Results tagged “jobs” from Economic Alert

If you're looking for hope in dismal job numbers, here's a trickle of it, mixed in with unsettling numbers:

From the Associated Press:

"There are about 6.1 unemployed workers, on average, competing for each job opening, a Labor Department report shows. That's down slightly from 6.2 last month, the most since the department began tracking job openings nine years ago.
It's a sharp increase from only 1.7 workers per opening when the recession began in December 2007.
The department's Job Openings and Labor Turnover survey said employers advertised about 2.5 million job openings at the end of September, up slightly from the previous month. That's down from a peak of 4.8 million openings in June 2007."

I realize that's not the greatest news. But it's on the right track.

The hope is that businesses will have no choice but to start hiring again, once they've trimmed production and labor to the point that they can't be trimmed any more.

If you are a professional looking for work, and you'd rather pound the pavement for work on Labor Day than grill a burger, you might want to attend the Pinkslip Mixer in Pasadena.

From 2 to 5 p.m. at a spot called Bar Celona, 46 E. Colorado Blvd., organizers are planning a multi-city/state job mixer, bringing together other Pinkslip mixers in other cities and state via live video streams and online media.

At the very least, it's a chance to mix with people in the same boat - unemployed or underemployed. And it could mean a chance to talk to a recruiter.

I attended one myself, and ended up doing a story on it. It seemed like a great way to make contacts, and share your job experience with others. The idea is to "pay it forward." You can look out for jobs that might fit people you meet. And they'll do the same for you.

Go to...

http://pinkslipmixers.com/

It would be so easy to shrivel up, stay at home and stare at a computer all day, after losing your job.

But I saw something different this week: courage.

I went to a couple of job networking mixers, and a job fair -- all in all seeing hundreds of people looking for work in this crappy economy.

Desperation was in the air. People who are wondering how to feed their families.

But people weren't sitting still...there was the mom who after 17 years in accounting was standing in a crowd of hundreds at her first job fair. There was the 22-year-old trying to go to school because she's not sure her probationary job will last. And then there was the warehouse worker -- who just wanted any job -- and the underemployed Disneyland employee who was just looking for anything to make up for his cut hours.

"I need to feed my family," he said. 

They were facing the worst economic debacle of our time with grit, humility, ideas and focus.

What I got out of the job fair was not a sense that the more than 3,000 that were there were actually going to get a job. Most probably wouldn't from the fair. But rather, it was just like one big support group. Even though they were competing for jobs, there was also a sense that we're all in this together.

I know that's probably corny. But don't tell that to Edwin Duterte. Unemployed for more than a year, the former commercial real estate lender, started Pinkslip Mixers for unemployed professionals to look for job leads.

His hope? That people's self interest will work for everybody else's interest. That companies, businesses, volunteers will all pitch in to help a community of jobless people find work -- because we're all so connected.  

Using online tools, social networking and his skills, he's got a movement going -- and growing. And he doesn't want a penny for it.

To me, that's courage -- courage to keep moving, and make something -- anything -- happen for his life -- and others.

I wish I could have that courage.

I got the sense from Dutarte that after years in the corporate sector, he was ready for a new kind of marketplace -- one where ideas and altruism rule out over greed.

In the end, he was just rying to do his part to do something good, even in the midst of his joblessness.

It's better than just letting everybody look out for themselves. Better to help eachother get jobs than to hurt eachother when those jobs are scarce, he said.

I found a great website for all you economy history buffs out there.

It basically gives you some good context on how everything from Americans' works hours to wages have changed over the years.

Go to http://www.bls.gov/ and go to the Databases tab. From there, you'll find a load of research and data that goes back many years. Just kick on the green button for any of the categories.

It's relevant today.

Take the numbers of hours we've worked as a nation since 1964.

As of this week, we collectively are working less hours a week than any time on record -- 33.2.

I was thumbing through the City of Industry's newsletter the other day and among

stuff I didn't know - and there's plenty of that, by the way - I found this blurb:

"The city of Industry ... is a full-service distribution center for over 1,000 McDonald's, providing them everything from cash register receipt paper to beef patties. The goods are shipped all over Southern California and ot over 25 countries in the Pacific Rim...."

Oh, but there's more....You'll be glad to know that from Industry's 270,000 square-foot facility:

*1.6 million pounds of French fries are shipped weekly.

*276,000 pounds of cheese is shipped weekly.

*900,000 pounds of beef is shopped weekly...and

*Drivers dsrive 100,000 milies on deliveries per week.

It's good to know that as the financial world stuggles all around us, McDonald's will survive - and in fact, based on its quarterly results - is benefitting from people's move toward less costly food.

Much of that success stems from a warehouse in the San Gabriel Valley. So, at least there will be jobs there.

So, with all this economic stimulus talk bouncing around, I started wondering -- why doesn't the government just give each person a chunk of the money -- like it did early last year with the rebate checks.

Yeah, I know, that's probably a way too simplistic way of looking at things. But it worked for me, until I checked my calculator and talked to an economist.

If my math is right -- and please correct me if I'm wrong -- if you divide 900 billion -- the number of dollars, give or take a couple hundred billion in the stimulus package -- and divide that by 300 million (the number of people the U.S.) you get $3,000.

I don't know...$900 billion to fix an economy, or $3,000 to fix my bank account.

Somehow, fixing the economy resonated more. Three thousand won't do me any good if there's no economy to save or spend it in.

Plus, Nancy Sidhu, chief economist and vice president at the Los Angeles County Economic Development Corp, put things into perspective for me.

"They are giving money to anybody who has a tax account," she said.

If it passed in the form Sidhu and I talked about on Monday, we're all going to see larger paychecks -- assuming we still have jobs.

That makes sense, especially since people held on to their rebate checks the last time.

The idea of such tax cuts is appealing. But I can only go so far, based on what I heard the other day from the Republican Chairman Michael S. Steele.

He was on the "This Week" on Sunday morning, touting the Republican line on President Barack Obama's proposed economic stimulus plan.

But he said something that really ticked me off.

He opposed the spending part of the stimulus plan, in part, because the jobh it would create via infrastructure spending would be "temporary."

Is he serious? Jobs are jobs, and in this economy -- especially whenit comes to building things -- all jobs are temporary.

At least their jobs. It  struck me that he said this, because I couldn't believe this was a reason why Republicans were holding this thing up.

Of course, longer term jobs are better than shorter term.

But I'm not sure we have the time to sit around and debate that point, when "jobs' in general can be created with this bill, and people can get to work.

The inauguration buzz could only last so long.

This week pretty well stopped the buzzing.

Just a quick recap: A couple of Obama nominee's succombed to tax problems, legislators sparred over the meaning of  the word stimulus, and the Labor Department reported that nearly 600,000 people lost their jobs in January.

If anything is a reminder that problems in this country go beyond who is president, it was this week.

Not even a free Grand Slam at Denny's could make things better.

But let's keep the faith -- among other things.

At 8.9 percent, L.A. County's unemployment rate is high enough. But there are pockets in the San Gabriel Valley that are even higher, and that's worrisome.

El Monte, Baldwin Park and La Puente hover around 10 percent unemployment and above.

Bob Machuca, whose job it is to go out and talk to businesses for the San Gabriel Valley Economic Partnership, brought up an interesting point about those pockets.

They are part of areas where unskilled, low-wage labor is a fixture.

In good times, these workers find jobs. But in bad times, they are the first to lose them.

Everybody's hurting these days, but the bad economy can be an opportunity, he said, to bring together representatives of labor and industry to figure out ways to retrain these very workers for new work.

I agree.