees.

The greening of America. Environmental restrictions and voluntary de-emphasis on materialism will result in a contracting economy and, in turn, fewer jobs.

The tax increases on companies. The Democrats, which all signs suggest will be in power for a long time, want to fund their expansion of government by printing money and increasing taxes on companies, which will reduce the amount of real dollars companies have to hire people and to develop new products, which in turn, would have created more jobs.

All signs point to these being long-term and potent factors, so I cannot envision a realistic scenario under which the unemployment rate will decline except perhaps temporarily in late 2009 or early 2010.

The Unspoken Key Issue re Health Care Reform

The medical establishment already kills over 100,000 people every year as the result of medical errors. Countless more people stay sick longer or get sicker because of such errors. For example, someone just told me that because of an error in surgery, he became blind.

Under President Obama's health care proposal, we'll be providing health care for 45 million more people with the same number of doctors, nurses, hospitals, MRI machines, etc. That 45 million has greater-than-average health care needs while having lower average income, and thus will often get low-cost or free health care under the Obama plan. The result will be that even more of the people who do fully pay into the system will stay sicker longer, get sicker, or die.

From where I sit, the answer is a two-tier system: a basic level of care for everyone and a higher level of care for those who pay into the system. Alas, I doubt seriously whether the Democrats could ever support such a plan. Their core principle is that equality trumps merit.

More on Men as Victims of Domestic Violence

The way the media would have you believe, almost all domestic violence is perpetrated by men.

Fact is, studies are unequivocal that high percentages are perpetrated by women. I reproduce this article by a public health expert at the prestigious Mount Sinai School of Medicine and a leading advocate for the fair treatment of men.

A domestic violence victim

Women are the aggressors as often as men

By Ned Holstein and Glenn Sacks | Washington Times, Tuesday, July 14, 2009

Police recently concluded that former NFL star Steve McNair was fatally shot in his sleep by girlfriend Sahel Kazemi in a murder-suicide. Yet while there are more than 10,000 media entries on Google News for Steve McNair, only a few of them even mention the phrase domestic violence.

Violence by women against their male partners is often ignored or not recognized as domestic violence. Law enforcement, the judicial system, the media and the domestic-violence establishment are still stuck in the outdated "man as perpetrator/woman as victim" conception of domestic violence.

Yet more than 200 studies have found that women initiate at least as much violence against their male partners as vice versa. Men account for about a third of domestic-violence injuries and deaths. Research shows women often compensate for their lack of physical strength by employing weapons and the element of surprise -- just as Miss Kazemi is thought to have done.

The most recent large-scale study of domestic violence was conducted by Harvard researchers and published in the American Journal of Public Health. The study, which surveyed 11,000 men and women, found that, according to both men's and women's accounts, 50 percent of the violence in their relationships was reciprocal (involving both parties). In those cases, the women were more likely to have been the first to strike. Moreover, when the violence was one-sided, both women and men said women were the perpetrators about 70 percent of the time.

New research from Deborah Capaldi shows the most dangerous domestic-violence scenario for both women and men is that of reciprocal violence, particularly if that violence is initiated by women. Moreover, children who witness their mothers assaulting their fathers are just as likely to assault their intimate partners when they are adults as those who saw their fathers assault their mothers.

There are solutions to protect all parties affected by domestic violence:

c Just as we've properly stigmatized men who hit women, we need to encourage women not to attack their men. Ms. Capaldi says she thinks the best way for women to be safe is not to initiate violence against their male partners. "The question of initiation of violence is a crucial one .... much DV is mutual, and initiations -- even that seem minor -- may lead to escalation," she says. Ms. Capaldi's research found that a young woman's domestic violence was just as predictive of her male partner's future domestic violence as the man's own past domestic violence.

c When safe, the domestic-violence system needs to treat violent couples as violent couples, instead of shoehorning them into the "man as perp/woman as victim" model. Counseling services for violent couples are rare. Domestic-violence author and authority Lonnie R. Hazelwood says the misguided domestic-violence establishment "has been very effective in passing laws to prohibit couples counseling and eliminate programs which use gender-inclusive strategies."

