Consumer spending lags, but what about job creation?
Shopping, retail sales, consumer spending — all these things drive economic recovery. But the most significant crisis all of us get hit by during a recession is the loss of a job, or job cutbacks, etc. And until unemployment declines and job creation seriously kicks in, any economic recovery won’t mean much to most folks, will it?
In our community, the media was all aflutter yesterday about a company that announced it was adding 150+ new jobs in the next few weeks. BUT — most of those doing the rejoicing aren’t the people who will end up with those jobs. The company is a “calling center” for vacation telemarketers. Unless you’re on a sales job search, they won’t be jobs you’ll get excited about. (Ever work at telemarketing vacation timeshares? You probably don’t want to — trust me on that.)
Gone, it seems, are the days when American job creation meant jobs where people MAKE something. Jobs for assembling things, even, are getting hard to find. There are, however, quite a number of minimum wage jobs where you “flip” things (as in hamburgers) in lots of communities.
When the telemarketing and fast-food jobs are replaced with serious jobs, THEN talk to me about job creation. That’s when the economic recovery will start to swing into action.