Who’s Hiring?:

“You can make six figures as an auto technician” says Rich Orbain, the manager of General Motors Auto Service Education Program. “If that person has the motivation and skill and the drive, they can do it” he says, adding that despite long-standing programs at 61 community colleges across the country, General Motors (GM) is currently only getting about 500 of the 2500 trained new technicians it needs each year.

Stuff like this should be a slam dunk for politicians. Where’s the legislative bill to creat more for programs of this nature? Where’s Obama’s PR push to get people into the jobs that are available today? Now 2000 jobs isn’t many, but that’s just at GM:

Data from the Department of Labor project that the need will be above average for auto service technicians in the coming years, and that the auto industry is going to need to find, train and hire more than 100,000 new people who can get under the hood and keep our cars and trucks running smoothly.

Not everyone wants a job as an auto tech, but there are plenty of people who would jump at the chance given the still sorry state of the economy. Even during good times lots of people need work, and more specifically need to gain the skills to get these jobs. We hear a lot about “job training programs”, but here we have programs that still aren’t meeting the demand companies need. Why? It’s not as if CEOs don’t have the ears of politicians. Pols need to ask the right questions. When Obama meets with the “titans of industry”, he should ask them where the jobs are. John Boehner & Mitch McConnell should do same. Find out where the jobs are & train people for those jobs. Give people specific tax breaks to help them move for a new job. Make it easier to get the breaks that are already on the books.

GM not being able to fill all their auto tech positions is an abject failure on the part of our government during a recession. Now the Republicans haven’t wanted the economy to get better for fear that Obama would get the credit, but I expect more from Democrats. This is the kind of stuff GOPers could possibly support.

People needs jobs, and there are some specific companies that need employees, and need them now. It’s the government’s job to get the 2 sides together.

Mostly from brilliant former Veep economist Jared Bernstein, bold mine:

Well, the big jobs report is out showing payrolls grew by a more-than-expected 171,000 last month and the unemployment rate ticked  up slightly, as expected, to 7.9%.  Job growth for the prior two months was revised up by 84,000, and the average monthly pace of job growth over the past four months–a useful way of smoothing out monthly noise in the data–is 173,000, a sharp acceleration over the second quarter’s pace of 67,000 per month (see figure).

The uptick in unemployment was expected after September’s 0.3 percentage point drop, but a few things are worth noting.  First, the 0.1 point increase is statistically indistinguishable from no change at all–the unemployment rate has to rise or fall about 0.2 points to be significant.  At 7.9%, the jobless rate is down significantly–by one full point–from its rate one year ago.  Second, one reason for the slight uptick was more people coming into the labor market seeking work.  We’ll need to see how this development evolves in coming months, but we may be seeing early signs of an improving job market pulling more job seekers in from the sidelines.

All told, given the acceleration in payroll growth, the upward revisions to prior months payroll gains, the trend decline in unemployment, and the pick-up in labor force participation, today’s report is generally pointing to job market that’s showing signs of improvement.