A jobless recovery?

[BrilloPad]

The only job he cares about is his own.

HTH

POTD.

[AtW]

If creating jobs and making people richer means re-election, then so be it.

That's a very difficult challenge. Much easier to give taxpayer backed guarantee to start reinflation of house market to make people feel good and spend spend spend.

[DimPrawn]

The only job he cares about is his own.

HTH

Govt is only concerned with re-election. If creating jobs and making people richer means re-election, then so be it.

If the same goal can be achieved with cheap immigrant labour, printing money to pay for govt debt and using tax payers money to create a house price boom, then that'll do nicely, thanks for voting.

[AtW]

The only job he cares about is his own.

HTH

[doodab]

Government should be hothousing new tech. George's skylon investment is a start, there must be more where that comes from.

[BrilloPad]

A jobless recovery: One issue that is keeping Mr Osborne up at night - Telegraph

Prof Christensen’s next book, due next year, is on “jobless recoveries” and already it is talked of as a mould breaker.

His argument is as follows. There are three types of innovations, two which lead to more jobs, one that doesn’t.

First comes “empowering innovations”, new products that change the way economies work such as the car or the internet.

Then come “sustaining innovations”, which change expensive, complex products into simpler, cheaper ones. The development of mainframe computers (millions of pounds) to personal computers (thousands of pounds) to smartphones (hundreds of pounds) are examples of such innovations.

Finally, come “efficiency innovations” – producing the same product at lower prices. Prof Christensen uses the example of Walmart.

According to him, investors have become obsessed with efficiency over true innovation.

To prove his point, he laid out the figures for US recessions since the Second World War. For the first six, it took six months for employment to return to pre-recession levels. In the early 1990s it took 15 months, in 2001 39 months. For the 2008 recession, it is looking like 70 months.
Why? Because all businesses, and the finance world that funds them, are obsessed with efficiency innovations which flatter metrics such as internal rate of return and return on capital employed.

Prof Christensen will argue that the developed world needs to start using different metrics if is to be truly innovative and create the type of jobs that will not simply be sucked away to the cheaper, emerging markets.

The argument is taking hold at the Treasury.

Recovery might be all very well, but if nobody is in work it will be a false dawn.