Britian back in recession

Maura74

According to BBC news the UK is back in recession again the last one was in 2009, wounder will the BoE will start printing money again.

'The UK economy has returned to recession, after shrinking by 0.2% in the first three months of 2012'

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/business-17836624

GSF

Its amazing the psychological impact of shrinking by -0.2% versus growing by +0.3%. Its way bigger than the impact of growth decreasing from say +2% to +1% even though the absolute drop is only half.

creeper1

No doubt they are already priming the printing presses as I post this.

The UK is finished.

The only thing to consider is whether they are going to end in very high inflation or hyperinflation.
:P

golden lane

creeper1 wrote: »

No doubt they are already priming the printing presses as I post this.

The UK is finished.

The only thing to consider is whether they are going to end in very high inflation or hyperinflation.
:P

all the figures are not in yet.....so no decisions will be made yet.....

the uk have finished what ?...........buying big telly's, computors or mobile phones........

the uk is a rich country........and all us here are doing very nicely for ourselves.....thank you..

djpbarry

creeper1 wrote: »

The UK is finished.

I think that's an ever-so-slight over-reaction to the fact that economic growth has been swinging from slightly negative to slightly positive and back again for quite a while now. It means nothing other than the UK economy, like many others, is pretty stagnant at the moment.

People place far too much emphasis on arbitrary definitions like "recession".

golden lane

djpbarry wrote: »

I think that's an ever-so-slight over-reaction to the fact that economic growth has been swinging from slightly negative to slightly positive and back again for quite a while now. It means nothing other than the UK economy, like many others, is pretty stagnant at the moment.

People place far too much emphasis on arbitrary definitions like "recession".

no growth....means the sames it was before...we were ok before, so no problems now.....we have had recessions in the uk since time immemorial.........it is only a problem when people ignore that fact.....most people don't.....so it is not a big problem......

paddy0090

It's not the UK that it's finished. Businesses are hoarding cash in anticipation/fear of a euro collapse even as above average inflation eats away at it. Their exports are hampered by austerity on the continent and consumers are seeming their purchasing power diminished by inflation.

Their stuck in a loop they can't break out of. This is why cameroon wanted to can the Fiscal Compact. IMO growth in the UK will tick up and down again.

ardmacha

the uk is a rich country........and all us here are doing very nicely for ourselves.....thank you..

the UK isn't a whole lot better off than Ireland; no growth, deficit about 1% lower, less favourable trade balance. The only difference here is that in Ireland there is some appreciation of the problems, even if it is only the rantings on this forum, in the UK it is business as usual. The Irish crash came after a period of phenomenal growth, the UK one after modest enough growth.

liammur

ardmacha wrote: »

The Irish crash came after a period of phenomenal growth, the UK one after modest enough growth.

So the UK didn't have much of a crash at all. Most western economies are in trouble, even in the US with all the QE the economy is still struggling.

Globalisation. Not sure it's as good as they told us it was, apart from getting cheap products etc

GSF

ardmacha wrote: »

in the UK it is business as usual.

Hardly. They havent gone down to the CPA for starters and are reducing quite agressively the number of public sector employees on the books

Tigerandahalf

liammur wrote: »

Globalisation.

This is one of the real problems. Before workers could move around when things were bad in one place and then return when things had improved. Now you have swathes of people unemployed.

liammur

Tigerandahalf wrote: »

This is one of the real problems. Before workers could move around when things were bad in one place and then return when things had improved. Now you have swathes of people unemployed.

I think it is THE problem, and I cannot see how the U.S economy is going to recover. In many ways it's far worse than the Eurozone area.

Godge

GSF wrote: »

Hardly. They havent gone down to the CPA for starters and are reducing quite agressively the number of public sector employees on the books

Eh, please, some links to this, last I heard they were awarding pay increases to public servants.

Slydice

I was on twitter earlier today and saw something related from a Karl Whelan tweet:
http://twitter.com/#!/WhelanKarl/status/195093373516906497

Amazing chart from UK ONS. http://www.ons.gov.uk/ons/dcp171766_263951.pdf Current recession now much worse the Great Depression. Time to start using the D-word?

djpbarry

Tigerandahalf wrote: »

Before workers could move around when things were bad in one place and then return when things had improved. Now you have swathes of people unemployed.

