South Dakota: Where The Jobs Are

Why people are moving to South Dakota
60% of people who moved to South Dakota did so for a new job or job transfer

South Dakota, home of Mount Rushmore, topped the list of states with the most inbound movers in 2016, and it’s mostly for the jobs.

The state, which has seen a 23% increase in people moving to the state in the last five years, took the No. 1 spot for the first time, beating Oregon, which had been in the top place for the past three years. South Dakota also attracted those looking to live closer to family and retire, according to the 40th annual moving study by St. Louis-based moving company United Van Lines. The study based its findings on states’ inbound and outbound percentages compared to total moves the company handles.

Of the people moving to South Dakota, 60% came for jobs. The state is home to financial services firms, like Citibank C, +0.83% , and has a low unemployment rate and reasonable home prices, said Michael Stoll, an economist and professor and chair of the Department of Public Policy at the University of California, Los Angeles, who worked with United Van Lines on the study. High demand jobs with high wages in South Dakota include registered nurses, accountants and auditors, general and operations managers, elementary school teachers, secondary school teachers and management analysts, according to the South Dakota Dept. of Labor & Regulation.

“There are more pull factors than push factors,” Stoll said. The unemployment rate in South Dakota was 2.7% in November, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics, compared with the U.S.’s unemployment rate that same month of 4.6%. The median home in South Dakota is about $170,000, according to real estate website Zillow’s home value index.

The top inbound states after South Dakota were Vermont, Oregon, Idaho, South Carolina, Washington state, then Washington, D.C., North Carolina, Nevada and Arizona. [...]

Interesting, that Oregon had been the top state drawing new people for the past three years. I'm pretty sure though, that most people coming to Oregon are looking to retire, not find work. Read the whole article for embedded links and more.

     

How to educate Americans for jobs

How to educate Americans for jobs? Ask the Germans, employers urge

INDIANAPOLIS — Two years. That’s how long it takes William Lankin’s fast-growing electrical contracting company to teach new hires with four-year university degrees the tricks of the trade.

These college grads “have learned the book stuff, but they don’t have real-world experience,” said Lankin, vice president of Industrial Electric. “They don’t know how to work with other people, or subcontractors — how to actually do business.”

Bringing them up to speed while paying them a salary is time-consuming and expensive, and even then there’s no guarantee that they’ll be good enough to keep. Which only complicates the original predicament: In spite of the still-soft job market, companies like Lankin’s can’t find enough qualified workers.

Now some hiring managers, a few policymakers, and a handful of community colleges are accepting help to solve this problem from an unexpected source: Germany

Through an initiative being quietly promoted by the German Embassy, U.S. colleges, which consider themselves part of the greatest higher-education system in the world, are importing the German model of career and technical education to keep up with a demand they can’t fill for skilled American workers.

“We said, ‘What is the best model?’” said Sue Smith, vice president for technology and applied sciences at Indiana’s Ivy Tech Community College, which has teamed up with Lankin’s company to create a program for prospective employees based on what the Germans do.

“And, quite honestly, the German model is the best model.”

It consists of a so-called dual system of education and training that combines a few days a week of classroom instruction at vocational schools with on-the-job apprenticeships that are designed to lead to full-time jobs for which graduates are ready straight out of school. The German students also receive a form of credential called a certification qualification.

This simple setup keeps German industry humming, and youth unemployment down to about 8 percent — less than half of what it is in the United States — according to the German Embassy.

By comparison, routes to similar careers in the United States are convoluted and confusing, even as the need for workers to fill them escalates, a study by the Organization of Economic Cooperation and Development found. [...]

Read the whole thing for embedded links, video and more. There are some interesting comments in the comments section.

This website has a seven minute video:

Skills Initiative: Enhancing German-American Cooperation on Workforce Training

The German Embassy in Washington, DC presents the Skills Initiative as one of the cornerstones of its work.

Through the Skills Initiative, the German Embassy is bringing together German and American businesses and local education/training providers with the aim of developing training programs best suited to businesses’ needs. The Embassy launched the Skills Initiative to identify and spread best practices in sustainable workforce development in the USA.

