<p>jym - what field is he in? How do they bypass the “competitive wage” requirement (or is it “N/A” nowadays?)</p>
<p>It certainly skipped Michigan. We’re still in a depression. And the government does not want to help us out like they did Wall Street either. They can save them by spending trillions of dollars, but they cant afford 10 billion for GM and Chrysler. Comparatively it doesn’t seem fair, but it does hint at who is scratching who’s back. Hopefully it does pick up in here soon though.</p>
<p>Bunsenburner-</p>
<p>The folks are “hired” as contractors (not FTEs), often through a 3rd party (ie subcontracted with a minority contractor ). Thats probably how the rates are less competitive. Just guessing though…</p>
<p>Wow, what a loophole! Disgusting. Ages ago, when we tried to hire a person who needed an H1B (this was a scientist with unique set of skills), as I recall, our HR had to submit some paperwork that this person would be paid a competitive wage.</p>
<p>The economy is definitely doing a little better here in Minnesota, with employers adding more jobs than they’re cutting. At 7.3% our unemployment rate is high by historical standards but well below the national average of 9.7% and roughly 1% better than last year at this time, so things are moving in the right direction. Lots of our big local employers—health care industry and medical device manufacturers—seem pretty immune from recession. Others might be even a little countercyclical—General Mills is doing well because people eat more Cheerios at home in a recession, as is Target Corp which benefits from a consumer shift to discount retailers. Best Buy is also doing pretty well, as people have continued to buy consumer electronics at a pretty good clip, especially at big box discounters. Neighboring North Dakota is doing even better, with an unemployment rate around 4.1%. And neighboring Canada is rebounding strongly from the recession, with lots of hiring and the loonie nearing parity with the U.S. dollar for the first time in decades. I’d look for some of that Canadian cash to start to trickle over the border soon. The Mall of America already attracts a very strong international customer base, not only Canadians but also a lot of Europeans who fly in with empty suitcases and leave stocked up with (for them) cheap goods due to the weak dollar. Who knew we’d become the bargain-basement retailer to the world?</p>
<p>Agree, bunsenburner-- it stinks</p>
<p>What additionally fries my cookies is that for the government contracts there is some incentive to use minority contracting cos. So big corporation gets bene’s for using minoritycontractor. Then too they (big company) can play “see no evil, hear no evil” with respect to what the subcontractors are paid. Their (big company’s) deal is only with the minority contractor-- what they (minority contractor) pay their subs is up to them. Seriously crummy. Keeps the pay painfuly low for the US subcontractors who are willing to work for that rate and able to get hired.</p>
<p>CT continues to have a top-heavy government. See this article in today’s NYT:
Notice how ineffective Rell is in eliminating these regulatory boards and commissions. Here’s why: “Appointing their members also gives governors and lawmakers a means to reward supporters.”</p>
<p>Heck, our state has not been able to get the kids back to school and remains the school with the fewest instructional days in the nation! It still spends more than most states per student and has a dismal performance record. 
Cutting school instructional days was one of the first things union & governor agreed to & the kids & teachers are stuck. :(</p>
<p>Isn’t it a question of timing? The recession began before we were notified - when people did feel the pain, we learned that things had started slipping a few months before. Why is recovery any different? I’m hoping that’s the case. When musicians stop playing, it takes a moment for the silence to reach the audience. There’s always a lag between action and awareness. That would mean the opportunity for reform is NOW when people’s attention is focused. In NY state, I don’t think there’s anyone in political power who has the capability of enacting reform.</p>
<p>The difference between this recovery and previous recovery is that the slog back on jobs will be very, very slow. We were overconsuming and now consumer spending levels have ratcheted back and that may become entrenched in minds for a generation. That’s the kind of environment that I grew up in where the economy looked like it would always be difficult.</p>
<p>I live in CT as well, and can report more activity, but not more payment. I act to collect accounts receivable, but with VERY mixed results. I do see more ‘movement’ but a number of small businesses are going to have to write down the pending payments and move on, including me.</p>
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<p>I know this is conventional wisdom right now, but Floyd Norris’s column on page 1 of today’s NY Times suggests otherwise. Norris says everyone’s thinking about the slow, weak recoveries we had from the last two recessions. But those were shallow recessions, which historically are followed by slow recoveries. Norris says the historical pattern is that steep, deep recessions like the one we’re now coming out of are usually followed by strong recoveries. And the current recovery in jobs, he says, may be stronger than meets the eye; household survey data show a strong gain of 1.1 million jobs in the first quarter of 2010, the best quarterly jobs gain since 2005. Employer survey data don’t match that figure, but Norris says in past recoveries the initial employer survey data had to be heavily revised upward as the extent of job gains became clearer. More fundamentally, Norris suggests, people have been talking about the “new normal” for the last decade or so, as if old rules no longer apply to today’s economy. That made many people naively optimistic and oblivious to risk in the housing bubble and derivatives trading, so that no one saw the crash coming. Now an inside-out version of the same psychology may be making people unduly pessimistic about recovery. Except that, understandably enough, recessions normally make people pessimistic, so that historically speaking it’s “normal” to underestimate the strength of a recovery while it’s happening. Norris could be wrong, of course. But it’s worth considering.</p>