That's not really true - unemployment varies quite substantially between different EU states. For example, Germany, Austria and The Netherlands currently have very low levels of unemployment. A big part of the problem is youth unemployment - almost one quarter of all under-25s in Europe are unemployed. In Greece and Spain, the figure is over 50%. So the problem doesn't appear to be "swathes of people unemployed", but rather swathes of young people who are either unwilling or incapable of securing employment.

liammur

djpbarry wrote: »

So the problem doesn't appear to be "swathes of people unemployed", but rather swathes of young people who are either unwilling or incapable of securing employment.

It's both, but the youth level is far more worrying. The reason is the jobs have dried up so they are incapable of getting them. The jobs are moving to the Far East.

djpbarry

liammur wrote: »

The reason is the jobs have dried up so they are incapable of getting them. The jobs are moving to the Far East.

Some jobs have moved (it's impossible to outsource everything to India and China and besides, India and China are heavily dependent on Europe to buy the stuff they're producing), but I'm guessing lack of skills and qualifications (and motivation in many cases) is a much bigger factor. Furthermore, in the UK at least, youth unemployment has been on the rise since long before the recession kicked in - this is not a problem that sprung up overnight:

http://www.bbc.co.uk/newsbeat/15258386

There are a lot of kids here who are going to third-level to study subjects that are in no way going to make them more employable - there are masses of graduates with qualifications that, in the jobs market, aren't worth the paper they're written on. Worse still, many kids are leaving school without basic literacy and numeracy skills, making them virtually unemployable.

maninasia

The Anglo world is in trouble, as is the Med world. Other places very much less so.

NakedNNettles

Tigerandahalf wrote: »

This is one of the real problems. Before workers could move around when things were bad in one place and then return when things had improved. Now you have swathes of people unemployed.

Yeah, I have heard the media trotting out this BS.

Last time I looked there were plenty of opportunities to head for Canada, NZ, Australia, Asia, even London for jobs. Despite globalistation nothings changed, it still takes the same amount of get up and go, recession or no recession.

Fact is many Irish have become soft from 10 years of the 'pampered good life', it's made them lazy and fostered a culture of self entitlement. It's all just a convenient excuse to sit on one's ar*e and do nothing.

djpbarry

NakedNNettles wrote: »

Fact is many Irish have become soft from 10 years of the 'pampered good life'...

This is certainly not something that is unique to Ireland, but I do think that, yes, the economic prosperity of the noughties probably influenced educational choices and prompted students to plump for the path of least resistance into the jobs market.

liammur

djpbarry wrote: »

Some jobs have moved (it's impossible to outsource everything to India and China and besides, India and China are heavily dependent on Europe to buy the stuff they're producing), but I'm guessing lack of skills and qualifications (and motivation in many cases) is a much bigger factor. Furthermore, in the UK at least, youth unemployment has been on the rise since long before the recession kicked in - this is not a problem that sprung up overnight:

http://www.bbc.co.uk/newsbeat/15258386

There are a lot of kids here who are going to third-level to study subjects that are in no way going to make them more employable - there are masses of graduates with qualifications that, in the jobs market, aren't worth the paper they're written on. Worse still, many kids are leaving school without basic literacy and numeracy skills, making them virtually unemployable.

That is true. But there are only X amount of jobs out there. And places like China/India are getting more and more of them.

djpbarry

liammur wrote: »

That is true. But there are only X amount of jobs out there.

That's just not true - the number of jobs (either filled or vacant) changes all the time, as of course does the nature of those jobs. So while some jobs will move to another location, such as India or China, other new jobs are created. As I said earlier, it's impossible to out-source everything to another geographical location - for example, a shop in Dublin can't very well employ staff based in Jaipur. If you're looking for a cleaner for an office in London, you're not going to go scanning notice boards in Beijing.

liammur

djpbarry wrote: »

That's just not true - the number of jobs (either filled or vacant) changes all the time, as of course does the nature of those jobs. So while some jobs will move to another location, such as India or China, other new jobs are created. As I said earlier, it's impossible to out-source everything to another geographical location - for example, a shop in Dublin can't very well employ staff based in Jaipur. If you're looking for a cleaner for an office in London, you're not going to go scanning notice boards in Beijing.

