Originally Posted by kane

Not to mention that our workforce is going through is shift. The middle class in America was built on manufacturing jobs. There were jobs that any high school graduate could get and after working it for a while could start to make good enough money that they could buy a house and raise a family. Those jobs are now being shipped overseas. Companies don't want to pay people $20 an hour for the same job they can pay a Guatemalan $2 a day for and with the outsourced jobs they don't have to provide health coverage, 401K, disability, unemployment, social security and they don't deal with things like OSHA regulation.

These manufacturing jobs are being replaced with lower paying service and retail jobs and good paying IT jobs. So your average manufacturing guy, when he loses his job, either has to take a lower paying job or go back to school and learn a new trade and this adaption to the market change is helping to cause unemployment to rise and the job market to be off center.