Jobs

Many job seekers know the phrase “We’re looking for someone with more experience.” It might be true, but there are reasons to be suspicious it’s just an excuse in order to have an easy way to end an interview. A few years ago, the Bureau of Labor Statistics expanded their classification of occupational education and training […]

President Carter’s domestic policy advisor, Stuart Eizenstat, and Robert Lerman, an Urban Institute Fellow, claim there is a skills gap in manufacturing that threatens America’s manufacturing comeback (“Bring back the apprentice”, Washington Post, May 5, 2013). Readers are asked to accept a citation from an unnamed survey that claims 600,000 jobs go unfilled because the […]

Growing opinion from outside of teaching expects teachers to produce a quality product measured by student test scores. The use of test scores in teacher evaluation and the use of test scores was the primary contention for teachers in the Chicago teacher strike. Manufactured products fail as a result of defective materials and workmanship, and […]

President Lyndon Johnson noticed the long-term decline of manufacturing jobs back in 1964, when he predicted that the nation would be capable of maintaining its present levels of production in 1975 with 20 million fewer workers*. He made the prediction during a period when automation was getting lots of attention. Calculating inflation adjusted GDP dollars […]