But you can't get 450,000 people off the dole doing shop work in Dublin, and that unfortunately is the key issue.

Turning our back on manufacturing and leaning towards the smart economy was a mistake. A big mistake. There simply isn't enough jobs out there, nor in the UK, nor the US. Claiming young people don't want to work is imo wildly off the mark.

AlekSmart

djpbarry wrote: »

There are a lot of kids here who are going to third-level to study subjects that are in no way going to make them more employable - there are masses of graduates with qualifications that, in the jobs market, aren't worth the paper they're written on. Worse still, many kids are leaving school without basic literacy and numeracy skills, making them virtually unemployable.

This,IMO,is the great bull elephant we have been rearing in the Irish parlour for some years now.

The continued belief that further "College" based education was an absolute pre-requisite to every young Irish persons adult life has skewed our views of Life as she is lived.

The survival of any genre of humanity is surely dependent upon its practitioners having a gist of ABC rather than an intimate knowledge of pure mathemical functions and/or theories of hydrodynamic finance....?

djpbarry

liammur wrote: »

But you can't get 450,000 people off the dole doing shop work in Dublin, and that unfortunately is the key issue.

That’s hardly what I was implying – I merely used shop vacancies as an example of positions that can’t be outsourced.

But anyway, that’s not the key issue. The key issue for Ireland is that a large proportion of unemployed people in Ireland were working directly or indirectly in the construction industry. Those jobs are never coming back and the skills acquired by those who worked in Ireland’s construction boom are largely non-transferrable. So, getting those people off the dole has less to do with creating positions for them and more to do with them re-training to do something else. Either that or they move to where the construction jobs are. Personally, I think a lot of those people are going to remain unemployed for the rest (or at least most) of their lives. That is, without question, Ireland’s biggest socio-economic challenge.

liammur wrote: »

Turning our back on manufacturing...

Ireland hasn’t turned its back on manufacturing at all. Quite the opposite in fact: Ireland has a well-established high-end manufacturing industry (computer hardware, medical devices, pharmaceuticals and food products being the main exports). What’s more, many companies within those industries are trying to expand, but they’re struggling to get the necessary staff:

http://www.irishtimes.com/newspaper/finance/2011/0702/1224299938422.html

liammur wrote: »

There simply isn't enough jobs out there, nor in the UK, nor the US.

1.6 million jobs were created in the US alone last year:

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/business-16445441

There are plenty of jobs being created in the UK & Ireland too, the problem is the mismatch between the skills required for those jobs and those of the unemployed.

liammur wrote: »

Claiming young people don't want to work is imo wildly off the mark.

Is it? You don’t think third-level graduates turning up their noses at jobs they feel are below them could even be a factor?

djpbarry

AlekSmart wrote: »

The survival of any genre of humanity is surely dependent upon its practitioners having a gist of ABC rather than an intimate knowledge of pure mathemical functions and/or theories of hydrodynamic finance....?

I think you’re conflating separate issues here – someone who is mathematically literate is very unlikely to be otherwise illiterate. And what’s more, the world needs more mathematically literate individuals, not less – someone comfortable working with math is very unlikely to find themselves out of work for extended periods because such people are always in demand.

ardmacha

And what’s more, the world needs more mathematically literate individuals, not less – someone comfortable working with math is very unlikely to find themselves out of work for extended periods because such people are always in demand.

Exactly. There is no recession for numerate graduates.
And people from the construction sector in this category, engineers, quantity surveyors and the like can readily retrain for something else, it is the manual workers that will be left behind.

Brian CivilEng

djpbarry wrote: »

someone comfortable working with math is very unlikely to find themselves out of work for extended periods because such people are always in demand.

Try telling that to the 10% of civil engineers who had to get at least a B3 in HL Maths in their Leaving but are now finding themselves in a state of extended readiness.

ardmacha

Try telling that to the 10% of civil engineers who had to get at least a B3 in HL Maths in their Leaving but are now finding themselves in a state of extended readiness.

