Is increased efficiency downsizing the jobs market?

I have been out of High School for a few years time and have worked a few jobs now since then. I'd like to share with you all a few trends I am noticing about co-workers' habbits, the job market and my outlook on what it all could mean for the grand scheme of things.

At this time, machines and automated processes continue to improve production and business logistics in what few manufacturing industries remain here (in U.S.). Job openings are seeming to be less diverse, more leaned towards desperation and availability (example, part time openings demanding reliable personal transportation, weekends, nights and holiday availability ON CALL) all while paying several times less than the living wage in the area. Openings have been mostly for jobs in the healthcare "field", service field and telemarketing/harassing fields.

With state property taxes and other mandatory subscriptions like rent/insurances of today, it would be correct to say that you need to have a job to survive. On that acknowledgement, workers like would like to keep their jobs whether it's to survive, whether to feed their kids (even if they should/shouldn't have had kids at the time they had them) or whether to take care of a sick family member or what-be-it.


At factory jobs I've run into, workers are encouraged by their bosses to offer suggestions to improve efficiency at the work place. There are those workers that will try hard and do what their job descriptions are, while there are those that will do the bare minimum, slacking from time to time, taking longer breaks than they should, using others as scape-goats to any trouble that results from their irresponsibility. Then there are those that will treat a job like it's only another necessity that they don't want, the same type that played hooky in highscool with the mentality a job is only another place they sit down and go to, like a doctor's waiting room and try to look busy until the end of their shifts, obviously they the supervisory patterns and how to cheat quality control / inspection elements to avoid as much responsibility as possible.

Now, upon closer inspection to the last two groups of workers that I named, to speak about them now, I feel that there actually may be some Robin-Hood-Like heroes in these groups. By intentionally slowing down processes whether it's because you really don't give a damn as a worker or for some other reason, it justifies the need for larger teams / more staff members, keeping human resources and management departments in these megamillion corporations from seeing a need to constantly downsize departments on a whim.

If all workers today pushed for efficiency, most would have effectively pushed themselves out of work as the shareholders pressure the heads of the corporations, and the heads of the corporations pressure management and then human resources squeezes the staff to "just enough" at every damn moment, causing unstable jobs for people who need money to survive. Think about it, it's not a question of if it's happening, it does happen.
Know that the jobs aren't changing location, they're being lost to efficiency and technology. FOR PROFIT. Jobs are becoming more scarce, and the school-grade kids just graduating from colleges and what-not are leaving school with entitlement attitudes and pretty text books displaying economic models from the 80s and 90s.

People don't have work, and the necessities like shelter, transportation and secondary education costs more than ever before. Now think that for each need, you now have exaggerated costs mandated by law like subscription based taxes (property) and being forced to buy insurances from private companies in order to have adequate reliable transportation on our automobile infrastructure. This is more than just manufacturing jobs, this can be greatly applied as an extension to the greater economic situation, people in nearly every career that have jobs to ensure things run smoothly or are repaired, often do much less than they should, and KNOWINGLY in order to keep things in a state of perpetual motion so that they don't outsource themselves to efficiency.





What have been your experiences? You know the economy is changing for good and whether it's for OUR good remains to be seen. What have you seen/heard and are you willing to say/do anything about it, or do you realize that although it's happening quick, it may not be in your lifetime that it happens? Maybe you are fat on your welfare or pension check, or occupying a non-contributing position and trying to prolong your job?
This job climate STINKS and our population is only growing!

BlubberyConspiracy








My opinion on this matter.



Jobs are being outsourced to exploited people overseas, the dollar is becoming worth less and less to inflation and the necessity of human labor in our economic model is dwindling. Many Americans have been born to this situation and I'm sure it's VERY SIMILAR in many other countries around the world. People are stagnating progress to keep their jobs because in the direction things are going, there IS NO ANSWER. The end result of efficiency is profit and those shafted out of the jobs train must pay higher food prices, higher property taxes all with no jobs. Our economic model will die, and medical/nanotechnologies are being reserved for profit. You can't count on the private sector to solve these issues, the economic model must be abandoned soon or everything will implode on itself and those who cant pay 40 dollars for a gallon of milk will suffer. The government is funding wars, global occupation, enforcing mandates and handing out welfare checks when they should be funding space exploration/colonization THEN sustainable technology.

