This article was sent to me by my friend Denny Boyd, it points out how much work has yet to be done to create good paying jobs for all, especially our young adults and how much has not been done. We need strong leadership and action not sound bites for re election campaigning.

Our economy and jobless are crying out to become a nation that creates, makes, and builds things again.....the true wealth creation engine for all Americans not just Wall Street!

We have discussed this many times before; the solutions are in 1) correcting/balancing our trade deficit in manufactured goods and services by stopping trade mercantilism and focusing on rules based free trade and holding our trading partners accountable, 2) rebuilding our infrastructure through meaningful investments that payback several fold, 3) undoing excessive regulations on business that are destroying our global competitiveness, 4) using our new found energy resources here at home to create more good paying jobs/careers and rebuild our global competitiveness. Being sure to not allow a " free-for-all" exporting of these resources but a balanced approach, 5) being sure that government policies are designed to encourage people to work not provide disincentives to work, 6) get our tax system globally competitive and job creating instead of chasing jobs overseas. 
For those that incorrectly blame a skills gap, I say yes we always have a skills gap as innovation changes the world we are in but today's jobs crisis is not skills gap based, it is based on not creating jobs for those who were gainfully employed prior to 2009 with skills enough and lost their jobs. This failure is rooted in ignoring the opportunities we had in spades to put them back to work rebuilding our infrastructure and making 
/building things, and the services that support all of it! Just what they were doing prior to the economy crashing. 

It time our leaders woke up our left town and it is up to us to hold them accountable. Don't be swayed by false and hollow sound bites, but demand substance from people of real experience not personality. Leave personality to Hollywood and the talking heads in the 'press' not to building a globally strong and competitive economy here at home. 

Don't be swayed by the happenings on Wall Street which have more to do with 1) low interest rates driving investors/Americans to look for better returns; 2) being the prettiest ugly man/woman at the global economic dance; 3) companies buying back their own stock; 4) merger/acquisition mania brought about by painfully slow growth in the economy and easy money looking for a home/returns.

Nothing necessarily wrong with good times on Wall Street but without a dynamic growing economy it does not reach all Americans in their paycheck or job aspirations .

America Wake-Up and do it Together.

Dan

(LUCAS JACKSON/REUTERS)

By Catherine Rampell Opinion writer September 15

We want to move out. We want to own our home. We want to marry. We want to work.

The problem is, many of us can’t.

America’s young adults have gotten a lot of flak for missing many of the milestones that earlier generations checked off with ease.

We aren’t getting even entry-level jobs, which could enable us to pay our own bills. Not only are we not buying houses, many of us aren’t renting, either: About a third of millennials still live with their parents, earning us the irksome epithet “boomerang generation” — a play on “boomer generation,” the presumed victim here.

We’re hanging out in our beleaguered parents’ basements rather than marrying and starting legally recognized unions of our own. Marriage rates have skidded downward, with a little more than a quarter of 18- to 35-year-olds ball-and-chained in 2012, compared with about 40 percent at the dawn of the millennium, according to calculations from the president’s Council of Economic Advisers. Partly as a result, more than half of the country is presently single, the first time this has been the case since the government began keeping track in 1976. (Singlehood hasn’t stopped many of us from continuing to reproduce, of course.)

To some, this arrested development is evidence of a prolonged adolescence and a rejection of self-sufficiency, perhaps encouraged by indulgent “helicopter parenting.” According to a recent ­Reason-Rupe survey, about three­quarters of America’s young adults consider millennials to be “responsible” and “hard-working,” while just half of older adults agree. If character isn’t the issue, perhaps it’s misplaced preferences: We millennials have set aside the ideals of an “ownership society” in favor of the hippy-dippy values of a “sharing economy.” We rent, borrow or share our textbooks, cars and evendinner leftovers, so why would we bother buying a home or permanently attaching ourselves to a single romantic partner?

Recent data, though, suggest that these standard, American-dream-style signposts still retain an incredibly strong hold over young people’s desires and aspirations. What’s changed is that basic goals such as getting married, having a secure job and owning a home have drifted further out of reach.

Even as marriage rates have plummeted — particularly for the young and the less educated — Gallup survey data show that young singles very much hope to get hitched. Of Americans age 18 to 34, only about 9 percent have both never been married and say they do not ever want to marry.