As I said two posts above, these people's profession is not in demand, the individuals very much are.

also from today's Irish Times
Ireland needs to address skills shortage for new tech careers
Initiative seeks to plug tech skills gap

Icepick

abitofacomedian wrote: »

Try telling that to the 10% of civil engineers who had to get at least a B3 in HL Maths in their Leaving but are now finding themselves in a state of extended readiness.

Most likely because their focus was on construction. They need to refocus and start a business.
Plenty of opportunities for engineers, but they may need to do their business abroad.

djpbarry

abitofacomedian wrote: »

Try telling that to the 10% of civil engineers who had to get at least a B3 in HL Maths in their Leaving but are now finding themselves in a state of extended readiness.

First of all, 10% is an extreme minority. Secondly, why they can't they do something other than civil engineering?

liammur

djpbarry wrote: »

That’s hardly what I was implying – I merely used shop vacancies as an example of positions that can’t be outsourced.

But anyway, that’s not the key issue. The key issue for Ireland is that a large proportion of unemployed people in Ireland were working directly or indirectly in the construction industry. Those jobs are never coming back and the skills acquired by those who worked in Ireland’s construction boom are largely non-transferrable. So, getting those people off the dole has less to do with creating positions for them and more to do with them re-training to do something else. Either that or they move to where the construction jobs are. Personally, I think a lot of those people are going to remain unemployed for the rest (or at least most) of their lives. That is, without question, Ireland’s biggest socio-economic challenge.
Ireland hasn’t turned its back on manufacturing at all. Quite the opposite in fact: Ireland has a well-established high-end manufacturing industry (computer hardware, medical devices, pharmaceuticals and food products being the main exports). What’s more, many companies within those industries are trying to expand, but they’re struggling to get the necessary staff:

http://www.irishtimes.com/newspaper/finance/2011/0702/1224299938422.html
1.6 million jobs were created in the US alone last year:

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/business-16445441

There are plenty of jobs being created in the UK & Ireland too, the problem is the mismatch between the skills required for those jobs and those of the unemployed.
Is it? You don’t think third-level graduates turning up their noses at jobs they feel are below them could even be a factor?

1.6million jobs were created, but how many were lost? For instance, when Tesco move into a town we hear about the jobs created, but we don't hear about the small shops closing.

I've heard of graduates applying for jobs in McDonalds, so I'm not sure you are right on that one.

paddy0090

For anyone whose interested here's a talk from TED by a guy called Ken Robinson. The gist of the speech is that schools kill creativity. In trying to preparing people for a job they think the pupil can get, as opposed to preparing them to be in it for themselves at whatever they want to do, leave them ill prepared to get any job at all. He also talks about educational inflation (You're gonna need a masters to do the same job a bachelors required in a couple of years) but I think that's another topic.

I don't think you can blame the young people for this. The Economist recently had a piece on third level education in the US which showed that the college courses studied by students today, though of a much wider variety, don't differ to much in discipline from what they did in the 60s. But the problem of youth unemployment is prevalent there too.

In Ireland as the former head of DCU (Ferdinand von Pronsy....brainfart) now in Aberdeen once said that many Irish students were conservative in their choice of study often opting for the professions instead of science or humanities in what he thought was a kind of snobbery. To be fair though given how well protected / guaranteed these incomes can be it's a smart choice on the face of it.

The farce that was FAS is now gone. But it has a nasty legacy. The practice of sending tradesmen from A to study in Z and paying them discourages intellectual rigour and FAS did it on a massive scale. This was worse than lowering educational standards, and IMO fed back into secondary schools. The prospect of getting paid to study for a diploma skews peoples decision making, against payless further, more, difficult education.

Vested interests and overly protected sectors of the economy have the same affect. The difference between and the unemployed youth is that they are on the inside while the youth are on the outside.

