Archive for category Jobs

American Dream Fades for Generation Y Professionals – Bloomberg

Posted by Michael B. Calyn in Economy, Jobs, labor on December 22, 2012


American Dream Fades for Generation Y Professionals

By Elliot Blair Smith - Dec 20, 2012

After being dismissed from her job as a Midtown Manhattan securities attorney in October 2009, Christina Tretter-Herriger hitched a used horse trailer to her Dodge Ram pickup and drove 1,628 miles to Texas.

The 32-year-old lawyer sold skin-care products in Houston before finding work as the assistant general counsel of a futures-trading firm where an irate customer punctuated a recorded voice-mail message with gunfire.

 

Gen Y: Busted Jobs Over 18 Months at Lower Salary

A job seeker attends an employment summit in El Cajon, California. Generation Y professionals entering the workforce are finding careers that once were gateways to high pay and upwardly mobile lives turning into detours and dead ends. Photographer: Sam Hodgson/Bloomberg

 

American Dream Fades for Post-2007 Class of Gen Y Professionals

Unemployment for individuals ages 25 to 34 remains stuck one-half to 1 percent above the national rate. Photographer: Sam Hodgson/Bloomberg

 

Gen Y: Busted Jobs Over 18 Months at Lower Salary

Applicants wait to enter a job fair in New York City. Young Americans are struggling to reconcile their lack of economic rewards with their relatively privileged upbringings by Baby Boomer parents and the material success of their older peers, Generation X, born in the late 1960s and 1970s. Photographer: John Moore/Getty Images

 

Former White House Chief Economist Michael Greenstone

Michael Greenstone, former chief economist at the White House Council of Economic Advisers in 2009 and 2010, says the shift to a downwardly mobile society may be lasting. “Children are not earning as much as their parents and I think we’re laying the seeds for that tocontinue into the future,” he says.

 

“No one was left with the impression that he just happened to be phoning from a sporting clays range,” she says.

Eighteen months and two busted jobs later, the daughter of a retired physician and a former editor at Vogue circled back to upstate New York and hunkered down at a small legal office that pays about one-quarter of her former $165,000 salary.

Generation Y professionals entering the workforce are finding careers that once were gateways to high pay and upwardly mobile lives turning into detours and dead ends. Average incomes for individuals ages 25 to 34 have fallen 8 percent, double the adult population’s total drop, since the recession began in December 2007. Their unemployment rate remains stuck one-half to 1 percentage point above the national figure.

Three and a half years after the worst recession since the Great Depression, the earnings and employment gap between those in the under-35 population and their parents and grandparents threatens to unravel the American dream of each generation doing better than the last. The nation’s younger workers have benefited least from an economic recovery that has been the most uneven in recent history.

‘Permanently Depressed’

“This generation will be permanently depressed and will be on a lower path of income for probably all of their life — and at least the next 10 years,” says Rutgers professor Cliff Zukin, a senior research fellow at the university’s John J. Heldrich Center for Workforce Development. Professionals who start out in jobs other than their first choice tend to stay on the alternative path, earning less than they would have otherwise while becoming less likely to start over again later in preferred fields, Zukin says.

Michael Greenstone, who was chief economist at the White House Council of Economic Advisers in 2009 and 2010, says the shift to a downwardly mobile society may be lasting. “Children are not earning as much as their parents, and I think we’re laying the seeds for that to continue into the future,” he says.

Only one-fifth of those who graduated college since 2006 expect greater success than their parents, a Rutgers survey found earlier this year. Little more than half were working full time. Just one in five said their job put them on a career path.

Disappearing Jobs

Those who finish only high school or drop out fare worse. Almost four out of five jobs destroyed by the recession were held by workers with a high school diploma or less, according toGeorgetown University’s Center on Education and the Workforce.

Middle-income jobs are disappearing for a wide range of young professionals. The number of financial counselors and loan officers ages 25 to 34 has dropped 40 percent since 2007, outpacing the 30 percent drop in total jobs for the profession, according to the federal Bureau of Labor Statistics.

Similarly, the number of hours logged by first-year and mid-level legal associates — a productivity measure of young lawyers — fell 12 percent from 2007 at some of New York’s largest law firms, says Jeff Grossman, national managing director of Wells Fargo Private Bank’s Legal Specialty Group in Charlotte, North Carolina. Yet profits per partner climbed $50,697 to $1.5 million on revenue of $66 billion last year, according to a separate survey of 86 of the world’s top law firms by The American Lawyer magazine.

Lost Faith

“I had a lot of faith in the system, the mythology that if you work really hard you can achieve anything, and the stock market always goes up,” says 2009 law school graduate Elizabeth Hallock, 33. “It was pretty naïve on my part.”

Hallock is the named plaintiff in one of 14 lawsuits against some of the nation’s best-known law schools, including her alma mater, the University of San Francisco School of Law. The civil complaints, filed in 2011 and 2012, accuse the institutions of overstating graduates’ job-placement results and incomes.

Young Americans are struggling to reconcile their lack of economic rewards with their relatively privileged upbringings by Baby Boomer parents and the material success of their older peers, Generation X, born in the late 1960s and 1970s, says Kathy Sheehan, general manager of GfK Consumer Trends and Roper Reports, a unit of German-based research firm GfK.

Great Expectations

“It’s a generation that had really high expectations, in some part driven by the way they were raised by their boomer parents,” she says. “Yet in the past five years they have had reality slammed in their face by the employment situation.”