Whether you like it or not, when human population grows to a large enough size, disease/war/famine will wipe us out if we don't figure out a technological solution to finally rid of the forced labor in today's western world, but before that time should come we NEED discussions like MARS and space colonization because if we manage to end human suffering first, humans will create suffering again when small groups oppose the incoming population queues that will SURELY COME if we don't come up with an answer to urban sprawl. AND KILLING CERTAINLY IS NOT AN ANSWER.

The problem is the import / export policies.

Restricting imports and increasing exports would solve most of the problems.

A few years ago, the U3 was well under 5% and the deficit spending was much much lower.

Details are complicated but doable.

If they don't do something soon, the U.S. is in deep trouble.

It's almost like they planned this.

Short answer, no. Nothing is efficient. Efficiency on paper maybe.

Big corporation/bank version of efficiency is, well, we can produce 1,000,000,000 lbs of X, and the market would be saturated, people would be happy, but we would only make Y because of the dilution.

Now…. If we cut 50,000 jobs, only sell 30% of the same thing, cut off the free market demand, costs will rise, while simultaneously cutting labour and our profit will be Z (old number) x600%

(In other words, efficiency is bound to profit, not overall market conditions.)

Mind you, in some cases this is a good thing. But they do it in industries where it should never happen. Even with infinite supplies, even in services.

As a businessman myself I like to make money, but I want to do it in a way that benefits everyone involved. Some of us strive for that kind of thing, some others just care about short sighted goals that let them bloat their bank accounts.

boncho
As a businessman myself I like to make money, but I want to do it in a way that benefits everyone involved. Some of us strive for that kind of thing, some others just care about short sighted goals that let them bloat their bank accounts.

edit on 25-10-2013 by boncho because: (no reason given)

Though doesn't it depend on who the company owner is? If it's the shareholders but not operations or the executives that own it, then all of these workers may be pressured to meet shareholders' demands and a single worth ethic like yours may not make it to the entire workforce.

Wouldn't you say then that these behaviors of the irresponsible business owners are adding insult to injury in terms of our sensitive economy and culture? It's not entirely to blame on any one group, taking the head off a rich man won't come up with a solution to where we're headed quickly.

Thoughts?

BlubberyConspiracy

boncho
As a businessman myself I like to make money, but I want to do it in a way that benefits everyone involved. Some of us strive for that kind of thing, some others just care about short sighted goals that let them bloat their bank accounts.

edit on 25-10-2013 by boncho because: (no reason given)

Though doesn't it depend on who the company owner is? If it's the shareholders but not operations or the executives that own it, then all of these workers may be pressured to meet shareholders' demands and a single worth ethic like yours may not make it to the entire workforce.

Wouldn't you say then that these behaviors of the irresponsible business owners are adding insult to injury in terms of our sensitive economy and culture? It's not entirely to blame on any one group, taking the head off a rich man won't come up with a solution to where we're headed quickly.

Thoughts?

edit on 26-10-2013 by BlubberyConspiracy because: (no reason given)

Redefining the system.

While I make jokes in my avatar profile I am not a sellout. My businesses have a ton of revenue and decent profit margins, which means big money would probably give me enough to retire and live the high life, but I'm young (in the biz world), I love my babies. So they aint going anywhere.

However, we struggle and have struggled on the way up. There is a terrible climate for small business.

The government has made laws which have completely stripped small businesses of any leverage they've had. Bankers are behind M&A, and they are behind the whole "shareholder" thing… It's not as if the public owns any decent size chunk of a public company.

Laws and regulations have solely benefitted bad business practices for a long while.

We need an actual free market. Free as in very little interference. Essentially, it's not the business owner making the decisions for the company so much as it is the market. Bad businesses go under every day. Hell, I launched mine after almost buying another, and the other owner can't figure out why I do 5x the numbers they do. Cause I analyzed the market!

(Note: Keep in mind small business to me is anything under 20 million in revenue. Mid size, 40-100 mil, and then you have big, then you have the sharks. The sharks write the laws.)

My experience is people who have worked hard to learn their trade through experience are being pushed out of the workplace by those who pay a trade or technical school for some knowledge. Those who have gone through 'school', at least on paper, are more 'qualified' than those who have actually been there and developed the techniques and knowledge the schools are teaching to those students.

A paradox.