I don't think that we neglected manufacturing, in fact I think it's the opposite, we geared our education system towards it, particularly construction. In the future I don't think our workforce will be composed of as many salarymen, people will migrate from one profession to another. Of course for that to happen RELEVANT training must be more widely available(NOT IN THE MOULD OF FAS).

liammur

paddy0090 wrote: »

For anyone whose interested here's a talk from TED by a guy called Ken Robinson. The gist of the speech is that schools kill creativity. In trying to preparing people for a job they think the pupil can get, as opposed to preparing them to be in it for themselves at whatever they want to do, leave them ill prepared to get any job at all. He also talks about educational inflation (You're gonna need a masters to do the same job a bachelors required in a couple of years) but I think that's another topic.

I don't think you can blame the young people for this. The Economist recently had a piece on third level education in the US which showed that the college courses studied by students today, though of a much wider variety, don't differ to much in discipline from what they did in the 60s. But the problem of youth unemployment is prevalent there too.

In Ireland as the former head of DCU (Ferdinand von Pronsy....brainfart) now in Aberdeen once said that many Irish students were conservative in their choice of study often opting for the professions instead of science or humanities in what he thought was a kind of snobbery. To be fair though given how well protected / guaranteed these incomes can be it's a smart choice on the face of it.

The farce that was FAS is now gone. But it has a nasty legacy. The practice of sending tradesmen from A to study in Z and paying them discourages intellectual rigour and FAS did it on a massive scale. This was worse than lowering educational standards, and IMO fed back into secondary schools. The prospect of getting paid to study for a diploma skews peoples decision making, against payless further, more, difficult education.

Vested interests and overly protected sectors of the economy have the same affect. The difference between and the unemployed youth is that they are on the inside while the youth are on the outside.

I don't think that we neglected manufacturing, in fact I think it's the opposite, we geared our education system towards it, particularly construction. In the future I don't think our workforce will be composed of as many salarymen, people will migrate from one profession to another. Of course for that to happen RELEVANT training must be more widely available(NOT IN THE MOULD OF FAS).

Our last government got completely carried away, the smart economy was to take over from manufacturing as we moved up the food chain. Only problem is: we're still waiting for the smart economy!

thebman

liammur wrote: »

Our last government got completely carried away, the smart economy was to take over from manufacturing as we moved up the food chain. Only problem is: we're still waiting for the smart economy!

I think we are waiting for the smart people

ardmacha

Only problem is: we're still waiting for the smart economy!

The smart economy is doing OK, people are choosing not to enter it.

djpbarry

paddy0090 wrote: »

I don't think that we neglected manufacturing, in fact I think it's the opposite, we geared our education system towards it, particularly construction.

Manufacturing and construction are two very different things, but I’d be very interested to hear how the Irish education system was geared towards construction?

djpbarry

liammur wrote: »

1.6million jobs were created, but how many were lost?

I don’t know, but unemployment in the US is declining. And besides, that wasn’t really my point – a job created does not necessarily equate to a job lost, as they may be in completely different fields. This is precisely what is happening in Ireland – lots of jobs in construction have been lost, but jobs in high-end manufacturing and software development are being created. If people are found to fill those jobs, more jobs will be created still.

liammur wrote: »

I've heard of graduates applying for jobs in McDonalds...

Yeah, I heard that one too and can’t help but feel it was a McDonalds PR stunt. It just happened to coincide with a massive McDonald’s recruitment drive:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Kvh6yPnbYBo
http://www.ft.com/cms/s/0/eccbcf66-46ab-11e1-85e2-00144feabdc0.html

liammur wrote: »

Our last government got completely carried away, the smart economy was to take over from manufacturing as we moved up the food chain. Only problem is: we're still waiting for the smart economy!

Off the top of my head...

Google, Facebook, Paypal, Betfair, Intel, Analog Devices, Boston Scientific, Abbot Diagnostics, Pfizer, IBM, Ericsson, Siemens, Oracle, Cisco, Citrix, Quintiles...

Who else are you waiting for?

creedp

djpbarry wrote: »

Manufacturing and construction are two very different things, but I’d be very interested to hear how the Irish education system was geared towards construction?

