Reply #5: this realtor gave a talk at my club yesterday [View All]

He said, in passing, that there was no unemployment locally. That did not seem right, so I checked. The rate for our county is 5.6%, higher than the state and national average. Still, that is not a bad rate. Back when I was studying and teaching economics, that would have been considered 'full employment'. I don't think that's accurate, but 5.6% would have been considered amazingly low in the 1980s.

I wonder if the growth of the "temp industry" is not responsible for that. I spent 3 years in Iowa before I finally left because I could not find what I considered to be a real job. The unemployment rate when I left was 3.0% for that county. Amazingly low, but my experience was of being unable to find a job?

One thing was that the temp job was better than many of the jobs that I applied for. It paid $8.5 an hour, plus 7 hours of over-time pay in the weeks when they did not steal it. I just saw a full-time, non-temp job in the paper yesterday. It pays $6.50 an hour. That's not nearly as much as my temp job was paying six years ago!