Is a Lean Economy Turning Mean? "Lean all the time?"

[DeepModem Mom]

NYT: March 2, 2008
Is a Lean Economy Turning Mean?
By PETER S. GOODMAN

....Across the nation, the labor market has been deteriorating. Many companies, long reluctant to add workers, are hunkered down and waiting for improved prospects, engaged in what Ed McKelvey, a senior economist at Goldman Sachs, calls “a hiring strike.” Americans with jobs are taking cuts to their work hours; those without jobs are staying out of work longer, or accepting positions that pay far less than they earned previously.

Teenagers are struggling to land minimum-wage jobs at fast-food restaurants, because those positions are increasingly being filled by adults. And those with poor credit are finding that this can disqualify them from getting a job. In many communities, dreams of upward mobility are yielding to despair and the grim realization that the economy — not strong for less-educated workers even when it was growing — may now be shrinking, making it tougher than ever to find a job. Indeed, the increasingly anemic job market comes on the heels of six years of economic expansion that delivered robust corporate profits but scant job growth. The last recession, in 2001, was followed by a so-called jobless recovery. As the economy resumed growing, payrolls continued to shrink....

***

Government data show that the labor market has weakened in recent years for nearly every demographic group. Women as well as men; whites, blacks, Hispanics and Asian-Americans; teenagers and the middle-aged; high school graduates and those with college degrees. In terms of employment as a percentage of population, all remain below the level reached before the last recession.

The source of this weakening and what it says about the overall, long-term health of the economy are the subject of fractious debate.
Some economists argue that the labor market has merely settled back to earth after years of ridiculously aggressive investment in technology, which created far more jobs in the 1990s than could be sustained....But others conclude that the sluggish job market reflects long-term, systemic forces reshaping the American economy. It represents, they say, the underbelly of the so-called new moderation that has made recessions less frequent and less severe. Traditionally, the American economy has often expanded in extreme cycles. In periods of growth, companies hire aggressively. When they sense a slowdown, they cut back, laying off workers and curtailing investments, amplifying the ripples of retrenchment. Now, however, companies aim to keep their work forces lean all the time....

http://www.nytimes.com/2008/03/02/business/02jobs.html?_r=1&oref=slogin&ref=todayspaper&pagewanted=print

[Deja Q]

1. What got the US out of the Great Depression of the 1930s?

Seems what stimulated the economy back then might have the same effect now.

If it's true that everything led to the Great Depression (GD, how amusing) is what's happening now too.

[ingac70]

2. Deficit spending is what got us out of the Depression...

Deficit spending domestically was what worked back in the day....the US is so deep in debt, from deficit spending on everything but stuff in the interest of this country, I don't see how we could be dug out of a depression in this day and age.

[phantom power]

3. WWII is generally credited with finally ending the Great Depression.

A side-effect of which was the rise of the military industrial complex.

[Bandit]

4. The need for government backed "Green Coller Jobs" is urgent

Now is the time for Government to come to the aid of good men.