A big chunk of construction unemployment relates to the hundred's of thousands of mostly eastern european workers who came here during the boom because smarts like IBEC were calling for at least 40,000 immigrants to come here annually to keep the 'Celtic Tiger Dream Alive. A significant majority of these workers ended up in construction because of the unbelievable wages that were going, building houses/appartments/shopping centres that nobody needed. When the recession hit all of these jobs went and there was nowhere to go to get another job but the dole. It will take alot time for the economy to absorb the massive numbers of people who came into this country during the boom to work in jobs that simply no longer exist.

liammur

djpbarry wrote: »

I don’t know, but unemployment in the US is declining. And besides, that wasn’t really my point – a job created does not necessarily equate to a job lost, as they may be in completely different fields. This is precisely what is happening in Ireland – lots of jobs in construction have been lost, but jobs in high-end manufacturing and software development are being created. If people are found to fill those jobs, more jobs will be created still.
Yeah, I heard that one too and can’t help but feel it was a McDonalds PR stunt. It just happened to coincide with a massive McDonald’s recruitment drive:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Kvh6yPnbYBo
http://www.ft.com/cms/s/0/eccbcf66-46ab-11e1-85e2-00144feabdc0.html
Off the top of my head...

Google, Facebook, Paypal, Betfair, Intel, Analog Devices, Boston Scientific, Abbot Diagnostics, Pfizer, IBM, Ericsson, Siemens, Oracle, Cisco, Citrix, Quintiles...

Who else are you waiting for?

America has printed money like crazy and their unemployment is still over 8%. They are now $17trillion in debt - I will be expecting a lot of job losses when their debt ceiling is reached. That should tell everybody, that full employment is practically impossible because so many manufacturing jobs have been lost to places like China.

Take Dell, those jobs were of no use to us under the last government, they were too low down the ladder. We needed higher end manufacturing. My point is: the smart economy alone is not enough, we also need the fruit of the looms of this world.

djpbarry

creedp wrote: »

A big chunk of construction unemployment relates to the hundred's of thousands of mostly eastern european workers who came here during the boom
...
It will take alot time for the economy to absorb the massive numbers of people who came into this country during the boom to work in jobs that simply no longer exist.

There are only about 26,000 people from the EU15 – EU27 states unemployed in Ireland (as of Q4 2011, down from 28,000 in Q4 2010) – you’re grossly over-stating the scale of that particular problem. I’d be far more concerned about the 256,000 unemployed Irish people.

djpbarry

liammur wrote: »

America has printed money like crazy and their unemployment is still over 8%. They are now $17trillion in debt - I will be expecting a lot of job losses when their debt ceiling is reached.
...
Take Dell, those jobs were of no use to us under the last government, they were too low down the ladder. We needed higher end manufacturing. My point is: the smart economy alone is not enough...

You’re shifting goalposts all over the place here. First you said there are no jobs, now you’re saying there are going to be huge job losses in the US. Initially you said there is no smart economy in Ireland, now you’re saying the smart economy alone is not enough.

liammur wrote: »

...we also need the fruit of the looms of this world.

Unless people are prepared to pay a premium for European-produced clothing, then those jobs are not coming back any time soon. People want cheap clothes from Penneys and Dunnes, hence manufacturers in India get the contracts to produce them, with whom manufacturers in Europe could not possibly compete.

Instead of mourning the loss of these jobs and pandering to the Joe Higgins of this world who make nonsense demands about governments "creating jobs", we should be encouraging people to upskill and do something else (and to be fair, a lot of people are, which is very heartening to see). Jobs become obsolete and/or redundant all the time – it’s a part of life. Protectionism is not the answer. Embracing new change and opportunities is. As I said above, not everything can be outsourced to Asia. So rather than trying to win back the jobs that are moving east, Ireland should be asking itself “what can we do that India and China cannot?”

creedp

djpbarry wrote: »

There are only about 26,000 people from the EU15 – EU27 states unemployed in Ireland (as of Q4 2011, down from 28,000 in Q4 2010) – you’re grossly over-stating the scale of that particular problem. I’d be far more concerned about the 256,000 unemployed Irish people.

