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Technology Stocks : IFMX - Investment Discussion -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Charles Hughes who wrote (10346)	4/21/1998 9:39:00 AM
From: Mark Finger	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 14631

>>There are several million employed persons in this general area. >>Call it 3 million even. Lets say there are 30,000 genuine open >>positions at the moment. That's 1% of the total positions out there. >>(Just trying to stick to even numbers here, for clarity.) But >>nominal unemployment is 5%. That would require 150,000 positions to >>employ everyone. >>Then there are the long-term unemployed and the part-timers, >>workfare, et cetera who are not counted. Say you need maybe another >>150,000 positions. That's 300,000. There is a problem with your numbers. Many of the open jobs require significant training and experience. How many of the jobs read BSCS and 3-5 years experience? In the Kansas City paper, there are 4 pages of computer programmer jobs listed in the average Sunday paper. In many cases, companies with open positions (like IFMX) do not advertise every week, so the number of open positions in some of these areas may be even higher. Another problem with your numbers is that the "disenchanted" estimate of unemployed is that many are high-school dropouts with few skills (many cannot even do basic math like fractions), abuse drugs or alcohol or simply will not follow direction like showing up on time or doing the job assigned. These definitely do not qualify for many of the jobs in the paper. The bill in congress relates to highly skilled position, which generally are not competitive with the bulk of the unemployed. The total number is around 100,000 (currently, before the adjustment upward), which is low compared to the total number of engineers and programmers in the United States, and very low compared to the total unemployment number of around 5-10 million.