On Friday, an estimated 3000-4000 showed up at a job fair for a mall being built in Merrimack. NHRP:
Patrice Noelle from Wilton, New Hampshire has been out of work for almost two years. When asked what type of work she was looking for, Noelle said, "I’ll do basically anything. I’ll sweep floors. My degree is in business."
When the doors opened at 8 a.m., a legion of hungry applicants — with résumés in tow — flooded the large hall.
Representatives from big chain stores were ready to interview for positions ranging from custodians to customer service.
Governor Lynch stopped in to check out the action:
The Governor says New Hampshire’s unemployment rate is 40 percent below the 8.3 percent national average.
"But we still have over 30,000 people out of work. The outlet mall will end up creating a minimum of 800 jobs, which is very exciting, and it may end up being more jobs than that," said Lynch.
The possibility of 800 new jobs is nice,but it's a drop in the bucket, when one considers 30,000 out of work. And that's only the people who are out of work - it doesn't take into consideration the number of people who are underemployed.
Just as these people getting these new jobs will be underemployed. Retail jobs don't pay enough to actually live on in our state. Many retail jobs don't provide health insurance. And many will be part time.
The jobs being created in our new economy are largely low paying service jobs. The creation of a permanent poverty wage level underclass is something that should concern us all.
2 comments:
Am I the only one who's sick of this argument?:
"New Hampshire does SO well because it's free market capitalist!"
"Well, you can't blame the unemployment, poverty in Manchester, Nashua, Berlin, etc., huge student debt, and mass exodus of young people from NH on free market capitalism because NH doesn't have REAL free market capitalism!"
This annoys me to no end!
But in all due respect, I would have to argue that there's plenty of ways to solve unemployment in NH without resorting to turning the entire Merrimack Valley into a string of malls (even though pretty much everywhere in the region except for boonies like Mont Vernon and Weare already are; even my hometown of Windham just got a Shaw's). Take the growing anti-capitalist cooperative movement, for example. Coops create jobs and give workers more autonomy and income.
Right wrong wingers are the first to screech when jobs and corporations move overseas or when non-American global corps. prove to be too much competition for us. Guess what? This is Capitalism and Americans are going to have to come to terms with 3 principal issues; 1.Guns
2. Health Care 3. Socialism. That wonderful word whom many in this country have turned into a dirty word and yet who enjoy such programs as Medicare and Medicaid.
And last but most importantly, population density. Unless and until individuals start to smarten up and realize that endless amounts of humans cannot be created and endless jobs expected to be at the end of the line, well, we won't get anywhere. There will never EVER be enough jobs to go around and people need to start to engage in the hard, real and necessary dialogue of just how many more people our economies and environment can possibly support.
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