“Although there is now a growing class divide in who gets and stays married in America, there is virtually no divide in the aspiration to marry,” says W. Bradford Wilcox, director of the National Marriage Project at the University of Virginia. “It doesn’t matter if you’re rich or poor, white, black or Hispanic. Most Americans are married or would like to marry. The challenge, then, facing the United States is bridging the gap between the nearly universal aspiration to marry and the growing inability of poor and working-class Americans to access marriage.”

On to housing. Young Americans are substantially less likely to own homes than their counterparts a generation or two ago, with their homeownership rates reaching record lows this year.

But survey after survey shows that young people would love to be deed-owners. Fannie Mae’s National Housing Survey, for example, asks respondents whether they think it’s better to own or rent to achieve various goals (such as feeling safe, building wealth, feeling engaged in their communities, etc.). On almost every point, young adults — just like their older brethren — say that owning is better. The vast majority of millennials also say they’ll buy at some point, if they haven’t already, and they believe that the best reasons for owning are not financial but the “broader security and lifestyle benefits of homeownership.”

So what’s keeping young people from buying, even as mortgage rates appear relatively cheap, and from marrying, even though possible mates are plentiful?

Economic opportunity has a lot to do with both. Unemployment rates for the youngest adults remain high, and they look far worse when you include people who aren’t actually looking for work but still say they want a job. Student loan debt also seems to be weighing on young people’s ability to buy, as documented by the economists at the Federal Reserve Bank of New York, among others.

Perhaps preferences for these kinds of life milestones will eventually change, too, as norms evolve out of economic necessity. But in the meantime, don’t malign millennials for “rejecting” milestones that remain out of their reach.

WSJ OPINION
The Full-Time Scandal of Part-Time America
Fewer than half of U.S. adults are working full time. Why? Slow growth and the perverse incentives of ObamaCare.

By MORTIMER ZUCKERMAN
July 13, 2014 6:47 p.m. ET

There has been a distinctive odor of hype lately about the national jobs report for June. Most people will have the impression that the 288,000 jobs created last month were full-time. Not so.

The Obama administration and much of the media trumpeting the figure overlooked that the government numbers didn't distinguish between new part-time and full-time jobs. Full-time jobs last month plunged by 523,000, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics. What has increased are part-time jobs.


Part time jobs soared by about 800,000 to more than 28 million. Just think of all those Americans working part time, no doubt glad to have the work but also contending with lower pay, diminished benefits and little job security.

On July 2 President Obama boasted that the jobs report "showed the sixth straight month of job growth" in the private economy. "Make no mistake," he said. "We are headed in the right direction." What he failed to mention is that only 47.7% of adults in the U.S. are working full time. Yes, the percentage of unemployed has fallen, but that's worth barely a Bronx cheer. It reflects the bleak fact that 2.4 million Americans have become discouraged and dropped out of the workforce. You might as well say that the unemployment rate would be zero if everyone quit looking for work.

Last month involuntary part-timers swelled to 7.5 million, compared with 4.4 million in 2007. Way too many adults now depend on the low-wage, part-time jobs that teenagers would normally fill. Federal Reserve Chair Janet Yellen had it right in March when she said: "The existence of such a large pool of partly unemployed workers is a sign that labor conditions are worse than indicated by the unemployment rate."

There are a number of reasons for our predicament, most importantly a historically low growth rate for an economic "recovery." Gross domestic product growth in 2013 was a feeble 1.9%, and it fell at a seasonally adjusted annual rate of 2.9% in the first quarter of 2014.

But there is one clear political contribution to the dismal jobs trend. Many employers cut workers' hours to avoid the Affordable Care Act's mandate to provide health insurance to anyone working 30 hours a week or more. The unintended consequence of President Obama's "signature legislation"? Fewer full-time workers. In many cases two people are working the same number of hours that one had previously worked.

Since mid-2007 the U.S. population has grown by 17.2 million, according to the Census Bureau, but we have 374,000 fewer jobs since a November 2007 peak and are 10 million jobs shy of where we should be. It is particularly upsetting that our current high unemployment is concentrated in the oldest and youngest workers. Older workers have been phased out as new technologies improve productivity, and young adults who lack skills are struggling to find entry-level jobs with advancement opportunities. In the process, they are losing critical time to develop workplace habits, contacts and new skills.