<p>[High</a> and Low Finance - Why So Glum? History Suggests a Strong Recovery - NYTimes.com](<a href=“http://www.nytimes.com/2010/04/09/business/09norris.html?src=me&ref=homepage]High”>http://www.nytimes.com/2010/04/09/business/09norris.html?src=me&ref=homepage)</p>
<p>Someone who’s good with math, help me out here. If:
(1) we’re gaining 1.1 Million jobs a quarter; and
(2) 1.1M is considered an excellent level (ie, best in five years); and
(3) we lost 7 Million jobs during the recession; and
(4) we need 1 Million NEW jobs each year to account for population growth; and
(5) the recession began in Fall 2007.</p>
<p>Then how long will it be before we are back to where we were in the Fall of 2007?</p>
<br>
<br>
<p>Here’s part of that article (which I read yesterday):</p>
<p>“I looked back at the recoveries after seven recessions from 1950 through 1982 and found”</p>
<p>The economic downturn has been between the depression and the more recent downturns. There have been a lot of comparisons to 2007 and 1929, moreso than those after 1950. I think that including something that’s more of a generational thing for comparison would be a more realistic approach. Did 2007/2008 break the consumer of spending habits? Is that a long enough downturn? Well, it has extended into 2009 and 2010 in terms of jobs, state revenues and other things.</p>
<p>I’m pretty optimistic right now. We have a fairly robust thread on the Politics board where we talk about positive and negative indicators. I’d be very happy if we recovered quickly on the jobs front. Australia is recovering right now. They’re actually running really hot. Unemployment is expected to drop to 5% this year and I think that they will need to crank up interest rates higher than the current 4.25%.</p>
<p>NewHope,
Don’t you also have to figure in the jobs that will be lost during this time as well? And do the numbers you report reflect loss/gain of fullltime jobs vs pt time or contract work? How do we figure in the people who are under-employed? Oooh, my head is spinning.</p>
<p>Just my little corner of the world in the upper Midwest, but my client company just released signficant funds for new projects in the next year. After being VERY tightfisted last year. Not as much as pre-recession funding, but a real uptick. Suddenly (last two weeks) we have more work than we can handle, and we are looking to hire more help (high paid technical contractors). I also noticed traffic during my commute was very heavy last week (pretty much back to pre-recession levels). That has been a bit of a silver lining of the recession, commuting traffic has been very light for almost 2 years… but I sat in traffic jams last week for the first time in ages.</p>
<p>Add AZ as another place where an “improving” economy has yet to be seen. </p>
<p>We’re still at historic levels of unemployment (10%) and no one is hiring, because our traditional economic mainstays of tourism and development/construction have taken big hits. Bankruptcy filings are averaging over 2,000 per month. We have a housing market where foreclosures hit an all-time high in March, and the Phoenix area is on track to see 50,000 foreclosures this year.</p>
<p>And I don’t see any end in sight.</p>
<p>jym - My head is spinning too. That was the motivation for starting this thread. The abundance of possibilities is such that I’m not sure how newly-created jobs benefit the economy. If the economy is “doing well” with seven to ten million workers on the sidelines, perhaps America has “right-sized” to the proper level. S*cks for those millions obviously.</p>
<p>I just got a call a few minutes ago from a colleague who is also seeing a significant uptick in project work at his client (same city), he was looking for help and wondered if I am available. When companies start funding projects again, that is a big boost for the economy a few months down the road… fingers crossed that it is sustained and widespread!</p>
<p>^^ I don’t think anyone is saying the economy is “doing well,” NewHope. We’re coming off the worst recession since the Great Depression, so there’s still a lot of pain out there and a tremendous amount of lost ground to make up. But I think it’s pretty clear the downward trend has been reversed and things are again starting to move in a positive direction—not everywhere all at once, and not nearly fast enough for those who were hurt worst by the recession, but overall in a positive direction, with some areas and sectors moving ahead quite strongly, others more weakly, others still stagnant. The question is, how brisk, how broad, and how sustainable will the recovery be? It may still take a couple of years to get back to pre-2007 employment levels. In some places—Michigan, Florida, Arizona, California, Nevada—it may take a lot longer than that, if ever. But a positive overall trend is definitely underway and that’s got to be better news than the direction we were headed a year or 18 months ago.</p>