Now the Embassy, through Skills Initiative, is seeking cooperation with federal states, locally convening groups of German companies and bringing them together with training providers so that they can work on the best fit for training programs in their area. [...]

The video has some interesting comments by American students who are participating and learning career skills, about why it is such an attractive alternative to college.
     

Would robots be better or worse for people?

There are conflicting opinions:

Pew: Split views on robots’ employment benefits

WASHINGTON — In 2025, self-driving cars could be the norm, people could have more leisure time and goods could become cheaper. Or, there could be chronic unemployment and an even wider income gap, human interaction could become a luxury and the wealthy could live in walled cities with robots serving as labor.

Or, very little could change.

A new survey released Wednesday by the Pew Research Center’s Internet Project and Elon University’s Imagining the Internet Center found that, when asked about the impact of artificial intelligence on jobs, nearly 1,900 experts and other respondents were divided over what to expect 11 years from now.

Forty-eight percent said robots would kill more jobs than they create, and 52 percent said technology will create more jobs than it destroys.

Respondents also varied widely when asked to elaborate on their expectations of jobs in the next decade. Some said that self-driving cars would be common, eliminating taxi cab and long-haul truck drivers. Some said that we should expect the wealthy to live in seclusion, using robot labor. Others were more conservative, cautioning that technology never moves quite as fast as people expect and humans aren’t so easily replaceable.

“We consistently underestimate the intelligence and complexity of human beings,” said Jonathan Grudin, principal researcher at Microsoft, who recalls that 40 years ago, people said that advances in computer-coding language were going to kill programming jobs.

Even as technology removed jobs such as secretaries and operators, it created brand new jobs, including Web marketing, Grudin said. And, as Grudin and other survey responders noted, 11 years isn’t much time for significant changes to take place, anyway.

Aaron Smith, senior researcher with the Pew Research Center’s Internet Project, said the results were unusually divided. He noted that in similar Pew surveys about the Internet over the past 12 years, there tended to be general consensus among the respondents, which included research scientists and a range of others, from business leaders to journalists. [...]

It goes on to give more opinions from educated people who make good cases for their opinions. Reading them all, it seems like no one can say exactly how it's going to play out, though a common theme of many of the opinions is, that over time, there may indeed be less jobs for people. And what changes will THAT bring? That seems to be the big question underlying it all.

     

The End of Work?

Uh... what exactly does that mean? Depends who you talk to:

Should We Fear "the End of Work"?

[...]  Cornell University's School of Industrial and Labor Relations recently brought together 40 leading economists, policy makers, engineers, bankers, corporate executives, social scientists, philanthropists, journalists and statisticians for a day-long exploration of how technology is shaping -- or misshaping -- the American workplace.

Coming up with answers was not the goal: Cornell's belief was that searching for consensus in a one-day meeting would be futile. Initially, I wondered about the utility of that, given the gravity of the economic challenge facing the country. But it was a good decision. The range of views on what's happening was so wide -- and surprising -- that reaching realistic solutions would have been, well, unrealistic. Precisely because this kind of a meeting has been so rare, the meeting imposed the Chatham House Rule on attendees: we could talk afterwards about what was said, but not about who said it. (I later asked some of those who attended if I could quote them directly; almost all said yes.) If I had to sum up a fascinating day -- well, let's save that for the end, after you've seen the amazing diversity of views on the future of work.

Here's perhaps the fundamental question about what's going on in the American economy as it struggles to recover from the Great Recession: "How is this recovery different from other recoveries?" Or is it?

To put it in economese, is the persistently high level of unemployment a result of cyclical factors (the traditional ups and downs of economic growth) or structural factors (new game-changing technologies, dramatic shifts in the global economy)? The NewsHour has covered this debate several times, including economists duking it out in one recent instance.

From one decades-long leading student of the American economy came a succinct one-liner in favor of cyclicality: "This isn't a jobless economic recovery as everyone insists on calling it; it's simply just not yet a recovery."

In other words, as painful as the waiting certainly is, the economy will heal -- and once again, create jobs -- in time.

