• Nationally, policies have been a disaster for Mfg Jobs, IT Jobs, and Advanced Technology Products "Trade" (national data is through Mar08)
• Colorado has been a worse disaster & jobs haven't anywhere near kept up with population growth (data through Feb08)
• Colorado Springs has been an even worse disaster (data through Feb08)

It's really difficult for me to understand how offshoring good-paying manufacturing and IT jobs are good for the US economy. That's because it's not. See  The Trade Deficit and the Fallacy of Composition for why it's not.

Summary of Job Loss data: National, Colorado, Colorado Springs since their peaks

Job Loss Summary

Comparison of Percentage of Manufacturing Jobs Lost

Mfg Job Loss Comparison

Comparison of Percentage of IT Jobs Lost

IT Job Loss Comparison

Woe is Colorado Springs.

US Job Growth has not kept up with Population Growth AND there are now 678,000 fewer jobs than in Nov 07. About 7.6 million of these jobs are held by persons who have another job (see the "multiple jobholders" graph at the bottom of Employment & Unemployment).

US Job Growth Negative

National Manufacturing Job Trend ... major resumption of downward trend since mid-06. China's less efficient use of oil increases gas prices in the US ... we pay for those low prices at the pump. Aside for the loss of jobs and higher gas prices, it's not good for the environment.

National Mfg Jobs Trend

National IT Job Trend. Bummer, people retrained for these jobs. But somehow the US needs 65,000 H-1B visas to import workers because there's a shortage?

National IT Jobs Trend

Colorado Manufacturing Job Trend

Colorado Mfg Jobs Trend

Colorado IT Job Trend

Colorado IT Jobs Trend

Colorado Springs Manufacturing Job Trend

Colorado Springs Mfg Jobs Trend

Colorado Springs IT Job Trend

Colorado Springs IT Jobs Trend

Colorado Non-Farm Jobs Trend. There's been a change in the statistics sometime since 9/07 ... somehow there were another 10,700 more jobs in 9/07 than previously thought ... wouldn't easily know that without keeping the data from then.

Colorado Non-Farm Jobs Trend

Advanced Technology Products "Trade" Trend.

So the US is going to let others (e.g., China) do the low-tech manufacturing and the US is going to retain high-tech manufacturing? Think again.

Wonder why student's aren't attracted to high-tech education? It's not that easy and the jobs are going away.

Advanced Technology Products "Trade" Balance Trend

While there's concern that the Official Unemployment Rate (U3) rose to 5.1%, there should be even more concern. What I call the "Real Unemployment Rate" is over 13%. Ever wonder why the official poverty rate in America is between 12% and 13%? It's no coincidence. 

My "Real Unemployment Rate" number includes those extra who are classified as "Not in labor force, but Persons who currently want a job" to the government's U6 statistic. It also adds those needed to keep up with population growth ... see the gap at the 4th figure above ... that's 5 million persons.

For explanations of these numbers see Unemployment: Official, Effective, Real. For the impact see There's no 'free market' for Labor.

 

Different Measures of the Unemployment Rate

That's more like 22 million persons unemployed than the official U3 number of 7.815 million. This does not count the underemployed. In 2006 there were 36.5 million people were in poverty.

Different Measures of the Unemployment Level

Concerned yet?