Today I noticed three articles, one about recruitment intensity (excellent!) another stating low or very slow hiring behavior, and the growth in unskilled temporary labor. I am a displaced executive search professional and former staff supplementation executive, (fancy name for temp or contract labor professional) I personally felt the entire labor market wash away in a slow Mississippi style flood starting in late 2007 and rolling through and into 2010 until we have settled in what is described as a new state of normal---low labor demand.
So when Romney says he knows how to create jobs he is blowing smoke---he don't know dicksquat when it comes to creating a job market demand----I also know since I started servicing the private equity market in the mid-00's and private equity is not about anything but exploiting a business opportunity for financial gain----nothing else.
In the simplest methodology job demand is in part four separate private enterprise markets; Big Corporate (aka Fortune 500/1000), Mid-sized Corporate (firms generally under $500M in revenues), Small Corporate Business (defined as under $50M to $5M), and then Small to Cottage Industries (under $5M to $500K).
Generally speaking all employees are hired because the business needs their work to generate revenues or increase/protect profitable returns---PERIOD.
How close the relationship and critical to the concept of generating revenues and/or simultaneously increasing or protecting profits is generally a relationship of what kind or size of company a prospective employee is going to work at---the smaller the company the more critical the employee is to the success of the firm the bigger the enterprise the more the risk is mitigated. Therefore a firm that has less than 25 employees has more of a percentage of their workforce that are considered highly valued than a firm that has 500 or 10,000 employees.
Okay when the US was going through 1980's economic recessions the US labor market was propelled by two forces, information technologies and small business explosion especially in the IT and software engineering/communications market. The growth was exponential to where a decade later the US labor market reached full employment status. The demand was underpinned that practically every firm's, (BIG and small) fortune was tied to maximizing revenues per employee.
Now because of productivity gains from IT and communication/software technologies BIG Corporations have learned to continue to grow revenues and profitability through deploying more and more technology instead of hiring employees. Furthermore there has been a financial analyst ratio of using contract labor (outsourcing, be it off shore or in place) based on project by project management. Therefore as this economy became more consolidated where BIG corporate bought more and more mid-sized and small corporate businesses the labor demand decreased in relation.
My example is simply walk into a super market. They have automated check outs (which I use because it is often faster and when I go into the store I buy less than 10 items) but the deployment of auto check out is about using technology and disposing of workers. While going to the locally owned organic grocer/deli they have computerized cashier but they have workers who are multi-talented and even well trained in customer relations. That store's employee is more critical to the success in that they will even offer knowledge on products.
Same for garden centers. My wife works part time in the summer at a locally owned flower and garden center and is considered one of their expert flower and perennial clerks. Since we live in a high mountain desert climate her (and others) advice is sought out and is used to develop customer loyalty. Yet we also shop at Home Depot, Lowes or even King Soopers/Ace when they drop their prices below market to get our plants, since we know what to buy and which ones are actually healthy. But don't ask their clerks for advice for they truly don't know what is an annual or a perennial. But each of those big corporations have sophisticated customer loyalty programs using technology---in fact ACE sent me $5.00 loyalty card to get me to come back, I did and purchased $3.85 gardening twine and $1.15 in wood screws---thanks ACE!
Now what to do. Break it all up. Break up the banks, the big corporations, de-nationalize the market (regionalize) force big companies to actually compete. Force the market place to hire employees by taxing contract labor over 60 days (call it an outsource tax) and over 150 days offer a tax break if hired and if a position (not person) is contracted for over six months and is still contracted out the tax break goes away and the tax increases. Understand that BIG CORP economics is not Adam Smith economics, do what Judge Green did to AT&T....break up the trusts and watch the entrepreneurial and small business explode and with it the labor market demand where the success of a company is again tied back to its employees and not some automated technology.
But who am I....