The Unemployment Timebomb is Quietly Ticking | Hacker News Reader

The Unemployment Timebomb is Quietly Ticking

telegraph.co.uk

14 pointshachiya7 comments

I love the smell of 'Atlas Shrugged' in the morning...

This is nothing but typical scaremongering from our good old British press. To the right hand side is a long, scrolling list of, er, job openings. (I've flagged it.)

Commenting that you've flagged is considered bad form at HN (it's in the rules). I have trouble resisting sometimes myself.

Some of those jobs:

Neurophysiologists: Band 6/7 Location: Southhampton | Salary: On Application

Cardiac Physiologists : Bands 6/7 Location: Southhampton | Salary: On Application

Yes a scrolling list of jobs the beer and soccer (football) crowd isn't qualified to do.

Jobs are still available for physicians, engineers and programmers but not widget assemblers.

I live in a city which is noted for it's low unemployment, high quality of living, etc. However, the layoffs are beginning.

Even government (funded) jobs like Head Start are in trouble. The stimulus money promised to state and local organisations just isn't there.

I know this is anecdotal and we won't know how bad it is for several months.

Which just so happens to be one of the main points of the article. What are our governments going to do with the masses of unemployed blue collar workers?

There's no quickie solution for this. We believe here that you can't just scale a tech industry (i.e. churn out massive numbers of CS degrees a la India or China and hope some magic happens). Then how can you similarly retrain that entire blue collar workforce?

Now I'm not suggesting that a massive government intervention is going to work. Whatever solution we find that works in the end is going to have to be more deep and creative than anything on the table right now.

Do you believe that we will find a solution? What brought us out of the Depression? WWII?

I don't know and nobody knows how to "fix" this. I'm not arguing with you, just making the point that no one can wave a wand or pass a law to make jobs.

Yes, you can employ a percentage of the population with make work jobs (WPA jobs like my grandfathers had). But that only keeps people from starving and rioting. It doesn't fix the problem.

I largely agree. I think most will agree that unemployment is a major concern, and I think all but the most optimistic think it will be a major concern for some time.

But this article tries to border on the apocalyptic with little justification.

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