Monday, June 09, 2008
ignorance is not bliss . . .
One night, not too long ago, I was surfing the website of the Seattle Post-Intelligencer. I decided to try to get a feel for what's happening in business in Seattle. When I looked at the drop down menu, I noticed a link to a "Layoff Tracker" that goes back to January of 2000. The listings seemed to stop in 2006 for the non "high tech" but keep going to today for "high tech" companies.
The irritating thing about the compiling of layoff data is that it only presents one view of the economy. Job losses are significant for those affected by them, but any cursory reading of serious economics would hopefully tell the reporters that our capitalist system is one of creative destruction whereby jobs in one field or with one company are lost only to be replaced eventually with other jobs that are either equal to what was lost or are better. I suspect that given the population growth of the Puget Sound area, the number of jobs created would far outpace the number of jobs lost, thus being far too much work for the diligent employees at the Post-Intelligencer to handle.<*sarc*>
The irritating thing about the compiling of layoff data is that it only presents one view of the economy. Job losses are significant for those affected by them, but any cursory reading of serious economics would hopefully tell the reporters that our capitalist system is one of creative destruction whereby jobs in one field or with one company are lost only to be replaced eventually with other jobs that are either equal to what was lost or are better. I suspect that given the population growth of the Puget Sound area, the number of jobs created would far outpace the number of jobs lost, thus being far too much work for the diligent employees at the Post-Intelligencer to handle.<*sarc*>
Labels: economics, jobs, Seattle Post-Intelligencer
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