"Brace yourselves," countered Eric Brynjolfsson, from MIT's Sloan School, co-author of "Race Against the Machine," a much-talked-about recent book which argues that the introduction of new transformative technologies has only just begun, and that we're dangerously unable to perceive what's actually going to happen. (Brynjolffson was featured in a Making Sen$e broadcast story in 2011.) He added:

"Many of our intuitions about what's coming next are going to fail us. All the disruptions we've been talking about today about the past 10 years, the past 20 years -- as important as they've been and as hard-hitting as they've been for so many people -- are just a small glimmer of the much bigger disruptions that we think are in store for us in the next 10 and 20 years, at least the ones that are related to technology."

Princeton University economist Alan Blinder, who served in the 1990s as vice chairman of the Federal Reserve, took a more measured view. He believes that both cyclical problems and disruptive technological change are at play, along with the changing face of the global economy:

"In terms of the number of jobs, it looks like an awful lot of the problem is cyclical. That's the first problem.

"The second problem is the lagging average wage. Until a few decades ago, India, China, and the former Soviet Union were isolated and not really participating in the world economy. But now they have roughly doubled the world's labor force, in a couple of decades.

"What did they bring to the table? Capital? No. They had almost none. But they had a lot of labor. So, if you double the amount of world labor and you don't change the amount of world capital much, then loosely speaking, the returns to labor are going to go down while the returns to capital go up. And this is about to end. And it's not mainly about technology.

"But then there is the third problem: what's behind the trend toward greater wage inequality? The non-economist in me wants to think about institutions and social norms. Some of the increase in inequality has to stem from changing attitudes in our society. I just don't believe that it's only technology."

The Promise and Perils of a Machine that Can Make Anything

The role of automation in the decline of manufacturing jobs has been front-and-center since the end of the recession. (Well, since the Luddites in the 19th century, but let's move on.) Cornell University's Hod Lipson is one of the country's most prominent experts on the interplay of robotics, IT and manufacturing. Lipson's next book is titled, ominously, "The Promise and Perils of a Machine that Can Make Anything." I found his presentation both powerful and unsettling:

"Machines are better at learning than humans in many different areas. So now the question is, what will they learn and what's the end game?
"Are we talking about the future of jobs in the next five years, 10 years, 50 years or 100 years?

"If you're talking 100 years, there's no doubt in my mind that all jobs will be gone, including creative ones. And 100 years is not far in the future -- some of our children will be alive in 100 years."

Trained years ago as an engineer myself, I get the enthusiasm for technological solutions to manufacturing problems. But given the persistent levels of unemployment, I asked Lipson if the engineering profession didn't have to take a broader view. His answer was blunt -- but also open to the possibility of change:

"In a way, we cannot help ourselves. We try to automate every difficult task that we see. It is rooted in the fact that the mantra of engineering has always been to try to alleviate drudgery and increase productivity -- that was the good thing to do. That's what we still train our students to do.

"But what I'm hearing here is that maybe we should redirect our efforts, and try to solve a new kind of problem. I'm not sure what that problem is. But I'm sure that if you can define what the problem is that we need to solve, then we can start thinking about how to solve it, using the same engineering tools."

Thomas Kochan, the co-director of MIT's Institute for Work and Employment Research, jumped in on that point. Decades ago, MIT was one of the first engineering schools in the country to focus on the public policy implications of engineering innovations. (Full disclosure: I'm an MIT grad). Here's what he had to say:

"Instead of focusing on how do we drive labor out and how do we eliminate variability by standardizing everything, we need the engineering profession to think about the world's big problems, and then to understand that it's the interaction between skills, the way in which we organize our work, and the technology that really drives productivity.

"The engineering profession needs to catch up with the understanding of how technology can be enhancing to society, without just thinking about how it drives out labor, through innovations. I think if we focus more on enhancing human skills, we'd get a lot more societal benefit out of the next generation of technology."

Lipson and the other tech experts took some pointed, albeit well-mannered, heat from people worried that more efficient production is nearly always equated with eliminating human workers. As one participant put it: "optimistically inventing stuff" with too little thought for the social consequences. [...]

