Read ‘Structural Unemployment, China/REE, Base Metals Usage’, e-mailed today to StockResearchPortal.com Subscribers.  The e-mail:

• discusses what I see to be an underlying structural issue related to U.S. Unemployment – something I think is particularly important in the context of potential U.S. economic recovery;

• provides a link to an interesting Chart on 2009 Rare Earths production;

• discusses changes in base metal usage between the developed and developing countries between 1995 – 2010; and,

• overviews the ‘Daily Press Release Price/Volume Changes’ feature offered by StockResearchPortal.com.

In part, the e-mail reads:

“Structural Unemployment

An article this morning in the Wall Street Journal is titled ‘High (U.S.) Unemployment Not Structural Problem’ says that “Fears high unemployment levels are structural in nature and beyond the aid of monetary policy are wrong, a new paper from the Federal Bank of San Fransisco argues”.  Here is a link to the referenced paper, which is titled ‘Is Structural Unemployment on the Rise?’.  I suggest you consider reading both articles, and think hard and reach your own conclusions about the issue of U.S. Structural Unemployment – reading time for the WSJ article 3 minutes, and for the Fed paper 8 minutes.  I see U.S. Structural Unemployment as an issue I may not have thought about entirely correctly up to this morning – although now having read the referenced articles I so believe my previous conclusion that there is important U.S. Structural Unemployment was, and continues to be correct.

Structural Unemployment is defined as (per Wikipedia): “a form of unemployment resulting from a mismatch between the sufficiently skilled workers seeking employment and demand in the labour market. Even though the number of vacancies may be equal to, or greater than, the number of the unemployed, the unemployed workers may lack the skills needed for the jobs — or may not live in the part of the country or world where the jobs are available”.

Until this morning I have written on more than one occasion that the U.S. suffers from Structural Unemployment that will be difficult, if even possible, to remedy because of the approximate 40% of its manufacturing jobs that have been lost after 1999 and won’t (or so I think) be returning.  What the Fed paper has focused me on this morning is (1) the definition of Structural Unemployment set out in the previous paragraph, and (2) importantly, the loss in U.S. jobs in the past three years in the construction and real estate sectors.  According to the paper “construction employment declined nearly 25% from the start of the recession through the end of 2009”.

The paper concludes that there is a substantive relationship “between the bursting of the (U.S.) residential real estate bubble and the need for many unemployed construction workers to find work in other sectors” (the paper mentions ‘health care’) and “the effects of both these factors are likely to be transitory rather than permanent”.  The Fed paper does not mention ….. – to read more click here

See Blog Legal Disclaimer

Possibly Related Posts:

• Greek Eurozone Exit Consequences?
• Q1 2012 Europe and Eurozone GDP!
• An Accident Waiting to Happen, or ‘Ever Closer To The Cliff’!
• After Spain, is Italy Next?
• Spain and Spanish Bank Dilemma!

Trackback URI | Comments RSS