Hillary Clinton lost West Virginia because she blurted out that she was going to put a lot of coal miners out of work. Then she tried to soften it by saying that she had a plan to budget $30 billion to create small businesses and retrain the unemployed of Appalachia and elsewhere. At the same time, she would use that money to protect the coal miners pensions and health benefits. That's asking a lot from just $30 billion. To be fair though, this sounds better than what President Obama promised. In his case, he simply told them to "take welfare".
But, if you're a soon-to-be-unemployed coal worker, I wouldn't count on Hillary to do much about it and I would certainly take Obama's advice. One only needs to look at Hillary's failed Caracol, Haiti project for an example of her incompetence at job creation.
Following the 7.0 earthquake that hit Haiti in 2010, around 40% of that nation's 4+ million workers became unemployed. That's about 1.7 million. Then, Secretary of State Clinton toured the rubble as she and her team put together a plan to spend millions in U.S. aid to build a nice new industrial park just north of a remote, tin-roofed fishing village called Caracol. The target was to create a total of 65,000 jobs in a country where 1.7 million were unemployed. Again, we can already see the lack of competence.
In order to build the park, 640 acres were needed and hundreds of subsistence farmers were "coaxed" off the their land in order to provide the required acreage. The park was also too remote for access to the power grid, so a power plant was built. Today, 95 percent of the vacated land is still vacant.
By 2015, Caracol had been open for 3 years. Only 11,300 of the promised 65,000 jobs were created. A $70 million expansion of the park by 2018 may add another 6,800 jobs. Oh, and Bill Clinton and the Clinton foundation managed the project for which it and he were well compensated. Of course, Bill Clinton is the person who Hillary claims she will put in charge of jobs and the economy, if she is elected President. God help us all! Of course, this is also an obvious admission that the economy has been horrible under Obama's watch.
The sad and simple truth is that Hillary is inept and has little knowledge of how jobs are created. Nor does she understand the coal business, and how entire towns exist only because of coal. No amount of job training or small business creation is going to put those towns back on their feet. Again, she has no idea what she was doing; just as in Caracol, Haiti.
References:
Fact Check: Hillary Clinton And Coal Jobs: http://www.npr.org/2016/05/03/476485650/fact-check-hillary-clinton-and-coal-jobs
Obama Costs Miners Their Job — Tells Them Take Welfare: http://www.libertynewsnow.com/obama-costs-miners-their-job-tells-them-take-welfare/article1446
A glittering industrial park in Haiti falls short: http://america.aljazeera.com/articles/2013/9/10/a-glittering-industrialparkfallsshortinhaiti.html
Hillary’s Half-Baked Haiti Project: https://www.google.com/search?q=Hillary%E2%80%99s+Half-Baked+Haiti+Project&ie=utf-8&oe=utf-8
Hillary Clinton says she'll put Bill 'in charge' of fixing economy: http://money.cnn.com/2016/05/16/news/economy/hillary-bill-clinton-economic-job-growth/
Showing posts with label workers. Show all posts
Showing posts with label workers. Show all posts
Wednesday, May 18, 2016
Friday, September 11, 2015
Two Distrubing Employment Facts That Aren't Being Reported
Every month the Federal Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS) releases two reports regarding the state of employment in the country. The first is the Employment Situation Report which most of us simply call the employment report or monthly jobs report. The other is less-known and is called the Job Openings and Labor Turnover Survey (aka the JOLTS report).
On September 4th, the Employment Situation Report was released with data covering August's employment data. It showed that the August unemployment rate fell to 5.1% from 5.3% in July with a total of almost 8 million people out of work. But what is generally overlooked is the fact that 4.1% of the workforce is working part time because they can't find full time work. The BLS labels this as workers " working part time for economic reasons". This is an amazing 6.5 million workers which is not that much less than the 8 million who are officially out of work. To put it into perspective, normally part time workers equal about 2.7% of the workforce, and this 4.1% is 52% higher than the norm.