Most Americans wouldn't call this an economic recovery. Yes, we're not technically in a recession as the recovery began in mid-2009, but high-wage industries have lost a million positions since 2007. Low-paying jobs are gaining and now account for 44% of all employment growth since employment hit bottom in February 2010, with by far the most growth—3.8 million jobs—in low-wage industries. The number of long-term unemployed remains at historically high levels, standing at more than three million in June. The proportion of Americans in the labor force is at a 36-year low, 62.8%, down from 66% in 2008.

Part-time jobs are no longer the domain of the young. Many are taken by adults in their prime working years—25 to 54 years of age—and many are single men and women without high-school diplomas. Why is this happening? It can't all be attributed to the unforeseen consequences of the Affordable Care Act. The longer workers have been out of a job, the more likely they are to take a part-time job to make ends meet.

The result: Faith in the American dream is eroding fast. The feeling is that the rules aren't fair and the system has been rigged in favor of business and against the average person. The share of financial compensation and outputs going to labor has dropped to less than 60% today from about 65% before 1980.

Why haven't increases in labor productivity translated into higher household income in private employment? In part because of very low rates of capital spending on new plant and equipment over the past five years. In the 1960s, only one in 20 American men between the ages of 25 and 54 was not working. According to former Treasury Secretary Larry Summers, in 10 years that number will be one in seven.


The lack of breadwinners working full time is a burgeoning disaster. There are 48 million people in the U.S. in low-wage jobs.

Those workers won't be able to spend what is necessary in an economy that is mostly based on consumer spending, and this will put further pressure on growth. What we have is a very high unemployment rate, a slow recovery and across-the-board wage stagnation (except for the top few percent). According to the Bureau of Labor Statistics, almost 91 million people over age 16 aren't working, a record high. When Barack Obama became president, that figure was nearly 10 million lower.

The great American job machine is spluttering. We are going through the weakest post-recession recovery the U.S. has ever experienced, with growth half of what it was after four previous recessions. And that's despite the most expansive monetary policy in history and the largest fiscal stimulus since World War II.

That is why the June numbers are so distressing. Five years after the Great Recession, more than 24 million working-age Americans remain jobless, working part-time involuntarily or having left the workforce. We are not in the middle of a recovery. We are in the middle of a muddle-through, and there's no point in pretending that the sky is blue when so many millions can attest to dark clouds.


Mr. Zuckerman is chairman and editor in chief of U.S. News & World Report.




 

Must read of the day.......America, the real unemployment rate is over 15% NOT 6.1%, Wake-Up and let your Congressional Officials and the President know, that you know! It's way past time to hold them accountable.

Peter Morici

Friday, the Labor Department is expected to report the economy added 235,000 jobs in July, and the unemployment rate remained steady at 6.1 percent, but that hardly tells the story.

The jobless rate may be down from its recession peak of 10 percent, but much of this results from adults, discouraged by the lack of decent job openings, have quit altogether. They are neither employed nor looking for work.

Only about half of the drop in the adult participation rate may be attributed to the Baby Boom generation reaching retirement age. Lacking adequate resources to retire, a larger percentage of adults over 65 are working than before the recession.

Many Americans who would like full time jobs are stuck in part-time positions, because businesses can hire desirable part-time workers to supplement a core of permanent, full-time employees, but at lower wages. And Obamacare’s employer health insurance mandates will not apply to workers on the job less than 30 hours a week.

Since 2000, Congress has enhanced the earned income tax credit, and expanded programs that provide direct benefits to low-income workers, including food stamps, Medicaid, Obamacare, and rent and mortgage assistance.

Virtually all phase as family incomes rise, either by securing higher hourly pay or working more hours, and impose an effective marginal tax rate as high as 50 percent.  Consequently, these programs discourage work and skills acquisition, and encourage single parents and one partner in two adult households not to work. Often, these motivate single people to work only part-time.

Undocumented immigrants face more difficulties accessing these programs, and lax immigration enforcement permits them to openly take jobs that government benefits discourage low-income Americans from accepting.

Employers can, intentionally or unintentionally, abuse the H-1B visa program, which permit businesses to employ foreign workers when qualified Americans are unavailable. Americans may be overlooked, because they demand higher wages, or are not networked with immigrants that are already employed in technical and managerial positions.

The economy has created only about 6 million new jobs during the Bush-Obama years, whereas the comparable figure during the Reagan-Clinton period was about 40 million. A recent study by the Center for Immigration Studies indicates that virtually all the new jobs created since 2000 went to immigrants, whereas none were created for native-born Americans.