I wasn't making that point to criticise any particular group. I was simply making the point that during the boom Ireland exeprienced a significant influx of people, many of whom still remain. Given that this occurred shortly before the biggest economic shock this country experienced in quite some time leading to a massive reduction in employment/increase in unemployment it was bound to have an impact on the ability of the economy to create sufficient job for all those looking for them.

djpbarry

creedp wrote: »

I was simply making the point that during the boom Ireland exeprienced a significant influx of people, many of whom still remain. Given that this occurred shortly before the biggest economic shock this country experienced in quite some time leading to a massive reduction in employment/increase in unemployment it was bound to have an impact on the ability of the economy to create sufficient job for all those looking for them.

But that assumes the economy remains fixed in size and make-up - it doesn't. People moving into an economy to work create demand for more good and services, creating more jobs.

liammur

djpbarry wrote: »

You’re shifting goalposts all over the place here. First you said there are no jobs, now you’re saying there are going to be huge job losses in the US. Initially you said there is no smart economy in Ireland, now you’re saying the smart economy alone is not enough.
Unless people are prepared to pay a premium for European-produced clothing, then those jobs are not coming back any time soon. People want cheap clothes from Penneys and Dunnes, hence manufacturers in India get the contracts to produce them, with whom manufacturers in Europe could not possibly compete.

Instead of mourning the loss of these jobs and pandering to the Joe Higgins of this world who make nonsense demands about governments "creating jobs", we should be encouraging people to upskill and do something else (and to be fair, a lot of people are, which is very heartening to see). Jobs become obsolete and/or redundant all the time – it’s a part of life. Protectionism is not the answer. Embracing new change and opportunities is. As I said above, not everything can be outsourced to Asia. So rather than trying to win back the jobs that are moving east, Ireland should be asking itself “what can we do that India and China cannot?”

I never said there are 'no' jobs. Of course there jobs, but there is not a job for every single young person in this country as you were alluding to.
As regards the smart economy, it was touted as the answer for Ireland, it clearly was never going to the answer by itself. There is no smart economy in many parts of Ireland:

Smart Economy jobs and the Irish Regions: Three quarters of new projects located in Greater Dublin Area
http://www.finfacts.ie/irishfinancenews/article_1022901.shtml

creedp

djpbarry wrote: »

But that assumes the economy remains fixed in size and make-up - it doesn't. People moving into an economy to work create demand for more good and services, creating more jobs.

I'll certainly defer to your expertise here but I would have thought that a large influx of people into Ireland during a boom where a large proportion of these people ended up working in an unsustainable building industry that has since collapsed would have a certain distortionary impact on the labour market.

djpbarry

liammur wrote: »

I never said there are 'no' jobs. Of course there jobs, but there is not a job for every single young person in this country as you were alluding to.

I neither alluded to, nor said, any such thing. In fact you'll note that I emphasised the need for people to retrain.

liammur

djpbarry wrote: »

I neither to, nor said, any such thing. In fact you'll note that I emphasised the need for people to retrain.

I couldn't agree more.
But I think the big problem the country faces is getting employment into towns like portlaois etc

The 'gateways'...anyone remember that nugget?

djpbarry

creedp wrote: »

...I would have thought that a large influx of people into Ireland during a boom where a large proportion of these people ended up working in an unsustainable building industry that has since collapsed would have a certain distortionary impact on the labour market.

It will of course have an impact, but I think it’s questionable that it would necessarily be a negative (or distortive) impact. Let’s just clarify that the property boom was obviously not a good thing, but, it happened. A demand for labour was created and that demand was met by overseas workers. Personally, I don’t see that as a bad thing. Regardless of the industry, a labour shortage generally leads to increased salaries and, therefore, increased costs, which reduces competitiveness. Furthermore, more workers means more tax revenue and more consumers.

Furthermore, while it’s true that Ireland’s demography has changed substantially over the last 10-15 years, a lot of people who came to Ireland to work in construction have likely left again. As stated above, there are a relatively small number of non-Irish nationals unemployed in Ireland and indeed the number is declining. This makes a lot of sense when you think about it – construction is by nature a transient industry (which a lot of young Irish men seem unwilling to accept, but anyway) and if a guy moves to Ireland to work on a building project, he probably knows that once the project is complete, he may be out of work. When you throw into the mix the fact that there has been a lot of construction work going in the UK, Poland and the Ukraine ahead of the Olympics and the European Championships, for example, it makes little sense to remain unemployed in Ireland with very limited future prospects.

paddy0090

djpbarry wrote: »

Manufacturing and construction are two very different things, but I’d be very interested to hear how the Irish education system was geared towards construction?