It is quite possible that ObamaCare is responsible for this substantial increase in part time work. After all, the employer mandate and the associated penalties are based on how many full time equivalent (FTE) workers an employer has. Businesses that are close to the mandate threshold can escape it all together by converting some full time workers to part time. Something that many opponents of ObamaCare said would happen.
Then, just five days later, the BLS released its JOLTS report for July. In that month, the number of unfilled job openings rose to a record 5.8 million since this reporting began in the year 2000, and that July number beat the previous record of 5.4 set in May. So, here we have 8 million unemployed workers looking for work and 6.5 million working part time for economic reasons, and the number of job openings is increasing. This, too, is not normal. If in fact, the unemployment rate is falling, so should the number of job openings.
This contradiction exposes the fact that we have a skills and education problem in this country. Essentially, job openings are being left on the table because we don't have the kind of workforce that can fill them. This is why big businesses and major corporations want immigration reform. They don't care about a bunch of uneducated or poorly educated workers streaming over our southern border. What they desperately need is more H1B work visas to provide the kind of educated employees we need so that we don't have 5.8 million jobs left open. This is something that no politicians -- especially the political left that supports the teacher's unions -- want to talk about when the subject of immigration is broached.
References:
The Employment Situation for August 2015: http://www.bls.gov/news.release/pdf/empsit.pdf
Job Openings and Labor Turnover Survey for July 2015: http://www.bls.gov/news.release/pdf/jolts.pdf
CNN Money: Business wants immigration reform. Why? Because they can't find enough workers: http://money.cnn.com/2014/07/11/news/companies/immigration-washington/
H1B Work Visas: https://www.google.com/search?q=h1b+visa&ie=utf-8&oe=utf-8
On September 4th, the Employment Situation Report was released with data covering August's employment data. It showed that the August unemployment rate fell to 5.1% from 5.3% in July with a total of almost 8 million people out of work. But what is generally overlooked is the fact that 4.1% of the workforce is working part time because they can't find full time work. The BLS labels this as workers " working part time for economic reasons". This is an amazing 6.5 million workers which is not that much less than the 8 million who are officially out of work. To put it into perspective, normally part time workers equal about 2.7% of the workforce, and this 4.1% is 52% higher than the norm.
It is quite possible that ObamaCare is responsible for this substantial increase in part time work. After all, the employer mandate and the associated penalties are based on how many full time equivalent (FTE) workers an employer has. Businesses that are close to the mandate threshold can escape it all together by converting some full time workers to part time. Something that many opponents of ObamaCare said would happen.
Then, just five days later, the BLS released its JOLTS report for July. In that month, the number of unfilled job openings rose to a record 5.8 million since this reporting began in the year 2000, and that July number beat the previous record of 5.4 set in May. So, here we have 8 million unemployed workers looking for work and 6.5 million working part time for economic reasons, and the number of job openings is increasing. This, too, is not normal. If in fact, the unemployment rate is falling, so should the number of job openings.
This contradiction exposes the fact that we have a skills and education problem in this country. Essentially, job openings are being left on the table because we don't have the kind of workforce that can fill them. This is why big businesses and major corporations want immigration reform. They don't care about a bunch of uneducated or poorly educated workers streaming over our southern border. What they desperately need is more H1B work visas to provide the kind of educated employees we need so that we don't have 5.8 million jobs left open. This is something that no politicians -- especially the political left that supports the teacher's unions -- want to talk about when the subject of immigration is broached.
References:
The Employment Situation for August 2015: http://www.bls.gov/news.release/pdf/empsit.pdf
Job Openings and Labor Turnover Survey for July 2015: http://www.bls.gov/news.release/pdf/jolts.pdf
CNN Money: Business wants immigration reform. Why? Because they can't find enough workers: http://money.cnn.com/2014/07/11/news/companies/immigration-washington/
H1B Work Visas: https://www.google.com/search?q=h1b+visa&ie=utf-8&oe=utf-8
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