Adding in discouraged adults who say they would begin looking for work if conditions were better, those working part-time but say they want full time work, and the effects of immigration, the unemployment rate becomes about 15 percent—and that is a lower bound estimate.

Many young people are being duped both by unscrupulous for profit, post-secondary institutions—as well as accredited colleges and universities with low admission standards—to enroll in useless programs. They would likely be in the labor force now but for easy access to federally sponsored loans and will end up heavily in debt.

Adding in these students, the real unemployment rate among U.S. citizens and permanent residents is at least 18 percent.

Since 2000, GDP growth has averaged 1.7 per year, whereas during the Reagan-Clinton years, it was 3.4 percent. The reluctance of both Presidents Bush and Obama to confront Chinese protectionism and currency manipulation and open up offshore oil for development have created a huge trade deficit that sends consumer demand, growth and jobs abroad.

New business regulations, more burdensome than are necessary to accomplish legitimate consumer protection and environmental objectives, exacerbate these problems.

All of this suppresses wages except for the most skilled and talented workers.

No surprise, average family income, adjusted for inflation has fallen from about $55,600 in 2007 to $51,000 even as the gap between families at the bottom and top widens.

Peter Morici is an economist and business professor at the University of Maryland, national columnist and five-time winner of the MarketWatch best forecaster award. He tweets @pmorici1

“Buy American” – Real or Window Dressing?

By William D. Feniger

There is a lot of big talk, flag waving and hot air being thrown about in the United States today relating to “Buy American.” In reality, the game is to display the signs but ultimately purchase based on price, regardless of patriotic sentiment.

What is that attitude really doing for America? Not much at all. America continues to struggle with less domestic steel, fewer trucks and rail cars to move the steel, less revenue for American manufacturers of steel products, and fewer jobs for Americans. It’s an economy of less is less. This tub of half-full economics also leaks. More and more jobs continue to leave our shores and the longer they are away from America, the bigger the risk that they will not return.

Americans are complacent critters. Despite protestations to the contrary, as a nation we let Washington make all of our decisions, hoping they give us something for nothing. It’s simply not working. America needs to realize that its government is not Washington, but its citizens who must re-awaken to this reality that seemed so clear two hundred years ago. If we don’t take back our destiny, the foundation of America, its infrastructure, the very moral fiber that made us who we have been, will crumble like the pillars of the Roman Empire.

This is no manifesto, no denial of world markets and international trade. It is simple common sense and basic economics. Like so many companies that diversified from their core business and died, we need to return to what we do best in America: taking care of ourselves by making it, building with it, and selling it – in America. We particularly need to reestablish the small and medium-size entrepreneur in America. They built this country and they will help bring us back to the dominance we once enjoyed world-wide.

We cannot forget the man hours it takes to produce a ton of steel. Every 10,000 tons of steel made in America creates ten full-time steel mill jobs. That same steel needs to be processed by slitting or leveling, which generates another ten jobs. The steel must be transported from location to location, which generates another five jobs in the transportation industry. Then, the steel is delivered to manufacturers in order to produce American products, which would generate another 30 jobs. Each manufacturer has numerous vendors that will provide him with services and products that could possibly add another 20 jobs to the work force.

We started with 10,000 tons of steel and in the simplest analysis saw how 75 jobs could be created in America rather than in some foreign country. In turn, these jobs generated paychecks for those 75 workers. Each of those workers will pay city, state and Federal Income Taxes. They will also spend their earnings at their local drug store, grocery store and car dealer, Walmart, Home Depot, Lowes, Ace Hardware, etc. Not to mention, buy houses and appliances. How much more American does that get? That scenario is what built this great country. As a system it may have had flaws, but it was never wrong. It worked. Somehow we started pulling gears from the American machine, thinking it would work just as well if the work was done by foreign machines. We know now that tinkering with the machine causes the gears to slip and make whirring noises in Washington.

The result of 10,000 tons of steel being made in America is the generation of 15 million dollars being pumped into the U.S. economy. Now think about the 20 to 30 million tons of foreign steel currently coming in to America, and the difference it would make to our country if that steel was produced here. The numbers are enormous and we have to stop closing our eye to what is happening in America.

Did you say something? I didn’t hear you. Maybe you can call a friend, write a letter to your Senator or join a group to further the efforts. Most critically, speak up and be heard. Do something! 