I spent 5 years 'in the trenches'... literally... learning how to build cell sites, run coaxial cable, install antennas, test systems and such. A 'person' fresh out of DeVry was hired by the company I worked for, for almost $2 an hour more than I. He had no understanding of what return and insertion loss are; what "VSWR", "impedance mismatch", "T1", "LEC", "azimuth" and "declination" are. He was paid more simply because of a piece of paper and not because of his knowledge. And it's a sad state when people are paid more based on academic fallacy than performance.

I was ultimately relieved from my duties because my attention to detail and providing quality products to our clients was not as important as providing products as quickly as possible. No one ever understood that if it takes 5 man/days to get it perfect versus 2 man/days to get it 'close' and another 8 man/days to clean it up, the former is more efficient. I was perceived as being inefficient because I couldn't turn in a site 'ready to be turned on' as quickly as the others. The math says otherwise.

Even worse is that even after I was released, those trade-school graduates called me daily for the next year asking me for advice.

I have even had the 'gratification' of teaching a man with 6 years experience as an ET in the USN working on radar systems what RF does. And don't ask... I'll just let it go with he thought connectors with a 'blue' hue indicate everything is working correctly.

There's a massive disconnect in the United States which most people either don't understand or have drank the KoolAid and don't believe is a problem. The USA cannot survive global free trade co-existing alongside minimum wage, high levels of environmental and workplace regulations, and internal taxes and spending mandates on employers. It is very much a choose one or the other scenario. Either reinstate tariffs on imports at a level which balances the field or eliminate enough regulations, taxes, and labor policies to give manufacturers a reason to manufacture their products inside the USA, creating jobs. In reality, both should probably be looked at to strike a balance. We should have some fashion of minimum wage and we should have better working conditions than third world countries do... but we should also be making it far less economically enticing for our manufacturers to leave America and ship product back into the country for sale.

In short, Ross Perot was right. I was in high school when that election occurred and I can tell you that the roots of today's TEA Party were planted at that time. Jokes were made at his expense and the globalists mocked him mercilessly but, 20 years later, I think very few not involved with the multinational conglomerates can make the claim that international free trade was anything but a fail for the USA.

reply to post by burdman30ott6


That's true county, state and federal regulations and mandates imposed on businesses considered large enough or meeting certain criteria really do make it EXPENSIVE to run anything in many cases from what I've seen looking into these things. The economic climate is just so dim that people have to room with others, stay with their folks longer and all in order to at least survive. For businesses, yeah, there needs to be enforced safety regulations and standards, but the costs of auditors and inspectors should come at the cost of only the state, and not have tax monies used for black budget projects instead.

However, I do think that this trend won't reverse. I feel we'll have to get cozy with the same corporate faces in our sights for a long time to come, and how they manage employees or (the lack of need for them) will determine where / when pressure gives and what legislative changes it may or may not help to push.

reply to post by abecedarian


I feel I know just what you mean, and what I can say is; Here comes the entitlement generation. So many college grads with none or very little experience and the hurt from being tricked into the idea that a paper transcript creates a guarantee. Foolish for an employer to let go of you for a less experienced, less productive worker. Since the numbers you said may have made it clear as to (management/HR or who-be-it responsible for hiring/firing) the right choice may have been, I think that it's more likely they took orders from someone "higher up" the chain in the company that REALLY had no idea of what transpires on the floor. It's terribly expensive for employers to give paid training (constantly re-hiring people when they shift around departments endlessly) I think their best bet would have been to offer you to go part time for a while to encourage/allow you time to develop your resume further.


Did you notice co-workers that intentionally changed their pace in order to secure their positions? I'm sorry they let you go for something so shallow though...

Yea, I just watched a clip on RT America in which it was stated that domestic production has increased during the recession.

Hard times, make you more efficient it seems.

reply to post by burdman30ott6


The idea should be demanding that other nations offer better living standards and working conditions and increase ecological considerations in place or taking advantage of "advantageous" conditions that promote relocation. This is even valid toward taxation and the flow of capital, but since government do not work for the benefit of all and only worry about appeasement of the masses and keeping the fat cats that pay for elections fat nothing will change and we will devolve into a run for the lowest bidder damn the social/ecological consequences...

reply to post by xuenchen

I personally would support something like that, when corporations would stop exloiting low income nations for selling cheap stuff at higher price in advanced nations, although I doubt many are willing to give up luxuries.