About 61 million people, one-fifth of the U.S. population, work at jobs where median earnings declined since 2007 even as the 1.2 million households whose incomes put them in the top 1 percent saw their pay rise 5.5 percent last year. Younger workers are experiencing the worst of the disparity in part because they’re being displaced by older workers. The number of employees ages 55 to 64 is expected to surpass the under-24 working population by 2020 for the first time since at least World War II, according to the BLS.

Dashed expectations crimped even some of the most innovative corners of the economy. Daniel White was wrapping up a week-long vacation to Vermont two summers ago when a co-worker at Chicago-based Groupon Inc. (GRPN) called to share the news that White was about to be fired from the e-commerce discounter.

Father’s Power

The 27-year-old business school graduate was living from paycheck to paycheck, cold-calling hair salons and pizza parlors in Youngstown, Ohio, from crowded offices at company headquarters when he found himself out on the street.

“To be honest, I’m glad it happened,” he says. “I guess I owe that to Steve Jobs, who made getting fired cool.”

This year, White says, he hopes to earn $2,000 at his own startup Web-sales venture in Burlington, Vermont, seeing technology as the one path to potentially matching his father’s generation, “the people with the money and power.”

In more traditional jobs, the fallout from the subprime- mortgage collapse a half-decade ago continues to pummel people, including the architects who designed homes. The number of them ages 25 to 34 has fallen by 41 percent since 2007, compared with the total drop in the profession of 25 percent.

At the Seattle architectural firm of Callison LLC, faces and names began to disappear from the staff directory almost immediately after new hire Eli Hardi joined in January 2008.

Smaller Paychecks

“People would drop off on a daily basis,” says Hardi, 28, a recent graduate of a five-year architecture degree program in California. Within a few months, Hardi rose from an hourly to salaried position. The promotion wiped out overtime pay and reduced his annual income by 12 percent to $39,500, he says.

The smaller paycheck reflected cost-cutting that has erased 40 percent of U.S. architectural firms’ revenue and almost one- third of their personnel since early 2008, according to theAmerican Institute of Architects in Washington.

Hardi worked through Christmas and New Year’s before being laid off during the first week of January 2009, 13 months after his hiring. He walked home in the cold to his apartment and new big-screen TV that was now a symbol of his uprooted ambitions.

“It’s a bit sudden, a bit jarring,” he says. Still, “there’s a certain sense of relief that you don’t have to deal with the sword hanging over your head. I almost felt worse for the people who had to stay, knowing they might lose their jobs.”

Highest Unemployment

Architecture graduates ages 25 to 29 had the highest unemployment rate of 57 degree programs surveyed by the Education Department in 2009. Their 9.6 percent jobless level rivaled the 10.6 percent unemployment for all Americans ages 25 to 29 that year, including those without college degrees. Nursing fared the best with a 1.5 percent jobless rate.

Hardi was called back, at his previous salary, in January 2010 as Callison won store-design work for Apple Inc. (AAPL)

“The hours were long, the pay was low and we got a notice saying the bonus would be minimal,” he says. “The hardest part, I found, is to maintain your own self respect and dignity.” In March, he quit to join a smaller firm where he works on historical renovations.

The same housing crash that hammered young architects and loan officers also slammed lawyers. Law schools are turning out about 45,000 degree holders a year for about 25,000 full-time positions available to them, according to the National Association for Law Placement Inc. in Washington. The class of 2011 had the lowest placement with law firms, 49.5 percent, in 36 years.

Tougher Path

“It is not the perfect path to wealth and success that people may have envisioned,” says Robin Sparkman, editor in chief of The American Lawyer magazine in New York.

Some of the disenchanted have taken their complaints to court. Plaintiffs’ attorneys and recent law-school graduates are pushing to change what they call law schools’ overstated reports of post-graduation employment numbers. The results are used in magazine rankings of the institutions and to recruit new applicants. In state-court lawsuits, the former students allege false advertising and consumer fraud.

The claims are “meritless,” says Angie Davis, spokeswoman for the University of San Francisco School of Law. “We are sympathetic to the difficulty faced by law school graduates nationwide in finding employment on the heels of the Great Recession,” she says, adding the university helps students find work, and many have found “successful, rewarding careers.”

Contested Lawsuits

With the lawsuits playing out, the Chicago-based American Bar Association began requiring accredited schools to disclose far more detailed information about new graduates’ employment beginning in December 2011.

This July, San Francisco County Superior Court Judge Harold Kahn allowed lawsuits against USF and Golden Gate University to proceed, ruling that some law-school graduates may have a basis for claims that they were deceived. Judges in Illinois and Michigan rejected similar complaints.

“It’s hard to look at the information the schools were putting out and say it’s not misleading,” says Derek Tokaz, research director of the nonprofit Law School Transparency initiative. It published research showing that the chance of recent graduates getting permanent full-time work in law was far lower than the 80-95 percent total employment rates the schools typically boasted.

Lehman Fallout

Tokaz, 28, worked with Tretter-Herriger at the Manhattan law firm of Curtis, Mallet-Prevost, Colt & Mosle LLP. She joined the firm in September 2008, the same month that Lehman Brothers Holdings Inc. collapsed, gradually setting off panic on Wall Street and around the world.

The late nights and long weeks awaited by first-year associates as a grueling rite of passage didn’t come, she says. Instead, there was so little work to do that the hedge fund lawyers and recruiters she worked with frequently retreated after lunch to a street-level pub to watch English soccer.

Tretter-Herriger says she and some other first-year associates were fired 13 months later with the proviso they could keep their desks and look for jobs through October. She found one at the Houston futures trading firm. When it later outsourced some of its legal work, she moved on again and answered an ad on Craigslist for a job in Buffalo, New York.

She now complements her $45,000 lawyer’s salary by training horses and giving riding lessons. She says she’d like to buy a rental property and become self-sufficient in case she loses this job.

