It should be noted that unemployment “stabilized” in November and if the trend continues, we should see the rebound starting to take place.
Lawrence H. Summers, President Obama’s top economic advisor, predicted on Sunday that by the spring the ranks of working Americans will start to grow once again.
via Summers Predicts Job Growth by Spring - NYTimes.com.
Jobs should continue to be lost, but at fewer rates, and at some point, the “leaner” firms will have to refill the spots that they lost due to the shrinking economy. When that happens, as simple logic tells us, job growth will hit the “zero point” and be positive thereafter.
It may not be much consolation for those who have lost their jobs, or those that have not been able to find work after graduation or being unemployed, but the economic situation has forced forward thinking firms to focus on sustained competitive advantage and ensuring costs are in line with their offerings. Peter Drucker would have recommended firms focus on innovation and investment in the future within these “uncertain times,” and those that have, will be poised for growth and ultimately the creation of jobs.
I would expect, as might seem like common sense, to see larger more innovative firms already starting to hire, and more staid industry leaders to follow suit when economic indicators are more favorable.
And this should come as welcome news to many.
GREEN BUSINESS – It’s no secret that America is going green. Green jobs are popping up everywhere, whether it’s the technician installing solar panels on a home, the scientist researching ways to build better batteries for electric cars, or the executive looking for ways to reduce waste, eliminate unnecessary packaging, and cut costs. Job growth in this area is expected to top 50% by 2016, nearly four times the job growth for all other occupations combined, according to the federal government. And a number of Presidential initiatives, including billions in new investments in renewable energy, energy efficiency, and energy research, are likely to accelerate that job growth.
[via BusinessWeek]
It’s not just family and friends that Americans are turning to for advice and support to cope with the prolonged recession; many have found a counselor in the Internet.
More than two-thirds of American adults — or 88 percent of U.S. Internet users — went online for help with recession-induced personal economic issues and to gather information on national economic problems, a study released on Wednesday said. [via Reuters]
File this one under: “not surprising in the least.”
Cloud computing could become mainstream with Google’s annoucement this week to release the Chrome operating system for NetBook PCs.
I believe the cloud is the platform of the future, and Google is uniquely poised with their already popular office suite, Google Docs, and their other Google Apps which do just about everything owners of netbooks would be looking for.
This is certainly an exciting announcement for consumers looking to the future, and should cause real innovation and competition within the other computer and software makers.
On a side note, Ars Technica has an article discussing the reliability issues with cloud computing, and whether or not our infrastructure is ready for Chrome. I agree, with the downtime that Google has faced earlier this year, which took down a large chunk of Internet traffic in North America, it may be too soon for firms to invest their money making ability (read: computer software) in the cloud. What happens when Google’s data center is down, and my netbook can’t open an office document that I have to send to my client because of a server issue? Well, we need to make reliability and uptime as close to 100% before people will take this service seriously.
But, SaaS and Cloud are looking brighter as we move further into the future.
Update: See this Barron’s article describing the problem with Chrome, and what they believe to be Google’s major misstep. (Editorial Note: I think they are missing the value of the cloud. They are using the old value model of standard software architecture, and are discrediting future innovation and consumer preferences changing in the open market. In short, I think they got it wrong.)
