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Do You have a Career or a Job?
How does this make sense in an economic atmosphere, where such enviably educated men openly debate wage gaps as the Federal Reserve Chairman Ben Bernanke did during a speech recently the Omaha Chamber of Commerce? Far from the first to offer such opinions, the belief that the only way we can bridge the growing disparity of income in this country, now almost five times greater for the highest paid workers as compared to the lowest paid employee is to get our citizenry better education.
Mark Zandy, of MoodysEconomy.com suggests that the key to bridging the income gap lies squarely with the way an individual markets one's skills and potential. My son suggests otherwise. In fact, the way his job opportunity increased came with the firing of several other employees.
In the third quarter of 2006, employers took 836 mass layoff actions in the private non-farm sector that resulted in the separation of 134,816 workers from their jobs for at least 31 days, according to preliminary figures released by the U.S. Department of Laborıs Bureau of Labor Statistics." The key word in that text, from the Department of Labor press release is preliminary. Challenger, Grey & Christmas Inc. reported that January job cuts would amount to 62,975 with almost 8,800 coming from the pharmaceutical industry.
The Jobs Report, released on the first Friday of every month by the BLS and based on a household survey has turned into a moving target of sorts. With constant monthly revisions, the report has come under fire when the number is too low and is otherwise hailed when it exceeds consensus estimates. The equity and bond markets react accordingly and often erratically to a report with unexpected surprises.
The job statistics provided monthly by Automatic Data Processing seem to be a much more reliable indicator. The report, used widely by bond traders, reflected a growth of 152,000 jobs in January. The generally accepted number for median job growth in the US is 150,000, which encompasses the amount of new jobs needed each month for all new employees entering into the marketplace each month. (The total number of Americans working exceeds the 143 million.)
The payroll data processing firm with over 500,000 clients covering 24 million employees releases a report based on the activity of those clients. Many of these companies are too small to conduct their own in-house payroll departments.
We hear a great deal of talk about the job creation in the service sector and how this economy has shifted from manufacturing to just such industries. But those jobs hardly qualify as much more than work that provides a paycheck. Healthcare added 28,000 workers primarily in nursing and residential care facilities. Over the past twelve months, the food industry has tacked on 347,000 with transportation adding 116,000 in the same period. In 2006, there were over 113 million service sector jobs with only 17 million considered professional and/or business related (and possibly called careers).
While we are a nation of what appears on the surface to be almost fully employed, those jobs are primarily just that, jobs. Closing the gap in education is not likely to close that disparity. That said, the average person can do little to change the course they are on and no amount of self-promotion as Mr. Zandy suggests will do much to change it.
Perhaps the only plausible shift would come from within. That job you drag yourself to on a rainy Monday morning, the one you hope to retire from someday, the one that hangs in the economic balance each time your companyıs CEO makes a bad decision and suggests labor reduction as a way to placate shareholders without any personal salary reductions, is really a career after all. And unless we take that job seriously, perhaps even go so far as to call it a career and insist that our employer do so as well, little is likely to change. Right now, having a job isnıt enough and going it alone isnıt helping matters.
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