c Establish services and help for male domestic-violence victims. Denise Hines of Clark University found that when an abused man called the police, the police were more likely to arrest him than to arrest his abusive female partner. This is partly the result of primary aggressor laws, which encourage police to discount who initiated and committed the violence but instead look at other factors that make them likelier to arrest men. When the men in Ms. Hines' study tried calling domestic-violence hot lines, 64 percent were told the hot lines helped only women, and more than half were referred to programs for male domestic-violence perpetrators.

c Work to ensure that male domestic-violence victims will not lose their children in custody proceedings. Ms. Hines found that the biggest reason male domestic-violence victims hesitate to leave their wives/girlfriends is concern for their children. If they leave, their children are left unprotected in the hands of a violent mother. If they take their children, when they're found, the children will be taken away and given to the mother. Moreover, the men probably would lose custody of their children in the divorce/custody proceeding anyway, again leaving their children in harm's way.

Perhaps none of these policies would have saved Mr. McNair. However, domestic violence by women isn't rare, it isn't trivial, and ignoring it harms couples and their children.

Dr. Ned Holstein is a public health specialist with the Mount Sinai School of Medicine and the founder of Fathers & Families. Glenn Sacks is the organization's executive director. Their Web site is www.FathersandFamiles.org.

Passionate About Nothing?

A caller to my KGO show last night said something like, "I'm a trainer for a cable company and I like it fine. It's stable, it pays well, I'm good at it, and the people there like me, but I'm not passionate about it. Would you help me find a career I'm passionate about?"

Given that in his 3o or 40 years on earth, he'd not heretofore found a career passion, I asked if, rather than take the time and income risk of changing careers, would he be wiser to recognize that he's got a pretty good deal? Might he may be one of the many millions of people who would not find a career they're passionate about that also "pays well, I'm good at it, and the people there like me,'"?" And if so, should he focus on being grateful for his good if not passion-filled career and find additional gratification outside work, for example, by spending more time doing the things you like: a hobby, playing with his kids, volunteering, and so on.?"

He said, 'Absolutely. You figured me out precisely. Thank you."

We live in an era where "follow your passion" is widely viewed as unequivocably to be sought. Fact is, too often, if you do what you love, poverty will follow. Or you end up spending a life of discontent, waiting for Godot: searching for a career passion where, for you, none ever reveals itself.

Rather than accept "do what you love" as a universal postulate, I invite you to consider which goal, for you, offers a higher risk-reward ratio:
A) a career or job you're passionate about
B) a career or job that pays reasonably, is ethical, and in which you have a good boss and coworkers, and where you find additional juice outside of work.

Is Obama Cooking the Books re Jobs Created by His Stimulus?

I received this email from someone who insists on anonymity because it could cost him his job:

"I won't disclose the company involved for reasons you should be able to divine. I work for a Fortune 500 defense contractor.

Management has been informed by Obama administration officials that we must go to the Federal Register and report that all the people currently working on our largest programs (5-10 years running) will now be classified as 'new' jobs 'created' by stimulus funding...or else.

'Or else what?' you may ask. Or else no new government contracts, plus the current ones may be stopped, that's what.

Considering this would mean thousands of people instantly unemployed, and management bonus and salaries evaporating, I think you can guess the answer our management gave to these Chicago-style thugs.

Please understand that these programs were already fully funded by various agencies for many more years. The government is taking that funding away, switching it out with freshly minted stimu-dollars and falsely claiming that new jobs were created.

Okay fine. Cook the books and lie about how many jobs the stimulus created, but this begs the question - where did the 'de-obligated' money go? You know, the original millions of dollars we already had won and were under contract for?

Inquiring minds want to know."
Syndicated columnist Linda Chavez's latest column offers plenty reason why Obama would be tempted to cook the job-creation books:

"When will the failing U.S. economy become President Obama's problem? To date, the president seems immune to criticism of his handling of the economy, except from conservatives. Job losses continue to mount, despite his promises that his "stimulus" plan would create jobs and stop rising unemployment. The housing market shows no sign of imminent recovery, with prices continuing to decline and more homeowners falling behind on their payments. Retail sales fell again in June, with even value stores like Costco experiencing drops in sales. And the federal debt has risen under President Obama to its highest level as a percentage of gross domestic product since the U.S. was coping with the debt incurred in World War II.