“As it is, all of my possessions still fit in the back of my truck,” she says. “I can pack it in a couple hours, pick up the trailer and horses and move anywhere the gas tank will take me at the drop of a hat. What can the system take away from you when you have that kind of freedom?”

 American Dream Fades for Generation Y Professionals – Bloomberg.

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Jobless Rate Falls to 7.8%, Lowest Since January 2009 – NYTimes.com

Posted by Michael B. Calyn in Economy, Job Search, Jobs on October 5, 2012


 

Jobless Rate Falls to 7.8%, Lowest Since January 2009

By SHAILA DEWAN

Published: October 5, 2012 

 

John Moore/Getty Images

Job applicants met with potential employers at 7 World Trade Center in New York last month.

 

The nation’s unemployment rate dropped below 8 percent in September to its lowest rate since the month President Obama took office, the Labor Department said Friday.

While employers added only a modest 114,000 jobs last month, the jobless rate declined to 7.8 percent from 8.1 percent, even though more people entered the labor force.

Adding to the positive news, job gains were revised upward by 40,000 for July (to 181,000) and by 46,000 for August (to 142,000), which had been considered a disappointing month, casting a slightly rosier hue on the summer slowdown.

The private sector, which has been adding jobs since March 2010, grew by 104,000 workers in September. Governments, where cuts have been a drag on the recovery, added 10,000 jobs.

Manufacturing, one of the bright spots that Mr. Obama has showcased throughout the re-election campaign, fell 16,000 jobs after losing  a revised 22,000  in August, and construction jobs grew by 5,000. The number of temporary jobs, usually considered a harbinger of future growth, fell 2,000.

Coming a month before the presidential election, the jobs report offered ammunition for both sides as the candidates vie to convince voters that each is better equipped to steer the economy.

Mr. Obama can point to the 24th straight month of overall job growth after a severe financial crisis and a drop below the stubborn 8 percent jobless rate that has dogged his presidency. Republicans can — and did on Friday — continue to criticize the slow pace of improvement.

Mitt Romney, the Republican presidential challenger, took particular issue with any positive interpretation of the report.

“This is not what a real recovery looks like,” he said in a statement. “We created fewer jobs in September than in August, and fewer jobs in August than in July, and we’ve lost over 600,000 manufacturing jobs since President Obama took office.”

Representative Kevin Brady, a Republican from Texas and vice chairman of the joint economic committee, said the drop in the unemployment rate “was driven primarily by an increase of 582,000 in the number of workers employed involuntarily in part-time jobs. These workers need and want full-time jobs.”

“If not for all the people who have simply dropped out of the labor force,” Mr. Romney said in his statement, “the real unemployment rate would be closer to 11 percent.”

Representative Eric Cantor of Virginia, the majority leader, conceded that numbers were an improvement but added, “it simply isn’t good enough.” A jobless rate of 7.8 percent “should not be cause for celebration.”

Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid, Democrat from Nevada, countered that “with unemployment dropping below 8 percent to the lowest level in four years, our economy is on the right track.”

Consumers and businesses, too, seem to have divergent views of the economic situation.Consumers have shown increasing confidence as stocks rise and home prices stabilize.

Business leaders have been hanging back, though, more focused on global economic slowing and domestic concerns. They say they are uncertain what the election will mean for the business climate and are waiting in part for a resolution of the so-called fiscal cliff, a host of tax increases and budget cuts that will be triggered at the end of the year if Congress fails to act.

Harry Kazazian, the chief executive officer of Exxel Outdoors, a maker of camping equipment in Alabama, said the election, the fiscal cliff and rapidly shifting regulations had put him in a cautious mood.

With sales on the rise, Exxel has restarted a capital investment plan that it suspended three years ago, but is doing so slowly. “We’re moving forward, but we’re doing it in steps rather than being much more aggressive and putting ourselves out there,” Mr. Kazazian said. “I wouldn’t be surprised if things start turning the other way, meaning down.”

But at a Walmart in Atlanta, shoppers were loosening the reins a bit, buying what they described as small indulgences like scented candle oil and seasonal beer.

Linda Avery, 50, a food service manager, said her income had not changed but her daughter had moved out of the house, reducing her food and utility expenses.

Michael Peacock, 43, said that although his house was in foreclosure, his chosen field, online marketing, was improving to the point where he could even turn down some jobs that were outside his specialty.

“I can see people shopping,” Ms. Avery said, surveying the store. “You just feel like things are getting a little better.”

The polling firm Gallup pinpointed September’s rise in consumer confidence to the first day of the Democratic National Convention, and said it was almost entirely because of increased optimism among Democrats, while confidence among Republicans held steady at low levels. But Gallup could not say whether politics or improving economic conditions drove the change.

The discrepancy between consumers’ mood and the outlook of companies can be easily explained, economists said. “Businesses are much more forward looking,” said Ellen Zentner, the senior United States economist for Nomura Securities International.

Concerns over the fiscal cliff had begun showing up in business surveys in April, she said. “It’s been weighing on their investment and hiring decisions for quite some time.”

In a survey of 400 chief financial officers conducted this summer, Grant Thornton, a management consulting firm, found that many had shifted from neutrality to pessimism, with 45 percent of respondents saying they expected their work force to hold steady and 18 percent saying they expected it to shrink over the next six months. A large majority said they expected both health care costs and salaries to increase.

Stephen Chipman, the chief executive of Grant Thornton, said there appeared to be genuine growth in the technology, high-end manufacturing and energy sectors, while growth in health care was largely a result of consolidation and increased efficiency, and financial service hiring was largely driven by the need to comply with more regulations.

