Why full employment will be a tough nut to crack

Full employment -- which is considered to be about 4-5% as there is always the chronically unemployed and people recently unemployed looking for work -- will be a tough thing to accomplish. You have to look not only at what happened in the last few years to create this economic mess, but you have to go farther back. Very far.

What happened during World War II? Males (mostly) went off to war and the women went to the factories to build planes and tanks. And what happened after the war was over? Women went back into the kitchen and men went back to the factories. In my father's day it was unusual for a woman to work outside the home. I think on our block there was only one working mom, and she was a nurse.

Then in the last three decades of the century women started entering the work force in droves. They started putting off marriage until after they had begun careers. If you were to look at a street in an average subdivision these days what would you see? (Besides much larger houses than my father ever dreamed of having!) You would see just the opposite of what I did when I was growing up. It would be the odd house where the wife didn't have a job outside the home.

But what happened at the same time all this was going on? The computer revolution. I'm old enough to have learned to type on a manual typewriter. I can remember my boss telling me he couldn't foresee a time when everyone would have a computer on their desks. And what did computers do? They upped productivity. By many multiples. At the same time, our manufacturing base went to other countries. Everything from programmers to lawyers are being outsourced overseas. In addition, people are living longer and in some cases wanting (or needing) to work longer as well.

All of this was masked by the fact that we Americans just kept buying stuff.

In short, it's a perfect storm that doesn't bode well for the employment picture.

I will suggest something that may or may not fly with a lot of people, but here goes: if you are lucky enough to be in a position where you don't have to work, try volunteering instead. I personally know several people who don't work for the money, but just for the companionship of being around people and to have something to do. If you are one of those people, there are so many organizations who need volunteers that you are sure to find one that interests you and that needs your time and talents. You could help walk dogs or clean litter boxes at a local animal shelter; read books to kids at hospitals; rock babies in the preemie unit; help build a home for someone who needs one, or shelve books at the local library. You would get the satisfaction of having something to do with your time, of helping others, and you would leave open a job for someone else who really needs one.

Just an idea.

Health care reform may come down to Mass. Senate race

Today is the special election to fill the Senate seat vacated with the death of Sen. Ted Kennedy. Martha Coakley, the Democrat, is facing Scott Brown, the Republican, in an election that all the pollsters are saying will flip the seat to the GOP side.

How ironic it is that the future of the health care reform bill may be in the hands of Massachusetts voters. See, Massachusetts has universal, state-sponsored health care, which was instituted by a Republican governor, Mitt Romney. And just how did Romney manage to make this happen with nary a whimper from any tea bagger, right-wing talk show host or Faux News story? He did it with George W. Bush's help -- and with help from the rest of the taxpayers of America.

Yes, that's right, folks! You and I, those of us who do not reside in the Commonwealth of Massachusetts, are helping pay for their universal health care through our federal tax dollars! Notice the silence coming from the right? Oh, that was a Republican governor. Well, I guess it's not socialism when a Republican does it.

her case of "I'm doing fine, I don't care about the rest of you people!"? Let's hope not!

The jobs report is meaningless...

... and the media doesn't know how to report it, either.

So according to the December jobs report, the economy lost another 85,000 jobs last month. In addition, the jobs report for November was revised from a loss of 11,000 jobs to a gain of 4,000 (this revision to positive growth territory, by the way, went almost totally unreported).

Let me tell you why neither one of these jobs reports matters. What happened in November and December? What happens every November and December? Go ahead, think about it, I'll wait.... hmmm hmmm hmmm.... dee dee dee.... OK, remember something called the holiday season? Anybody?? Well, apparently the media forgets about it.

This is why the jobs report is worthless. In November stores hire temporary help for the holiday season. At the end of December they let them go. Giving you one total jobs number for any given month is misleading at best. What I want to know is -- how many full-time, permanent jobs were created? Put the temporary seasonal jobs in another category. Put the construction jobs in another category. Don't muck up the jobs report number with jobs that are seasonal or only last for a few weeks. I guarantee you that around March there will be a lot of construction jobs starting back up, which should goose the numbers. And I guarantee you also that the media will once again only report the total.

Why can't the media give us some useful information instead of trying to panic everyone and claiming the sky is falling? Is the job market bad? Yes, we know that... maybe they think bad news sells better than accurate news? Who knows? Someday I think I'll write a post about how bad the state of journalism is these days!