Is this the new natural unemployment rate? No. Is the unemployment rate ever going to return back to 5-6%, highly unlikely. Yes, similar things were said after every revolution like the industrial revolution or the invention of agriculture but what you have to realize is that once we got over those job issues they didn't simply vanish. With more and more efficiency from these revolutions comes more and more difficulties for the common worker who has no particular skill set. The real issue that this latest recession displayed is that people who are running these small businesses and even large corporations alike have learned what running "lean" really means. They have now realized their most bare essentials to make it through these hard economic times and now that the bar has been set it will be incredibly difficult to lift it to the previous level.
I had a discussion with a Fixed Income Desk Manager when I visited MorganStanley a few months back about this very issue and we both agreed that companies will never return to the previous level of employment. The job market is fundamentally changing and this idea that everyone has that jobs are around the corner I feel is naive. Could their possibly be an uptick in highly skilled areas of the market? I think so but besides those areas I think unskilled laborers are in for a difficult time. There will always be room in the economy for people that can do hands on jobs because somethings cannot be left up to technology alone i.e. construction or landscaping but beside these things we are moving towards a more skilled society and I think the only way the economy improves is if older unskilled workers eventually leave the job market and make way for younger more technologically savvy employees.
> I think the only way the economy improves is if older unskilled workers eventually leave the job market and make way for younger more technologically savvy employees.
I'm not sure I follow you here. In general, older employees are more skilled, even in technological areas. It's true that younger people skew towards tech, but you'll find few 20 year-old googlers with the skills of an average 40 year-old googler.
As someone with experience hiring people, I'd say that the main advantage in hiring younger people are lower salary expectations, possibly more idealism, and a small chance at them developing into a talent and while still staying loyal to the company.
Yeah older employees do tend to be more skilled thats why I specifically said older employees who were not skilled leave the workforce, obviously people who don't exist under this umbrella are highly skilled computer programmers that work at Google, of course in their situation it is better to be older.
I had a discussion with a Fixed Income Desk Manager when I visited MorganStanley a few months back about this very issue and we both agreed that companies will never return to the previous level of employment. The job market is fundamentally changing and this idea that everyone has that jobs are around the corner I feel is naive. Could their possibly be an uptick in highly skilled areas of the market? I think so but besides those areas I think unskilled laborers are in for a difficult time. There will always be room in the economy for people that can do hands on jobs because somethings cannot be left up to technology alone i.e. construction or landscaping but beside these things we are moving towards a more skilled society and I think the only way the economy improves is if older unskilled workers eventually leave the job market and make way for younger more technologically savvy employees.