Current Events #1

Name: Jimmy Alverson
Source: Future Hiring Will Mainly Benefit the High-Skilled, The Associated Press, The New York Times, 5 September 2010.
Summary: This article discussed the spike in unemployment and the creation of new jobs in the future. Economists predict there to be two types of jobs in the future. High-skill, high-paying jobs or low-skill, low-paying jobs. That leaves less mid-level jobs which used to make up the bulk of the work-force. A further division between the affluent and poor is expected to occur if the type of jobs do become more or less specialized. Currently the unemployment rate is 9.6% or 14.9 million people. This shift in the reduction of mid-level jobs stems from an economy led by manufacturing to one led by service industries. The hardest sector of unemployment has come in the real estate industry. Some of the sectors that are going to see the most growth in the number of jobs are health care professions, information technology jobs, and newly created industries.
Analysis: This is important to the world and, at least, the United States because with unemployment comes reduced spending, and with reduced spending there less stimulation to pull the country out of the recession. People from the United States would also buy less imports as they might cost more due to import taxes and the country that the products are bought from will get less revenue and not help their economic situation. This is also important for the rest of the world because it could show that their is a global movement for less middle-income jobs and more division between rich and poor. This is an interesting development because typically the middle-class, at least in the United States, held the majority of jobs in the workforce. I think, in order to create more jobs, the government needs to give tax breaks to middle to lower income people to create more spending which will then help create more need for labor or employment. As far as getting people to have more knowledge or skill for a job, college should be more affordable to people with lower incomes. The government should also have more initiative for keeping kids in school and showing the benefits of higher education. Another way to create more jobs in the United States is to stop outsourcing jobs to other countries by providing incentives to the companies or put a higher tax on imports.