There is a lot more, but I can't excerpt the whole article. I can't say what is going to happen, but there is plenty food for thought here.
     

Austerity, Spending, and Economic Growth

Alex Castellanos says Europe hasn't really embraced austerity yet:

Could austerity be the right cure for Europe's hangover?

(CNN) -- I never imagined we would find a no-win question to displace the genre's champ, "Have you stopped beating your wife?" Now, there is contender: "Does austerity work?"

Fareed Zakaria tells us it doesn't, faulting it for Europe's constriction. The problem is not a borderless European financial system, unable to quarantine nations sick with public and private debt. Oh, no, Zakaria writes, "The larger failure, shared across Europe, has been too much austerity."

In the Washington Post, Ezra Klein notes unemployment is "skyrocketing" across Europe and he contends the fault lies in shrinking budget deficits brought by spending cuts and tax increases. Klein tells us this is what austerity looks like "and it can be expected to reduce economic growth."

As the UK slides into a double-dip recession, economist Paul Krugman blames David Cameron's austerity. Borrowing from John Maynard Keynes, he tells us, "The boom, not the slump, is the right time for austerity."

Never mind that spending in Britain is virtually unchanged and other nations in Europe are spending more. Neal Reynolds writes that "austerity," as practiced in Euro27 countries, has actually increased government spending from 46% to 51% of Europe's GDP from 2006 to 2010.

Greece, where rioters protest "austeros," increased its public sector expenditures from 45.2 % of GDP to 50.1% tin he same period. As the Richmond Times-Dispatch noted, in 2011, 23 of the EU's 27 nations jacked up their spending levels. This year 24 will. Apparently, it is not austerity itself that constricts economies. The mere thought of austerity is enough to choke the eurozone to death.

Austerity seems to be working just fine for the masters of the practice, the Germans: We are counting on them to bail out the entire eurozone.

[...]

On June 17, the world will come to an end, as it often does. Ripples from Europe's unraveling will begin traveling to America. Greece will have an election. Greeks will vote to make Germans work until they are 67 so they can retire at 50. They will vote to make someone else pay their bills, fund their holidays and support their benefits.

They will be lectured about this by an American president who asks his own nation to make China pay its bills, fund its holidays and support its benefits. We can only hope he does it from the Hellenic state of California, which has also attempted to outsmart austerity. Remarkably, it hasn't grown jobs, just debt. [...]

Those who complain the most about austerity, are the ones who won't practice it. And they are the ones who are in shit-street financially, wanting someone else to bail them out. The rest of the article explains perfectly why they won't get gain, can't get gain, without some austerity pain first, because they spent (and continue to spend) money they didn't (and still don't) have. Castellanos says that asking whether austerity works is like asking a drinker if sobriety works. Those who are on a binge, (be it spending or drinking) aren't likely to agree.


Austerity alone isn't the answer though, to get things moving again. Jeffery Miron, a senior fellow at the Cato Institute, offers this:

How to get economy growing fast

Cambridge, Massachusetts (CNN) -- In a recent discussion of what his administration might accomplish, Mitt Romney claimed that "by virtue of the policies that we put in place, we'd get the unemployment rate down to 6%, and perhaps a little lower," over a period of four years.

Is this goal attainable?

It is. Indeed, it is not that tough a task. If the United States avoids new growth-retarding policies, such as the tax hikes scheduled for January 1, the economy's natural adjustments will lower unemployment substantially. These include downward adjustments in wages, reallocation of job-seekers from slower to faster growing sectors and regions, reduced in-migration plus increased out-migration, and withdrawals from the labor force.

These adjustments do not always work quickly or for everyone (not every former construction worker can become a computer technician). But history suggests the adjustments do occur, as they have since the recession began. Over the next four years, they will continue to lower the unemployment rate, if not to 6%, at least near that territory.

The more important task for either presidential candidate is restoring the economy to its prerecession growth path. Real GDP has historically grown about 3% per year, and major downturns have been followed by strong recoveries. Within two to three years, therefore, output is typically "back where it would have been."