Even with the import taxes, Chinese, Bangladesh, Taiwan people do the same work for 10 times less pay, if not more, depending on region. The workplace standards are far lower (quality of air, cleanness, ESD). It is often even cheaper not using machines, but letting everything handmade. For example, when assembling components to circuit boards, in many Chinese factories, every component is assembled manually - in total hundreds of millions of manual assemblies & solderings every year, while in European and US factories everything like that is done by machines. Machines cost more though than using 100s of people there to assemble these manually, although the quality is higher when using machines.

So the question, are you willing to pay significantly more for different products, when it would solve the unemployment problems?


To OP:

Yes, technology advancements are taking away the jobs from advanced nations. In a decade the things would be worse, as machines are becoming good enough to do the work in service sectors. Soon McDonalds might not need the burger flippers as machine will do it for them. Currently it is cheaper to use manual labour as machines cost a lot, but the prices are going down. Faster service, no wage,except initial purchase and service tech, better quality on average, more efficient - humans are not able to compete with machines.

Education should be one of the main in any country currently, as more and more manual labor is not required anymore and when the service industry is downsized in jobs, more and more people are required to have skillset to program, fix the machines if broken.

Interesting.

I tend to not pay much attention to statements such as 'drink the kool-aid, Fat Cats, Black Budgets or criminal CEO's' as those statements seem better suited for the bar stool than any conceptual discussion. I can take this back to the early eighties when I would have been in the age group that is commenting now. At that time the biggest problem in America was the service industry-or the lack of it. You couldn't start a small business for the simple reason that you could not find anyone to staff your business-especially the restaurant industry. In those days a tacky looking person could walk down the main drag in city USA and get hired for 5 different jobs in one afternoon. Restaurants closed and went out of business, not because they didn't have paying costumers, because they couldn't find employees-no matter how much they paid them!

A discussion on what has changed in those 30 years or so is useless as the normal political pundits can batty around the usual suspects. NAFTA, Deregulation, President Regan, Tax cuts, globalization, a peacetime Army, and so on.

I was traveling quite frequently in those days and got impression from many different perspectives.

To me the difference was attitude-things were better because people thought they were better and it was contagious. True, President Regan was a highly effective cheerleader, however none of that would have worked if peoples attitudes that things were good were not already in place. President Obama would look foolish for giving a speech-for no reason whatsoever like Regan did-with chest pumping Americanism and patriotic nationalism to the tune of 'God Bless America' like was done then.

People think everything sucks-so it does. That, however, is not really the case. There is plenty going right in the country now however people refuse to open there eyes and see it.

Why, you ask? I have taken heat over the past few weeks for my relentless assault of the mainstream American media however I am convinced they(all the media-not just left or right leaning networks) are the root of all the discord Americans feel. The more controversy-black vs white, rich vs poor, gay or nay, man vs woman is not only what they desire-they thrive on it and are addicted too it. Like all addicts they are in constant denial that they are the problem.

My generation has passed so it's not my problem to solve. Go to any news outlet-Web, TV, print media and try to find something good. There is none and that is just the way they want it.

reply to post by spooky24


To be fair, by black budgets I mostly mean that funds need to be re-allocated to more important things, though to sway all of the short sighted interest groups this nation holds when its population is now larger and more diverse than ever is hardly even possibly if longer than a few moments time.

It's simply so hard to personally account for everyone or to snowball momentum into a movement, a movement that really just makes it become easier to monotonise your effort to become more easily disassembled by opponents.



I'll comment on your example of service industry job markets that suffered in the days your peers were just entering the work force. The interesting aspect of your story to me is that the lack of workers was an issue, people could easily get hired and everything would be OK IF the businesses did not suffer then. What may have been needed then was actually technology to fill the gap, whereas today, the growth of technology is outpacing the need for human labor in many "developed" areas. Combine this with a high population and we have today's problem. The technology and sciences that should be necessary to provide a good quality of life aren't as developed as it needs to be or well distributed. There are for profit interests stagnating growth of our scholars' work by reserving them for high payers. People FEAR that in the one week or two that a technology is released that helps remove desperation and poverty from the majority of the populace would result in people losing jobs they wouldn't need anymore. As if it's a bad thing.

When I compare the story of your era to this era, it seems that the influence of technology or the lack thereof is very large and shouldn't be overlooked.