This blog is not particularly worried about Standard and Poor's dire prognosis of AA+ for the US Government although it is a temporary set back for the stock market.
However, I am concerned about the underlying message of of the S&P downgrade -which is not so much about the US Government's solvency but more about the eagerness of both parties to score points over each other rather than focusing on the key US problem- jobs for those without a college degree.
For, the real problem is not with the college educated unemployed. The overall college grad unemployment rate in the US is getting closer to 4% and was the max of 5% when you see the last row of the Table A-4 of the Bureau of Labor Statistics . The no college US workforce has suddenly run out of opportunities because all the low-skilled manufacturing jobs have been shipped to China and the low-skilled service jobs have been shipped to India,Philipines etc.
So, if you do not have a college degree and/or skills you are really an unemployable person in the US. Unless you add a skill that allows you to do a "hands on work, " in today's high tech workplace. Let's say you know how to run a traditional lathe – getting trained on a computer controlled precision machining equipment would help. There is such a shortage – that someone will take you on. And you'll have a new career……
The point is that we need to segment the employment problem population more precisely and drive programs that help these segments directly. To do so, leaders of all parties need to come together which is the point of the S&P downgrade in the first place. The debt problem will be more manageable once we are able to fix the unemployment problem….