Before Mr. Obama took office, he pledged that his stimulus plan would keep unemployment from rising above 8 percent, based on projections that greatly underestimated the depth of the recession. Instead, unemployment has exceeded 8 percent since February 2009, peaking at 10 percent in October of that year.

There are now almost the same number of jobs as there were when Mr. Obama took office, but there are 426,000 more than when the economy stopped hemorrhaging jobs in February 2010. A mere 62,000 increase in the number of jobs would allow Mr. Obama to claim a net increase in jobs over his tenure.

This year, the economy has added an average of 146,000 jobs a month. Economists say that job growth of 100,000 to 175,000 a month is essentially neutral in terms of its effect on the election, while anything higher would favor the incumbent.

The government’s first estimate of September’s payrolls, while eagerly awaited, is less than precise and will be revised in coming months as more data is collected and verified. In an annual recalibration last month, the Bureau of Labor Statistics estimated that there were actually 400,000 more jobs added in the 12 months that ended in March than was previously thought. That benchmark will not be incorporated into the monthly jobs figures until early next year.

“The economy seems since the recovery began to have three gears,” said Patrick O’Keefe, a labor economist and director of economic research at J. H. Cohn, an accounting firm, “slow, idle and reverse. It’s stuck in slow. We don’t have a gear faster than slow.”

 Jobless Rate Falls to 7.8%, Lowest Since January 2009 – NYTimes.com.

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House Republicans’ New “Job Creation” Bill Creates No Jobs, Increases Workplace Abuses | Alternet

Posted by Michael B. Calyn in GOP, Jobs, Legislation on August 18, 2012


 

House Republicans’ New “Job Creation” Bill Creates No Jobs, Increases Workplace Abuses

Only the House Republicans could construct a jobs measure that divides the employed and unemployed, without creating a single job.

 

 

Anyone wondering why public disdain for Congress is sky high need look no further than the latest stunt by House Republicans:  In response to Americans’ top priority—more good jobs—the House passed a radical anti-regulation bill on Thursday that not only cynically pits people who have jobs against those desperate to find them, but also threatens public health and workplace safety—without creating a single good job. 

The centerpiece of the House effort is a provision stating that no agency may take “any significant regulatory action” until the monthly unemployment rate is “equal to or less than 6.0 percent.” Laughably touted as a “job creation” measure, H.R. 4078’s true aim is to bring federal regulation to a grinding halt and eviscerate public safeguards across the entire range of federal agencies in one fell swoop.

With few exceptions, the House proposal would mean that federal agencies may not adopt any new rules—or even write or seek public comment on rules—until the unemployment rate drops down to levels not seen since 2008.  It may be 2017 before we get back to that point, according to the Congressional Budget Office and Office of Management and Budget.

Meanwhile, urgently needed reforms would be cast into indefinite limbo.  Occupational safety measures would be delayed at a time when there are three million annual injuries and illnesses that workers suffer on the job – injuries that could land workers in the unemployment line themselves.  The 2.5 million home care workers currently excluded from basic minimum wage and overtime lawsthat most of us take for granted would have to wait many more years for these protections—never mind that increased pay in their pocket could help boost demand and hiring.

For the architects of this effort, it seems the solution to the unemployment crisis is to put people with jobs in danger and to leave them vulnerable to workplace abuses such as wage theft.  While employers get off scot-free, unsafe and unfair workplaces are the sacrifice that one group of workers should be willing to make for those searching for work, even if there’s no evidence that this unscrupulous trade-off would solve the plight of the unemployed. 

The cynicism of House leaders in holding good jobs hostage to an ongoing unemployment crisis that they are doing nothing to address is simply breathtaking. 

Let’s keep in mind that the biggest hindrance to hiring is not over-regulation but lack of demand, according to numerous surveys conducted by the American Sustainable Business Council, the Main Street Alliance, the Small Business Majority, the McClatchy/Tribune News Service, and even the U.S. Chamber of Commerce.   Also keep in mind that the current White House has issued fewer final regulations than any administration going back twenty years.  And consider this irony:  The American Chemistry Council recently requested new regulations from the FDA in order to bolster consumer confidence in the safety of their plastic products.

There are more productive ways for Congress to spend its time. Passing the Fair Minimum Wage Act of 2012, introduced in the U.S. Senate and House of Representatives last week, would raise the spending power of millions of struggling workers and their families and increase consumer demand. Addressing the infrastructure problems that have left millions of Americans sitting in the dark this summer by improving the power grid and developing alternative energy sources would also put unemployed workers back on the job.

Allowing the quality of our workplaces to deteriorate for years at a time is no way to build a solid economic recovery with good jobs as its foundation.  Leaders in Congress owe it to the American people—those with jobs, and those who want to work—to stop spinning their wheels and wasting time on partisan stunts and cynical legislation like H.R. 4078 and its ilk.  With nearly four months remaining until the next election, congressional leaders need to get down to business and do the serious job of putting America back to work.

 House Republicans’ New “Job Creation” Bill Creates No Jobs, Increases Workplace Abuses | Alternet.

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Silicon Valley Creating Jobs, But Not for Everyone | Wired Business | Wired.com

Posted by Michael B. Calyn in Jobs on August 6, 2012


 

Silicon Valley Creating Jobs, But Not for Everyone

BY MARCUS WOHLSEN

 

Unemployment Line

Waiting in line for unemployment benefits in San Francisco during the Great Depression. Despite nation-leading job growth, Silicon Valley still has more people out of work than the national average. Photo: Library of Congress, Prints & Photographs Division, FSA/OWI Collection, LC-USF346-BN-018310-D

 

Pundits will hash and rehash the impact of today’s jobs report on the president’s chances in November. But it’s the Labor Department’s regional employment figures for June that should unsettle both candidates.