In this recession, the rapid recovery phase has so far been absent; real GDP is still well below where one would have predicted pre-2008, and with average growth under 3% since the recession ended, the gap grows larger every quarter.

So can Romney, or anyone, get us back to a higher growth rate? Yes. Here is a program that will restore U.S. economic performance: [...]

Miron goes on to list eight reforms that are needed, that make good sense. I suspect some Republicans may have a problem with #4, but the world is changing, including American demographics, and we're going to have to adapt to what IS.
     

Where the jobs are: Health Care

I've posted previously about MBTI personality testing as a tool for choosing a compatible career. I tested as an ISTJ, one of 16 personality types.

At the Keirsey website, the sixteen types are divided into four temperament groups: Guardians, Idealists, Artisans and Rationals. And there are four sub-types for each of those. My type, ISTJ, is a Guardian, with the sub-type being The Inspector.

Anyhow, one link on their right sidebar was to an article that said there is one job sector that continues to enjoy job growth, and is expected to continue to do so for the foreseeable future. And that sector has jobs that suit each one of the personality types! I found it quite interesting:

Rx For an Ailing Career Outlook:
Health Care is a Growth Industry

With the economy in seeming freefall, and companies daily announcing layoff plans, the employment picture is looking bleak for those entering the workforce, or those hit by the layoffs needing to find new jobs.

However, there is one employment sector that is continuing to show steady growth. According to Joanne Giudicelli, Talent Management Consultant and author of HIRE POWER: A Radical New Strategy for Defining and Executing Successful Hiring, the health care sector is itself one of the healthiest in terms of employment opportunities. According to Giudicelli, "As the large crop of Baby Boomers age, the need for health workers has increased. The need is not only found in the United States, but in countries throughout the world." Backing Giudicelli's statement, an August 1, 2008 report from the Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS) stated that "employment continued to fall in construction, manufacturing, and several service-providing industries, while health care continued to add jobs."

[...]

Career Coach and Author Alice Fairhurst points out, "While most people are aware of the critical need for primary care physicians, physician assistants and nursing staff, many do not realize the shortage in the allied health professionals such as respiratory care practitioners, medical transcriptionists, radiographers and lab technicians. Those with the highest projected need include physical therapist assistants, dental hygienists and pharmacy technicians. Some health care providers are working with two year colleges to provide needed clinical training."

Mid-career workers who have lost their jobs due to downsizing are taking training to enter these fields where demand is high. And people who worked in health care in another country are getting certification in the United States to fill the need.

To help sort out the various opportunities in this growing sector, Fairhurst recommends individuals take the Keirsey Temperament Sorter which can help guide a person into which of the careers might be more satisfying. [...]

The full article gives examples of suitable jobs for the different types. If you don't know your type, but want to find out, try taking the MBTI test for free, here or here.

A job skill that will always be in demand, is a nice thing to have. And if it's one that suites your personality too, so much the better.


Also see:

What to do in college right now

Best alternative to grad school

Bad career advice: Do what you love

There Are No Bad Bosses, Only Whiny Employees.

Overcome the willpower myth
     

Renewal of Tax Cuts: What's at stake

How Congress' tax-cut decision may affect economy

On this, economists agree: Extending tax cuts passed under President George W. Bush for low- and middle-income people would strengthen the weak economy.

The question is what to do about the highest-paid 3 percent of taxpayers. Should Congress let their tax cuts expire at year's end as scheduled? Extend them for only a while? Or make them permanent?

It isn't just a debate over how much money high-income Americans should get to keep. It's about how much their tax cuts might aid the economy. And how much they'll affect the budget deficit years from now.

But first, consider what would happen next year if Congress let the tax cuts for everyone expire as scheduled. According to Moody's Analytics, the deficit would drop to $732 billion. That's well below the $1.3 trillion deficit for the budget year that ended Sept. 30.

At the same time, the economy would suffer, Moody's says: Growth would tail off to just 0.9 percent next year. That's scarcely more than a recessionary pace. And unemployment would average 10.7 percent next year.

