What Unemployment?

Apparently one of the big issues the democrats plan to raise in the upcoming presidential election is the George Bush's failure to hold down unemployment, the flight of jobs overseas and the grim prospects for the job market in America during the next few years, presumably a crisis which only a democrat can deal with effectively. If that's their best campaign strategy they're going to be seriously embarassed in November, since the real facts on unemployment are easy for anyone to figure out, and the future of America's job market, while troubling in some ways - bears no resemblance to their dire predictions.

Despite the frantic complaints of the left, soppy Michael Moore films do not make an unemployment problem in America a reality. The numbers speak for themselves. The current rate of unemployment (at the end of February) is 5.6 percent. By no measure could that be considered high unemployment. That's historically low unemployment. The average level of unemployment for the last 30 years is 6.8 percent, so the current unemployment level is about 18% lower than average. High unemployment is numbers like the 9.7% unemployment of the early years of the Reagan administration when there really was a recession. When unemployment gets that high you can genuinely complain about people being out of work.

The lowest unemployment ever gets in the US is about 4%. It's really almost impossible for it to go much lower than that because of the chronic unemployed, people who are either incapable or unwilling to keep a job or seek a job. Any unemployment over that 4% is made up of people who are genuinely unemployed, looking for work, or between jobs. Currently that's about 1.6% of the working population, which means about 3 million people. Unemployment has been historically trending upwards in the last decade or so, because of the growth of the element of the population which changes jobs frequently. In some parts of the country people average less than 9 months at their jobs because they get hired away by another company at a better salary or in a better location. Increasingly, this group who are between jobs for at most a month or two make up the majority of those enemployed who are not part of the chronically unemployed 4%.

The reality is that if you want a job in the US right now, not only is a job available, but you probably have a choice of desirable jobs at a respectable salary. Take a look at the employment section in your local paper. Why are all those job listings there? Ask the Human Resources managers at large companies, at temp agencies or with government offices. They have good jobs at respectable salaries which go listed and unfilled for months at a time. There are certain areas in our economy which cannot find qualified people to do the jobs they are desperate to fill, and I'm not just talking about fast food restaurants. There is a shortage of competent white colar clerical workers in many parts of the country, a desperate shortage of nurses, and great demand in other areas as well. Companies are offering hiring incentives, training programs and taking other desperate measures to try to find workers with the skills they need in almost every sector of the economy.

These facts leave us asking why exactly all these unemployed people the democrats keep talking about don't have a job. The true situation for those who seem to be unemployed for more than a month or two and are actually looking for a job is that they are trained in specialized skills and are unwilling because of pride or unrealistic expectations to take a job which doesn't fit their exact field of expertise. This is an issue for the democrats because a lot of those people are union workers who have lost jobs in heavy industry and are unwilling to look for jobs in other fields even if the pay is roughly equivalent. They are encouraged in this by their unions, which help them file unemployment, give them limited support and resources while they are unemployed and hold out the hope that the union will eventually get them their old job or its equivalent back. What the unions would never admit to them is that our economy and our job market are changing, and that those union workers might have to face up to the reality that their old job doesn't exist and is never coming back. There are still plenty of good jobs out there for them, but they're not the same jobs. They need to bite the bullet and look for work in a new field, even if that requires some additional training, moving to a different part of the country, or changing their lifestyle just a little.

If you really want a job. If you have a family to support. If you feel any sense of responsibility to society. You'll go out and get a job. The jobs are there if you're willing to take them. There's no reason for anyone who wants to work to be unemployed for even a few days. Anyone with a high-school education and some work experience can get at least some sort of job paying well over minimum wage while looking for something more to their taste. If you lost your auto plant job in Flint Michigan, pack your bags, get in your Suburban and get your butt down to the sun belt and work in construction until something better comes along. All it takes is common sense and enough self-respect not to want to live off government handouts.

If the democrats are foolish enough to raise unemployment as an issue in the election and somehow get people to overlook the true statistics, then what do they offer us as an alternative? Kerry, Clinton and their friends would like to have more government control over wages and hiring and firing practices, forcing companies to extend more benefits and keep people employed even when they don't need them. They'd like to adopt a socialized European model with more support for the unemployed, support which encourages those who don't have jobs to stay out of work and not look overly hard for new jobs. The result is that in European countries the unemployment rates are enormously higher than they are here in America, even more jobs go unfilled, more workers have to be imported from outside, more jobs have to be outsourced, and the tax burden on those who do work is enormous. France has 17% unemployment. Germany has unemployment over 25%. Are those the kinds of unemployment numbers the democrats would like to see in the US? In those countries people have learned that if you don't work the government will support you, and for some it's easier to not work and go on the dole than it is to find a job and have all your income taxed away to pay for those who'd rather not work. That really doesn't sound like a better scenario than our current rather low level of unemployment.