In Ireland Construction is/was(this may have changed) considered part of manufacturing and included in the statistics. One of the reasons productivity was seen to be dropping was that construction is a typically low productivity industry.

I might have gotten carried away there saying that the entire Irish education system was gearded towards constuction. But secondary education includes two subjects in both junior and leaving cert curriculums. None for ICT. Also I think there was something of a self serving belief amongst some in the establishment that if it didn't deliver proper skills in literacy and numeracy it was the students destiny to labour or work in the semi skilled sector.

Post secondary level there's the paid diploma for trades, payment of course doesn't extend to other diplomas in marketing other disciplines. Many professions use the apprenticeship model (accounting, law), but the taught element usually runs concurrent to work and payment is inclusive of study time and exams time off. The only ICT course offered by FAS was the ECDL.

On the last point this is changing thanks to greater involvement by the private sector in training programmes. Previously they were shut out by the govt. who didn't want to start a row with the unions. In the long run we may well have something to thank Rody Molloy for!

Re the smart economy, or economy if you don't like govt. buzzwords, many of the companies offering work are looking for a very specific skillset and are prepared to wait for the perfect candidate. Check the vacanies on offer and a very small amount are for graduates. Most require 2 or more years experience with expertise in x y z etc. My sister went for an interview with Microsoft and the interview process had then different parts. I'm told Googles comprises 5.

I don't think that's necessarily a bad thing that MNCs hire foreign workers to fill vacancies. It would be better for us if they could fill them with Irish people but they can't according to their own rules. Tough! The jobs and capital investment are usually what garners attention but they bring much more in terms of technology and management procedures. Irish management has been considered relatively poor by international standards so this has to be welcomed. How exactly the govt can bridge the experience gap I don't know.

I'm an IT grad myself with 2 yrs exp. under my belt but went travelling for 2 yrs and fell out of the loop and now I have to reskill. I'm not alone in this, as many of the people on my course have ended up like me thru a variety of ways.

creedp wrote:

...I would have thought that a large influx of people into Ireland during a boom where a large proportion of these people ended up working in an unsustainable building industry that has since ...

I read an article in the WSJ about Spains property boom 2yrs ago. The Thing I remember was that they said that the labour market competition was such that crews were being hired off one site in the mid morning and then being rehired by the original company come evening. It never got this bad in Ireland because of the foreign labour. If it had we'd probably have further to go to improve our competitiveness. I don't think it was a bad thing.

djpbarry

paddy0090 wrote: »

In Ireland Construction is/was(this may have changed) considered part of manufacturing and included in the statistics.

Ok, but I’m just making the distinction between the two myself.

paddy0090 wrote: »

...many of the companies offering work are looking for a very specific skillset and are prepared to wait for the perfect candidate. Check the vacanies on offer and a very small amount are for graduates.

I disagree. There is broad recognition that a chronic shortage of engineers and computer scientists exists in the world (Germany, the engineering powerhouse of the world, has a massive shortage) and a lot of companies accept that they have to invest in graduates. For example, Intel have a number of intern and graduate positions advertised at present:
http://www.intel.com/jobs/jobsearch/index_js.htm?Location=200000039&JobCategory=-1

paddy0090 wrote: »

Most require 2 or more years experience with expertise in x y z etc.

Job specs are not set in stone. It’s very likely that most applicants for a position are not going to tick all the boxes. But, the likes of Google can afford to be a bit more demanding because they know they’re going to get plenty of overseas applicants.

paddy0090 wrote: »

I don't think that's necessarily a bad thing that MNCs hire foreign workers to fill vacancies.

I’m not saying it’s a bad thing, I was just pointing out that the vacancies that exist in Ireland at present are unlikely to be filled by those currently on the dole.