If there’s one talking point Obama and Romeny can agree on, it’s that innovation creates jobs. By one metric, the regional jobs report supports that seemingly no-duh assertion. The metro region that includes Silicon Valley led the country in job growth, posting a 3.8 percent increase compared to the same time last year. San Francisco followed close behind with the second-highest growth rate at 3.6 percent.

Unsurprisingly, tech jobs led the way. Facebook is hiring. Twitter is hiring. Google is hiring. Startups are hiring. Rents in San Francisco have soared as young tech workers compete for scarce real estate. Tech industry boom times create a weird parallel universe effect. Headlines about the nation’s economic stagnation drone on, but in the Bay Area new restaurants selling $9 grilled cheese sandwiches and $10 cocktails seem to open daily.

But the other key measure of the region’s economic well-being undermines the uncritical optimism politicians tend to lavish on tech. In Silicon Valley, this nation-leading hub of economic vitality and job creation, the unemployment rate in June was 8.8 percent, an increase of nearly half a percent from May, and well above the national average. To be sure, the current rate is a big improvement compared to June of last year, when 10.2 percent of the region’s labor force was out of work. But shouldn’t a place as exceptional as Silicon Valley be able to do better than that? Shouldn’t such an engine of economic vitality stand out more in its prosperity compared to the rest of the United States?

In the definitive annual report on the state of Silicon Valley’s economy, the Silicon Valley Index, researchers earlier this year found that jobs for highly educated workers abound. Average incomes are on the rise, fueled by hot competition for talent among mobile, internet, social media and cloud-computing companies. Yet the Index also found that median incomes have fallen, and more students are receiving free or reduced-price lunches — a standard measure of economic hardship. In other words, as some workers make notably more money, more workers are making less. Today, many of them are still not finding work at all. As I’ve written about before, tech’s trickle-down effect looks weak on the local level. The industry creates jobs for some, but not for all.

Academics have nicknamed this phenomenon the “hollowing out” of the U.S. economy. Highly skilled, highly educated workers do increasingly well in an increasingly specialized economy driven by knowledge work. Their prosperity feeds demand for low-paying service work. But when tech companies grow, they no longer create the kind of medium-skilled, middle-class jobs they did in the past. Facebook doesn’t need factory workers.

“You can have companies doing well and you can have all this startup activity, but it no longer means lots of jobs,” said Russell Hancock, president of Joint Ventures, which publishes the Silicon Valley Index. “That’s the reality, and it’s going to be that way from here on out. You don’t need all the people you used to need.”

Hancock tells Wired he believes the hollowing out of Silicon Valley reflects not a temporary condition but a basic structural change. The shakeout has just started, he says, as newer tech companies seek to stay lean and nimble and old-school Valley companies try to look more like the new ones. Companies don’t seek the talent that’s closest to home — they seek the best people in the world, wherever they may live. We all need to view ourselves as startups in this new economy, which means a willingness to reinvent ourselves, Hancock says.

But as anyone in Silicon Valley knows, startups fail fast and often. It’s the winners who make headlines. The losers simply fade into the dustbin of history.

“We used to have an economy that had absorption capacity. It could provide opportunities for the whole,” Hancock says. “Now we have an economy that’s brutal, an economy that only rewards people at the high end. The rest I don’t know. I don’t know what’s going to happen.”

 Silicon Valley Creating Jobs, But Not for Everyone | Wired Business | Wired.com.

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Cagle Post » Obama and Romney Should Read The Wall Street Journal to Learn About American Job Loss

Posted by Michael B. Calyn in Economy, Jobs, Opinion, Politics on July 20, 2012


 

JOE GUZZARDI

Obama and Romney Should Read The Wall Street Journal to Learn About American Job Loss

 

According to an analysis made by Challenger, Grey and Christmas, layoffs in the tech sector reached their highest level in three years during 2012′s first six months. CGC is the nation’s first, largest and oldest executive placement organization.

From January through June, 51,529 planned job cuts were announced. In the aggregate, they represented a 260 percent increase over the 14,308 estimated layoffs during the first half of 2011. The employment picture to date this year is so grim that projected job reduction exceeds by 39 percent all total cuts in the tech sector recorded last year.

 

Chris Weyant 

Among the most prominent corporate names slashing staff is Hewlett Packard. By the end of 2014, HP will eliminate 27,000 jobs (8 percent of its work force). Under the direction of failed California gubernatorial candidate Meg Whitman, HP will reinvest the payroll savings into research and development.

The 2012 gutting comes on top of a miserable 2011 when Bank of America announced 30,000 cuts. Large-scale layoffs also came from pharmaceutical firm Merck (13,000), Sam’s Club (11,000), and Borders Group, Inc.(11,000).

The worst may be yet to come. John Challenger, CEO of CGC, said:

“We may see more job cuts from the computer sector in the months ahead. While consumers and businesses are spending more on technology, the spending appears to favor a handful of companies. Those that are struggling to keep up with the rapidly changing trends and consumer tastes are shuffling workers to new projects or laying them off altogether.”

Apparently, neither President Barack Obama nor presumptive Republican nominee Mitt Romney read the Wall Street Journal.

Both have made liberalizing non-immigrant worker visas, specifically the H-1B, a campaign priority. One preposterous proposal both support is stapling a green card to any university diploma earned by foreign-born students in the Science, Technology, Engineering and Mathematics (STEM) field. With nearly 60,000 Chinese nationals alone currently enrolled in related study areas, the destructive impact automatic work authorization would have on unemployed Americans is incalculable.


