Actually, I have not seen any new Fords or GMs. It's entirely foreign cars such as Toyota, Honda, Kia. It obviously has something to do with a booming economy as shown by the economy's growth rate and low unemployment rates. I'm not buying this conspiracy here that the numbers are wrong and everything is bad and getting worse.
This article shows how the unemployment rate is misleading and does not reflect the total number unemployed. Below is an excerpt. "The "official" unemployment rate in the United States is 5.5 percent (July 2004), a contradiction to the actual number of unemployed men and women in the United States which stands at 16,265,736. The United States government only keeps you "unemployed" for six months, whether or not you find a job. The Labor Department (BLS) reports that an additional 300,000 workers fell out of the labor pool (an average monthly share throughout 2003.) Some 6,700,000 professionals have fallen off their unemployment benefits without finding a new job. Employers added no hope, creating only 32,000 jobs in July 2004." http://www.thinkandask.com/news/jobs.html
The point is that how it has been calculated before and how it's being calculated today. The fact that it was 5.6% awhile back and now 5% now show that it is indeed falling. Since it is the same method of calculation.
... and even those lower salary jobs are going going ...gone. The 160K java programmers hopefully realized that their demand curve was part of a bubble and acted accordingly. Yes, there still are 160K US based Java programmers but many many fewer than a few years ago and they had better be thinking about how they can move into sales or marketing or consulting because I gaurantee that their jobs and salarys will be gone in 5 - 7 years .... Now maybe they will move into something like autonomous systems development, complex adaptive systems research etc or something that will be in demand. The days of the US based cubicle programmer at US salary levels are nearing an end.
If I ran a company... why pay 160k for someone in the US when I could get a someone even more qualified at only 16k in India. Salaries at that level was indeed a bubble which piggybacked on tech. Back in the tech days, profit was not an issue. So of course salaries rose to unsustainable levels during this time of irrational exuberance. There is no such thing as a job for life.
What is particularly misleading about the jobs number is that it does not reflect total job incomes... One hundred million jobs averaging $40,000 versus one hundred million jobs averaging $25,000 is a staggering blow to the US economy... If the US economy is so sensitive that $100 per month extra for gas per family can put the US in recession...now look a little harder at the jobs number... It is not the quantity...it's the quality...
You are not taking into account the millions of jobs that are not counted: small yardman, flea market folks, Ebay, small repair/construction etc etc. Sounds like nickel/dime jobs but you add them up across the entire US and you have billions of dollars floating around that never show up in any government statistic. Take a stay at home mom: She has a little booth at the local flea market on weekends: She nets $300/400 per week as a part time job and more on holidays. Where is she counted? And look at Ebay!! How many "unemployed" people make a very nice living selling the "wares" on line? This is not insignificant amount of money. And since when is $100/month extra for gas sent the economy into a recession??? People are much more mobile now and will move to better location for job or other opportunities. How many small construction/repair trucks are headed to Florida as we speak, LOL??? Smart guy can go down there and make himself $50,000-$75,000 in next 6 months and I am talking about the honest ones. Hopefully they throw the crooks in jail. SteveD
SteveD...... Excellent Commentary..... The truth is ...nobody knows for sure.... What we do know is that outsourcing is a growing issue... Outsourcing basically means a shift down in personal incomes... The real question is how sensitive is the US in terms of being economically ök¨...to an overall drop in personal income of more than 50% on average ? To give you an idea of how sensitive the US is...just look at how difficult it is for them to issue tax credits of anykind of let´s say $300 per year per family unit... Now think about the average income dropping from $50,000 to $25,000 per household..... However if the drop is offset by gains in value from corporation values because they are extended worldwide...still finding value by paying Indians $15,000 instead of paying an American $50,000...then the Nation´s wealth statistic could stay the same or even grow...There is just a widening of the ¨haves¨and ¨have nots¨.... The point is that ...it is becoming quite clear that the US government is dominated by big company influence and propaganda...And the average US family´s well being is being compromised to non US labor...
The self-employed jobs always existed and were never taken into account by the unemployment report, why start now if we want to compare apples to apples. The point the originator of the discussion was making was that nobody's hiring, lots of layoffs, the number of private sector jobs is just about the same as t was in January 2001, yet the unemployment rate is very low. Weird indeed.