Sounds like productivity lag and free riders at the top.    Eventually
someone somewhere is going to perceive of this as an opportunity to develop
an inclusive theory that will tear the roof off of modern economics and
create success.   Who will that be?   Someone creative.   Someone ambitious.
Someone smart.   Someone unwilling to whine and make excuses.     It’s not
what the bulk of the people have been doing that is wrong.   It’s what the
people preaching the gospel of the leave it alone private market, and coming
up short, has been doing wrong.    It’s those professional
physicists/amateur CEOs on Wall Street with the big IQs that have given us
this mess.  Amateurs are always dangerous.    You could start with making it
illegal to bet against the market and tap those geniuses to come up with a
better market that serves ALL of the people.     No one should pay the
people who break windows to replace them.    Make it illegal to break them
and then come up with a better REAL product.    That’s what I was taught to
call “innovation”  not this fraudulent stuff that we have today that is
immoral and dangerous. 

 

REH

 

From: [email protected]
[mailto:[email protected]] On Behalf Of Ed Weick
Sent: Friday, February 04, 2011 3:54 PM
To: [email protected]
Subject: [Futurework] Not good news

 


FROM TODAY'S gLOBE AND mAIL


 

eD

  _____  

 


jOB FEARS FOR A LOST gENERATION


 


TAVIA GRANT


Globe and Mail Update


Published Thursday, Feb. 03, 2011 7:15PM EST


Last updated Friday, Feb. 04, 2011 7:11AM EST


 

Shreyas Rangappa graduated with a master’s degree in electrical and computer
engineering from Dalhousie University in October. He figures he has sent out
600 to 700 résumés across North America since then. He’s willing to move,
and to work outside his field. So far, though, no luck.

 

“They all prefer prior experience,” Mr. Rangappa, 26, said in an interview
from Halifax. “You just sit at home, and all you can think is you need to
get a job. And you don’t know what you’re doing wrong.”

 

Meet the face of youth unemployment in 2011, a legacy of the global economic
meltdown that is pressuring governments in North America and helping to feed
deep social unrest the world over. Anger in Egypt and Tunisia over youth
joblessness represented nothing less than a “ticking time bomb” waiting to
explode, International Monetary Fund chief Dominique Strauss-Kahn said this
week. Around the world, the problem not only hurts the young but threatens
growth for decades to come.

It’s not only Egypt, where anger over a youth unemployment rate of about 25
per cent helped fuel protests over poverty and repression, where the problem
is surfacing. In Spain, almost half of young people are without work. In
Canada, the rate is almost 14 per cent, nearly twice the national average.
And in the United States, it’s 18 per cent.

In a speech on Thursday in Washington, one day before the U.S. and Canadian
governments release their employment snapshot for January, U.S. Federal
Reserve Board chairman Ben Bernanke gave younger job seekers little hope for
optimism. Any recent U.S. job gains have been “barely sufficient to
accommodate the inflow of recent graduates and other new entrants to the
labour force,” he said.

It’s a labour force some aren’t even bothering to enter. As unemployment
spiked through the global recession, young people started giving up the
search. About 1.7 million discouraged youth dropped out of or delayed entry
into the labour market between 2007 and 2009, a United Nations group said
this week.

“This represents a huge waste of human potential, which could have serious
long-term repercussions for the affected young people themselves and for
societies at large,” said the International Labour Organization, which has
repeatedly warned of the spectre of a “lost generation.”

Long periods of unemployment tend to leave long-lasting scars. Young people
left out of the labour market tend to see their skills deteriorate and
bargaining power diminish the longer they are out of work. Youth who leave
school during recessions typically see a lifetime hit to earnings, academic
studies have shown.

The flashpoints this year have been in Tunisia and Egypt. The region of the
Middle East and North Africa has the highest youth unemployment rate in the
world, at about 24 per cent, according to the ILO.

Canada’s situation seems a far cry from Egypt’s. Youth unemployment, at 13.8
per cent, is lower than that of other countries and the rate has come down
in recent months. But the numbers can be misleading. While the rate has
fallen, it’s largely owing to a drop in the participation rate, which is
close to a decade low. In December, 391,000 young people were counted as
unemployed, up from 379,500 in November.

“We’re seeing elevated demand from all sectors, from those who don’t have
high school to those who have university degrees. It’s taking them all so
much longer. We see there’s a frustration and a lack of hope,” said Nancy
Schaefer, president of Youth Employment Services in Toronto.

The ripple effects are numerous: more kids living at home for longer; more
in youth shelters or reduced to “couch surfing” at friends’ houses; more
working in the underground economy without job security or benefits – and
more dealing drugs, she said.

She would like to see a new Canadian youth employment strategy – one that
includes awareness campaigns and incentives for employers, and funding for
entrepreneurship programs to help youth train for small business startups.

Demand for programs that teach skills and help people start their own
businesses is growing, said Kathy Murphy, president of the Centre for
Entrepreneurship Education and Development, which runs youth employment
programs throughout Nova Scotia – which has the country’s highest youth
unemployment rate, at 18.6 per cent.

Without work, “they’re leaving the area, or they sometimes go back to
school. Or, in more severe cases, they get into crime or back into poverty
because there are not opportunities.”

The educated seem disproportionately hit. In Montreal, Juliana Pelaez, who
has a degree in international business, and speaks English, French and
Spanish, is in a similar boat to Mr. Rangappa. “Trying to look for a job
always every day, and not receiving any interviews or calls, it’s
frustrating. There’s not a lot of professional opportunities out there.”

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