Is Santa Coming This Year?

With the end of 2010 upon us, we would like to think that Santa, or some other magical figure is going to come and spread a good economy on the country. Actually, despite the high levels of unemployment, we are probably in a good economy right now, at least the economy we are going to have to get used to.

Corporate profits are booming, consumers are starting to spend again, and those with marketable skills are actually in short supply. What we don't have is an economy that will put our manual labor workforce to work.

For much of our history, we had a great need for workers who might not possess much more than a willingness to work hard. Our manufacturing, mining, farming, construction and similar industries needed and utilized these workers, training them just enough to do the job that need to be done.

Well, those jobs while not completely gone are in short supply, considering the labor force we have available.

The replacement jobs are those in various service industries, but even those jobs are disappearing.

There are a lot of factors that contribute to this and barring some more bubbles in construction or some other industry, the number of workers needed is simply not going to absorb our unemployed. Companies are outsourcing or automating as many of these jobs as they can, especially since turning off a machine in slow times is a lot less painful than laying off workers.

I might be short sighted, but the future I see is simply going to continue this trend. If you fit into this category, and are over 45, you are facing a tough competitive job market. Retraining is often brought up, but let's be honest. Even if they have the temperament, they will be competing with younger workers who grew up in a world where interacting with machines and computers was second nature to them.

I do think the problem will most likely take care of itself in the future as these workers age more and leave the workforce, but they will create a tremendous drain on social services and other resources for years to come. Looking at our deficits and national debt, the country is ill prepared to support this group.

We need to put them to work rebuilding America. There are so many things we need that will help this country thrive. The Government can't be the employer of these people, but Government policies need to support the projects we need that will rebuild the country and employ our people. Clean energy credits for homeowners, incentives for cars that run on Natural Gas, yes, Government funded projects to rebuild highways, bridges, railways and airports that will prepare us for the future. Each of these needs to be truly beneficial, we don't need bridges to nowhere, but much of our infrastructure is old and needs to be repaired or replaced.

On the way into work the other day I was looking at the results of American labor from the last century. We as a country need to get the spirit of America back and do the work we need to do. It will pay for itself as employment increases and efficiency improves, making the country a better place to work, and live.