A good example of how the H-1B visa system works in the real world was described in a 2011 lawsuit filed against Molina Healthcare Inc., which handles Medicaid and Medicare paperwork for the federal government, and Cognizant Technology Solutions Corp., which recruits H-1B workers in India. On January 14, 2010, one day after the Department of Labor approved Molina’s application for 40 H-1B workers, Molina fired approximately 40 competent U.S. programmers, managers and analysts and hired 40 H-1B replacements imported by Cognizant from India.

James Otto, a lawyer representing the fired workers said:

“They [Molina executives] just wanted to fire the Americans and that’s what happened. It wasn’t a downsizing, it wasn’t an outsourcing, it was bringing in foreigners onto American soil to replace American workers. That [was] the scheme and it’s going on around the country.”

Despite all the campaign lip service Obama and Romney give to job creation, they willfully continue to overlook the obvious: there’s a surplus of American workers and each visa issued that includes a work permit is a threat to American employment.

 Cagle Post » Obama and Romney Should Read The Wall Street Journal to Learn About American Job Loss.

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Is the US Losing its Lead in Innovation? – 24/7 Wall St.

Posted by Michael B. Calyn in Congress, Economics, Engineering, Innovation, Jobs, Opinion, Perspective, Society, Technology on June 28, 2012


 

Is the US Losing its Lead in Innovation?

Posted: June 27, 2012 at 10:37 am

The OECD has just released its Economic Survey of the United States, and once the word gets out, the report is likely to spark a lot of interest among the chattering class. The argument will focus on the report’s statement that “fissures have begun to appear” in the US lead in innovation.

Here’s a bit from the report’s overview:                                         

To foster innovation and economic growth, reductions in the federal R&D budget should be as limited as possible. Ideally, funds would be appropriated to continue on the path approved in the 2007 America COMPETES Act of doubling the budgets for three key science agencies within a decade. Patent reform should be taken further than in the America Invents Act by ensuring that the legal standards for granting injunctive relief and damages awards for patent infringement reflect realistic business practices and the relative contributions of patented components of complex products. In light of spillover benefits from manufacturing activity, the measures proposed by the Administration to strengthen manufacturing competitiveness should be implemented. Education reform is needed to strengthen achievement and to address lagging tertiary attainment in the fields of science, technology, engineering and mathematics (STEM).

Does anyone believe that any of these things will occur? The US Congress

can’t even agree on what day of the week it is, much less on a strategy to foster US innovation.

And spend more money? Now there’s a non-starter. Or support the Obama administration’s plan to strengthen manufacturing competitiveness? Not in this lifetime. Or more funding for education? Just the opposite is the order of the day.

The report also has some harsh things to say about the rise of income inequality in the US:

To reduce both income inequality and distortions in resource allocation, tax expenditures that disproportionately benefit high earners should be limited over time. In particular, effective tax rates on debt-financed corporate investment and housing should be equalized at the higher rate on equity-financed corporate investment while simultaneously lowering the corporate tax rate.

Perhaps the OECD doesn’t understand the full implications of the current political stand-off in the US. Sometimes it seems that technocrats live in a parallel universe, and this is one of those times.

Here’s a link to the survey overview.

Paul Ausick

 Is the US Losing its Lead in Innovation? – 24/7 Wall St..

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NHL labor: NHL players ready for a fight, hope for best – chicagotribune.com

Posted by Michael B. Calyn in Business, Jobs, Sports on June 28, 2012


NHL players ready for a fight, hope for best

Fehr seeks fast resolution when negotiations start Friday

Jonathan Toews

Blackhawks captain Jonathan Toews. (Phil Velasquez / Tribune Photo /June 27, 2012)

By Chris Kuc, Chicago Tribune reporter

6:38 p.m. CDT, June 27, 2012

Until the NHL Players’ Association sits across the table with the league and exchanges proposals, it won’t know what kind of fight it’s in for during negotiations on a new collective bargaining agreement.

If it comes to it, the union appears willing and able to drop the gloves after three days of executive board meetings that concluded Wednesday at a downtown Chicago hotel. The sides will meet beginning Friday in New York to attempt to reach a new CBA with the old one set to expire Sept. 15.

“Nothing would make us happier than to get to a resolution that everybody can find acceptable and do it in as fast and as least difficult manner as we can figure out,” NHLPA executive director Donald Fehr said, acknowledging that Commissioner Gary Bettman and other NHL officials have said they want “a quick and painless negotiation.”

The Blackhawks’ Jonathan Toews and Steve Montador were among players from around the league who flanked Fehr. Montador and fellow veteran Brendan Morrison will represent the Hawks on a 31-player negotiating committee that will aid the NHLPA in talks with the league.

Fehr pointed out that the NHL is coming off a season with record revenues and soaring TV ratings — among other positives — and said the goal is to keep things headed in a positive direction.

“When we approach these negotiations, the object is to get a deal done which can continue that momentum and continue it uninterrupted,” Fehr said.

History has not been kind to the NHLPA in recent labor negotiations, with the owners gaining major concessions from the union — including the implementation of the salary cap — following a lockout that caused the cancellation of the 2004-05 season. This time, the players appear resolved to win more of the battles.

“The players understand what happened last time — of course they do,” Fehr said. “A bunch of them lived through it. With respect to those who didn’t, they’ve been told by the guys that did. They understand that backdrop and they understand what took place. Every agreement that you make, however, stands on its own and you have to go forward.”

A total of 56 players attended meetings over the three days and they will inform their teammates of the issues and the solidarity the NHLPA displayed heading into the negotiations.