That's because higher taxes would leave people with less money to spend. Businesses would be less inclined to hire. Economic growth would slide. Yet if Democrats and Republicans can't reach a deal during the post-election lame-duck session that began this month, taxes will rise across the board in January.

Republicans triumphant in the midterm elections insist that everyone, regardless of income, should continue to enjoy the tax cuts approved during George W. Bush's presidency. [...]

It goes on to give three options that could play out, and their probable consequences. It's a short but informative article, well worth the read.

Then there's this:

Thus Does the Economy Grow

[...] Here, then, are ten practical tips for elected Republican officials, who are torn between trying to govern as a majority party and trying to oppose President Obama’s agenda as a minority party.

[...]

Six. Don’t delink income-tax rates. The strategy we developed in 2001 and 2003 worked. Forced by reconciliation rules to sunset the tax cuts, we set them all to expire on the same day. President Bush reframed the top income-tax rates as small-business tax rates. This argument won the day in 2003 and 2010 and will win again as long as the expiration dates remain synchronized. Don’t fall for the trap of temporarily extending the top rates and permanently extending the others. This would guarantee future increases in the top rates.

Seven. Offer to help the president expand free trade and open investment. Rebuild the center-right free-trade coalition. The president will need to deliver a few Democrats to offset the protectionist Republicans (darn them). You can fight economic isolationism, raise American standards of living, help American allies in Latin America and Asia, cooperate with the president, and split congressional Democrats. That’s a five-part win.

[...]

Read all ten, they're good.
     

"shipping jobs overseas" argument is flawed

See the logic. Do the math:

Shipping out jobs
A myth pols find convenient

With campaign season comes predictable charges that Candidate X favors "tax breaks for corporations that ship US jobs overseas." It's a bogus claim.

With unemployment still stubbornly high, Americans are rightly worried about the economy. And politicians of both parties -- from President Obama on down -- have seized on US multinational companies as a convenient scapegoat.

The charge sounds logical: Under the US corporate tax code, US-based companies aren't taxed on profits that their affiliates abroad earn until those profits are returned here. Supposedly, this "tax break" gives firms an incentive to create jobs overseas rather than at home, so any candidate who doesn't want to impose higher taxes on those foreign operations is guilty of "shipping jobs overseas."

In fact, American companies have quite valid reasons beyond any tax advantage to establish overseas affiliates: That's how they reach foreign customers with US-branded goods and services.

Those affiliates allow US companies to sell services that can only be delivered where the customer lives (such as fast food and retail) or to customize their products, such as automobiles, to better reflect the taste of customers in foreign markets.

In 2008, US companies sold more than $6 trillion worth of goods and services through overseas affiliates -- three times what US companies exported from America. And, no, those affiliates aren't mainly "export platforms," set up to ship goods back to the United States: Almost 90 percent of what they produce abroad is sold abroad.

It's not about access to "cheap labor," either: More than three-quarters of outward US manufacturing investment goes to other rich, developed economies like Canada and the European Union. That's where they find the wealthy customers, skilled workers, open markets, efficient infrastructure and political stability to operate profitably.

Indeed, US manufacturing companies invest a modest $2 billion a year in China, compared to $30 billion a year in Europe.

Nor do jobs created by those investments come at the expense of American workers. In fact, the more workers US multinationals hire abroad, the more they tend to hire at their parent operations in America. Ramped up production at affiliates stimulates demand at home for managers, accountants, engineers and sales reps. It also stokes demand for the export of higher-end components and services from the US-based parent.

But the charge is worse yet -- because if Congress were to repeal the tax exemption for income earned abroad, it would kill American jobs. [...]

Read the rest and see how. The truth matters.
     

Which party is better at job growth?

How job growth looked before and after the Democrats took control of Congress

This is why we have 10% unemployment. The Democrats keep blaming George Bush and the Republicans for it, but it's congress that controls economic policy. And since it's the Democrats who've controlled congress since 2007, the unemployment we are seeing today is largely due to their policies and decision-making. The more power they got, the more employment dropped.