Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: FRIDAY, March 18, 1994 TAG: 9403180253
SECTION: BUSINESS PAGE: B-5 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: Associated Press
DATELINE: NEW YORK LENGTH: Medium
Only 60 percent? ``Well, it was 70 percent not long ago,'' he said.
Sindlinger & Co. has been telephoning heads of household every day for 40 years - as many as 4,000 a month - seeking data on the consumer economy.
With two-thirds of the U.S. economy related to consumer incomes and spending, Sindlinger figures the way to understand what's going on is to ask consumers rather than listen to hypothetical economic analyses.
Based on details supplied by his interviewers, Sindlinger now concludes that ``It's about time we stopped kidding ourselves about this recovery.''
Were this a normal business-cycle recovery, he says, only 12 percent to 15 percent of households would be having income problems. Normally, he pointed out, companies would be hiring and paying well to get the best workers.
It is different today: Instead of hiring, thousands of companies are doing their best not to hire. Worse, they have been reducing work forces and have plans to continue doing so. Downsizing has developed into an art or science.
In a normal business cycle, Sindlinger observes, opportunities increase with economic recovery. But this, he says, is not a normal recovery. ``It is a restructuring,'' an occurrence much rarer than recessions and recoveries.
Restructurings are fundamental changes in the conduct of business. In this restructuring, the engine of change is advanced technology and various new ways of obtaining greater output from time, money and labor.
Thus the anomaly: Official economic indicators showing economic progress, and millions of workers barely aware, if aware at all. In fact, their awareness is of bad times: terminations, early retirements, lack of opportunities.
The problem, which afflicts all industrial nations to some extent, is better understood with each passing month. Hardly a personnel forum takes place without the subject being discussed. Books have been written about it.
Substantial solutions may be as much as a decade away.
Perhaps the most widely accepted approach to a better job market is an improvement in training and skills. Increasingly, jobs today involve more mental and less physical skills, but training has not kept pace.
In fact, millions of young men and women are dumped into the U.S. job market today without even rudimentary skills. Their prospects would be poor in any economy; they do not exist in an increasingly complex work environment.
In short, it remains a dilemma and is likely to stay that way for many years. The economy changes and expands, taking those with the required skills along with it, but leaving a good part of America behind.
by CNB