“You have to be confident in these situations,” Toews said. “You have to be confident in each other, especially the players amongst themselves. We’re going to keep working and learning together.

“(Both sides) want the same thing and have our priorities right,” Toews continued. “The ultimate thing that both sides want is a fair deal that is something both can compromise on and be happy about. And in the end give the fans what they want and that’s a great NHL product. We’ll see how that develops.”

 NHL labor: NHL players ready for a fight, hope for best – chicagotribune.com.

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Bad Hackers Turned Good Get Top Spot in Facebook Manhunt – Bloomberg

Posted by Michael B. Calyn in Computing, Jobs on June 28, 2012


 

Bad Hackers Turned Good Get Top Spot In Facebook Manhunt

By Marie Mawad and Jonathan Browning - Jun 27, 2012 5:01 PM CT

 

Spend your Saturday night in a dimly-lit room crowded with hackers and you may well land a job in recession-hit Europe. Recruiters are scouring hackathons — venues for self-trained computer geeks to meet and train — to find those who could help fend off cyberthreats.

Companies and governments in western Europe will need to double the number of security specialists by 2015 and are set to face a shortage of talent, researcher IDC says. While jobless rates in the 17-nation euro region hit 11 percent in March and April, security employment is getting a boost from tougher regulation and heightened awareness, sparked by high-profile breaches at companies, including LinkedIn Corp. (LNKD) and Sony Corp.

 

Hacking Provides Europe Job Growth With Facebook on Hunt

A general view of the audience during the TechCrunch Disrupt Hackathon, in New York. Photographer: Joe Corrigan/Getty Images for AOL

 

“There’s no diploma to become a hacker,” said Guillaume Vassault-Houliere, 29, also known as Free_Man, who helped host 1,200 participants outside Paris last weekend in an event started 10 years ago by a local hacker. “Recruiters drop by looking for talent that just can’t be learned at school.”

Employers from Facebook Inc. (FB) to the U.K. government have put up “wanted” signs looking for so-called white-hat hackers — computer geeks who probe networks and pry into private data for recognition or just plain fun, not for money or criminal purposes. The U.K. Ministry of Defence said last year it planned to hire hundreds of security specialists.

Jonathan Evans, the head of the U.K. security service, known as MI5, said this week in a speech in London that one publicly traded British company incurred losses of 800 million pounds ($1.25 billion) in revenue from a hostile “state- sponsored” attack. “They will not be the only corporate victim of these problems,” he said, without identifying the target.

11-Hour Hack

Recruiters are turning their backs on resumes, diplomas, suits and ties as they work to attract atypical, sometimes marginal profiles that fit into a different set of rules.

“We need to find a way to allow the most skilled people in the world to land a job, instead of going to work for the mob,” said Winn Schwartau, a security consultant in Nashville, Tennessee, who is starting a Web portal matching recruiters and hard-to-come-by candidates. “The mob has its own geek headhunters, and guess what: They pay better and they don’t care if you have long hair or a tattoo.”

Long-haired men in their early 20s made up most of the crowd on a Saturday night on the outskirts of the French capital, as they arranged computers and swapped their names for aliases to enter the country’s biggest hackathon. For 11 hours, starting at 8 p.m., they emptiedbeer bottles and worked to defend their team’s servers and infiltrate those of rivals in a cyberwar similar to the one companies and governments are fighting in real life.

Password Thefts

This year’s event got extra attention from recruiters because recent high-profile attacks have reminded organizations of the growing, increasingly complex threats, Vassault-Houliere and other organizers said, declining to name the recruiters because they asked to remain anonymous. This month, LinkedIn said that hackers had stolen 6.5 million user passwords. Customers of CBS Corp. (CBS)’s Last.fm music site and EHarmony Inc.’s dating portal also had passwords stolen.

“Governments, large companies, banks — we have all been attacked on a regular basis,” said Boris Hajduk, chief information security officer at Paris-based Viadeo SA, a social network for professionals that competes with LinkedIn. “The attacks are more and more technical and visible, so we have to reinforce our defense skills.”

Viadeo is hiring to strengthen its cybersecurity team and regularly goes to hackathons to spot talent, Hajduk said. Paris- based Sysdream, which helps banks, energy companies and the French Ministry of Defense protect their systems, has also recruited staff at the events, co-owner Olivier Franchi said.

Under 30

“The only question I ask when I’m doing a job interview is ‘How long have you been hacking?”’ Franchi said. “I need people younger than 30, who will skip reading the manual when they get their hands on a new gadget.”

Menlo Park, California-based Facebook, the world’s largest social network, has posted an ad on its site saying it is “seeking a passionate hacker who derives purpose in life by revealing potential weaknesses and then crafting creative solutions to eliminate those weaknesses.”

Companies need to exercise caution when recruiting hackers, said Graham Cluley, a technology consultant at Abingdon, England-based security firm Sophos Ltd. Antivirus companies, for instance, typically avoid hiring malware programmers to avoid causing concern to customers, Cluley said.

“We need to trust our engineers and our partners need to trust us,” he said. “If there’s someone that’s done something criminal, that’d be a big no-no.”

‘Tight Community’

The British security service is using unusual methods to seek out candidates. GCHQ, the government’s intelligence and cybersecurity arm, last year set out a code with 160 groups of letters and numbers on an unmarked website, with successful code breakers taken through to a site listing relevant jobs available. Applications increased by 42 percent following the campaign, according to a GCHQ representative.

“We’re recruiting more people who can think both like a hacker and a defender to help us stay ahead of our adversaries,” the agency said on its website.