"Meanwhile the president went off to Russia to negotiate dubious arms agreements while administration officials back home plotted the nationalization of one of the largest sectors of the U.S. economy: the health system.

"In January, the Obama team said that unemployment would level off at about 8 percent with the passage of a nearly trillion-dollar stimulus plan. The stimulus package was supposed to create 1-3 million new jobs -- but to date even the White House claims only 150,000 jobs have been created or saved by their profligate spending. Let's see, the math on that works out to about $5 million per job.

"It's not even clear that the paltry 150,000 jobs are real. Unemployment figures show that nearly 2 million people have lost jobs since the stimulus plan took effect. The White House calculations depend on a formula used to predict job creation based on government spending and tax cuts, but the formula doesn't actually count jobs. But even if you accept the Obama administration's claims, a disproportionate number of those jobs appear to have gone to Obama's union allies: namely, the teachers unions, autoworkers, and state and local public employees. But, not to worry, the administration now says that by August 750,000 jobs will have been created or saved by mortgaging America's future. "

Of course, in light of the email above, one wonders how many will be real new jobs. As a career counselor, I can say that I'm seeing people having more and more trouble landing a job, with fear rising, not falling.

A Liberal vs Libertarian Approach to Homelessness

This comes from the San Francisco's Libertarian Party website, posted by Steve DeKorte.

I recently asked my friends' little girl what she wanted to be when she grows up. She said she wanted to be President some day.

Both of her parents, liberal Democrats, were standing there, so I asked her, "If you were President what would be the first thing you would do? " She replied, "I'd give food and houses to all the homeless people." Her parents beamed.

'Wow...what a worthy goal." I told her. "But you don't have to wait until you're President to do that.. You can come over to my house and mow the lawn, pull weeds, and rake my yard, and I'll pay you $50. Then I'll take you over to the grocery store where the homeless guy hangs out and you can give him the $50 to use toward food and a new house. "

She thought that over for a few seconds, then she looked me straight in the eye and asked, "Why doesn't the homeless guy come over and do the work, and you can just pay him the $50?"

I said, "Welcome to the Libertarian Party."

Her parents still aren't speaking to me.

How I May Have Helped a Client Control His Procrastination

At the end of his first career counseling session, an 18-year-old client said that for homework, he'd visit a firehouse and ask what it's really like to be a firefighter.

He returned for his second session not having done it. After probing, we discovered the core reason: At the moment he's deciding whether to do a task, he feels anxiety and gets quickest relief by deciding, "I'll do it some other time." A few more of my questions and he came up with his own cure: "At that moment, I have to stop thinking and just make myself get started on the task."

But he then said, "I think I'll do better when summer's over. Summer is the season for play, not work." I said something like, "Key to my feeling good about my life is that I seek rather than avoid work--because while I enjoy playing with my dog, watching movies and so on, play does nothing for the world. In contrast, by doing work I'm good at and thus kind of enjoy (although not as much as playing with my dog), I feel proud of myself and never feel guilt for frittering away time. A key to avoiding procrastination is to seek work rather than avoid it." He agreed and said he'd really think about that. I'm not sure whether he was shining me on or not.

He then said, "I'm afraid though of imposing on the firefighter or sounding stupid." I told him how my father, to buy the merchandise he'd sell in his clothing store, he had to go to tiny wholesalers, in person, each Sunday. He would take me with him. Often, he'd use this strategy: He'd keep asking for a lower price until the wholesaler said something like, "That's my lowest price." My father would thank him and walk out. If the wholesaler didn't come after him, my dad knew he had gotten the best price and would--if the price was in fact acceptable--return and say, "Okay, I'll take it." I asked my dad, "Don't you feel embarrassed to go back in there?" My father said something like, "Martin, it's worth a moment of embarrassment to make sure I get a good price so I can make a decent living and take care of you, your sister, and your mother." Moral of the story: A survivable measure of uncomfortability is worth it if the larger benefit is worth it. As long as it's ethical, ask for what you want--go and ask that firefighter what it's really like to be one.

I don't know whether any of the above will actually help my client control his procrastination but we're both cautiously optimistic and so I thought I'd share that anecdote with you.