For the last 6 years we have been pointing out to EVERYONE in Washington the need for job creation. One of the "Right in your Face" solutions that matched a huge need to modernize our massive transportation infrastructure to replace the millions in job losses that occurred in all segments of the Construction and related industries, due to the Great Recession. Taking such action would also have created many, many jobs in Manufacturing and Services of all kinds. 

However, the Democrats chose not to when they controlled both Houses of Congress and the Presidency, instead focusing on "arguably" important issues, but not the crisis they were made out to be, like Cap&Trade and Universal healthcare. Then the Republicans focused on the budget deficit versus job creation so they have not acted to drive the rebuilding of our infrastructure either!!! The budget deficit and debt issues are no doubt of serious concern to all of us. BUT, just as with the Democrats focus on "Man-made global warming...read Cap & Trade.....read Climate Change"and universal healthcare....read Obamacare, the R's failed to focus on the real crisis at hand....JOB CREATION and Economic Stimulus! Any good, let alone great leader knows the difference between long term problem solving and immediate Crisis solving....the reality was and is that good/great leadership is not present in Washington, hence they don't and didn't!

So here we are still with the need to create 25-30 million new jobs over the next 5-7 years and still no recognition, in concrete action, of the TRUE crisis before us...JOB CREATION and STRONG economic growth. The anemic growth in both is proof of the failure in Leadership.

One very important point to make about the article below, which focuses on gas tax increase to generate funds for infrastructure work, which we should support for "part of the funding needs", is this. The State governments and Federal governments are currently using the taxes being raised today for infrastructure for other purposes.....debt reduction....general funding needs....not infrastructure. This must stop immediately if an increase in gas taxes is to have the desired impact on Job Creation and a strong economic stimulus. THIS IS A MUST HAVE as part of any increase in the gas tax!!!!

AMERICA'S CHALLENGE--WAKE-UP!!!!! We all must work Together to be Champions and Activists!  If we don't change the focus in Washington to economic growth and job creation, already 6 years behind, the other "long term" issues we see as important will never really get dealt with! How can we all not be for Job Creation and Real Growth in our Economy Today???

Let all your elected officials, both State and Federal know what they need to do. NOW!

Dan

Highway Transportation Fund needs a permanent and simple fixBy Editorial Board July 12 at 6:37 PM

WITH THE Highway Trust Fund running dangerously low on cash, threatening infrastructure projects across the country in the height of construction season, members of Congress seem to have settled on their latest short-term gimmick to pay for the country’s roads and rails. The only question left seems to be when they will try to do something better. The answer should be: immediately.

Without new funding, the Transportation Department will begin slashing highway payouts tostates starting Aug. 1. Few want to see that, but lawmakers have been perpetually unable to fund the nation’s transportation budget responsibly. So, depressingly if predictably, withanother funding crisis looming, members of Congress seem to agree on exploiting an arcane accounting trick called pension smoothing, which could reduce the security of private pensions but would result in more federal revenue over a decade. That decade’s worth of revenue will pay for several months of transportation spending.

This budget gimmickry is distasteful for several reasons, starting with the fact that the plan spends money now, over the course of less than a year, that the government will make back over 10 years. The idea is to give Congress more time to sort out a permanent solution to the Highway Trust Fund’s perpetual funding shortfalls. But lawmakers don’t need more time; they need more spine.

The straightforward policy, the one on which the Highway Trust Fund historically has been based, is to raise the gas tax to keep up with inflation and infrastructure needs. This model is fair and efficient, demanding that those who use the roads pay for them. As a sustainable and predictable source of revenue, a gas tax of sufficient size also would eliminate uncertainty about the level and source of government transportation funding.

Congress could end the transportation funding crunch by adopting a bipartisan plan from Sen. Bob Corker (R-Tenn.) and Sen. Chris Murphy (D-Conn.). The proposal would raise the gas tax by 12 cents per gallon over two years, and it would index the tax to inflation. The last time Congress raised the gas tax, in 1993, it failed to peg the tax to inflation, which is largely why lawmakers are scrounging for money now.

Lawmakers should pass the Corker-Murphy plan. Instead, they are fighting over when they will have to consider the long-term transportation funding issue. Many Republicans want to push off the decision-making until next spring. Many Democrats want to have the debate this December. If lawmakers aren’t willing to accept the obvious funding plan in front of them before the November elections, they should do so immediately afterward, when the political atmosphere may be more conducive to doing the right thing. More important, there’s no reason to make the country wait any longer for funding certainty.