Governments also want programmers and software engineers to build as well as to protect, and are using hacking to get there, Rohan Silva, a special adviser on technology to U.K. Prime Minister David Cameron, said in an interview. Over the next 12 months, coders will be given data on topics from transport to health in hackathon sessions to find ways of making such information more easily accessible, he said.

At the Paris contest, the winners landed a trip to Las Vegas, where they will attend the world’s biggest hackathon, dubbed Defcon. Though some contestants left with business cards from recruiters, many said they came to meet and make friends, not for the job opportunities.

“You get to finally meet face-to-face with those you’ve been chatting with online for months,” Vassault-Houliere said. “It’s a tight community. We all know each other. The holy grail after-hours of hacking is really just grabbing a beer together.”

 Bad Hackers Turned Good Get Top Spot in Facebook Manhunt – Bloomberg.

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Why You Can’t Braid Someone’s Hair In Utah For Money Without First Paying $16k | Techdirt

Posted by Michael B. Calyn in Business, Employment, Government, Jobs on June 28, 2012


 

Why You Can’t Braid Someone’s Hair In Utah For Money Without First Paying $16k

from the regulatory-control dept

The common wisdom that you’ll often hear is that industries hate regulations, and would prefer deregulation. And, in certain areas that’s definitely true. But, in others, industries wantregulation — but not for a good reason. It’s because legacy players realize two things: (1) they can often “control” the regulatory process (hello regulatory capture) to twist it to their own advantage and (2) it’s a really handy way to limit competition. We just recently wrote about some of the more ridiculous factors concerning teaching certifications. Lots of people pushed back in the comments arguing — correctly — that just because someone knows something, it doesn’t mean they’re a good teacher. But… there’s another point that we made in the post that many of those people ignored: just because you “certify” teachers, it doesn’t mean they’re any better at teaching. In fact, as our post noted, the research has shown no noticeable difference between certified and uncertified teachers. So you can make the argument all you want that certification is somehow “needed,” but if that certification doesn’t seem to help at all, it’s wise to at least question the certification process.

The same Planet Money folks who brought us that story recently did a podcast and a NY Times article on another example of regulatory ridiculousness. This one involved a woman who had built a small business braiding the hair of African children in Utah. The woman, Jestina Clayton, grew up in Sierra Leone, where she learned to braid hair, and when she ended up in Centerville, Utah, she discovered there was demand there, due to a large number of adopted African children, whose parents had no idea what to do with their hair. Then, someone threatened to “report” her for practicing “cosmetology” without a license. She checked it out and discovered that bizarre (but all too common) regulation made that true — but to get her license she’d have to go to school for two years at a cost of $16,000. All to braid hair. And, even more ridiculous, none of the schools taught anything having to do with braiding hair like Clayton did. It would be a pure waste.

If you can, you should listen to the Planet Money podcast on this, because they actually get a spokesperson from the “Professional Beauty Association” try to explain why the governmentmust regulate “professional beauty” practitioners before they kill again (well, only slight exaggeration). She does go on and on about the “consumer safety issues” of the people she’s supposedly representing. My favorite risk? “Open wounds.” From hair braiding?

Either way, Clayton went before the (I’m not joking) Barber, Cosmetology/Barber, Esthetics, Electrology and Nail Technology Licensing Board of Utah, to try to convince them to let her braid without a license. Apparently this became a big issue and “licensed cosmetologists” came out of the woodwork to argue against her — and her request was denied.


As the report notes: none of this is to necessarily say that all regulation is bad and that industries don’t need some sort of regulation. But, at the very least, if there is going to be regulation, shouldn’t there be some evidence that it’s (a) needed and (b) effective? Because, somehow, I don’t think that there’s a big risk from a woman braiding some kids’ hair in Utah.

Why You Can’t Braid Someone’s Hair In Utah For Money Without First Paying $16k | Techdirt.

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Try Finding a Job Without a G.E.D. – NYTimes.com

Posted by Michael B. Calyn in Editorial, Education, Job Search, Jobs, Opinion, Perspective, Society on June 25, 2012


 

Try Finding a Job Without a G.E.D.

Published: June 24, 2012

 

The General Educational Development test, which provides the equivalent of a high school diploma, is being revised to conform with the rigorous new standards proposed by the National Governors Association, along with state school superintendents. New York State and New York City will have to do more to prepare people for an exam that could help them get a leg up in the job market.

Far too many of the 50,000 New Yorkers who take the G.E.D. each year do so without preparation. The state pays only for the test and a $20 subsidy per test taker to help run the nonprofit centers that offer the exam, and the pass rate is a low 59 percent. The rate for Iowa, where students take a diagnostic test and receive remedial help at little or no cost, is 98 percent.

The New York City Council has a pilot project that funnels unskilled job seekers into test preparation programs. The results have been good — a pass rate of 83 percent — but with only a thousand people enrolled, the programs will need to be greatly expanded. The Bloomberg administration, with a grant from the MetLife Foundation, is trying to develop a model for educating more adult learners more quickly. At the same time, however, Mayor Michael Bloomberg has proposed zeroing out a program that, for the modest cost of $5.2 million, served an estimated 6,000 people who participated in adult education classes in 2010.

In addition to becoming more rigorous, the G.E.D. is moving from a paper-and-pencil format to an online system that state officials say will raise the state’s cost from about $58 per person for the current exam to $120 for the new test, which comes online in 2014.

The state is looking into the option of developing a less expensive exam in collaboration with other states.

These are the numbers that matter most: 2.3 million people in New York State without a high school diploma — 1.3 million in the city. The economy needs educated workers. Anyone willing to study for the G.E.D. deserves help.

 Try Finding a Job Without a G.E.D. – NYTimes.com.

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