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Latest Jobs Report: On the Rise, But Many Workers Being Left Behind

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The latest jobs numbers released Friday by the Labor Department, the last under President Obama, set a high bar for President Trump’s administration but does leave areas for improvement.

The numbers came on the same day President Trump convened the first meeting of his CEO Council at the White House.

Here a breakdown of the numbers:

  • 227,000 jobs were added in January.
  • The unemployment rate ticked up to 4.8% from 4.7%.
  • The underemployment rate, which includes part-time workers who’d prefer a full-time position and people who want to work but have given up looking, rose to 9.4 percent from 9.2 percent.
  • Average hourly earnings went up 0.1 percent in January and 2.5 percent over the past year.
  • There was a 36,000 increase in construction payrolls, largest since March.
  • The participation rate, share of working-age people in the labor force, increased to a four-month high of 62.9 percent from 62.7 percent.
  • 5.84 million Americans were working part-time for economic reasons, or working part-time but would rather have a full-time position.
  • Factory jobs rose by 5,000, after an 11,000 increase in the previous month.
  • Retailers increased payrolls by 45,900.
  • Employment in financial activities was up 32,000.
  • Professional and business services jobs rose by 39,000.
  • Jobs in leisure and hospitality was up 34,000.

In his first two weeks as president, Trump has made it no secret that he wants to bring jobs back to America. He met with executives from both large and small businesses to reiterate his plan to reform taxes and trade policies, and cut regulations, as well as hear from “the biggest and best minds in the country” on what they need to help America’s workforce thrive.

So far, Trump has centered his focus on globalization and trade to address jobs in America, however, many economists point to automation, technology, and lack of adequate education as the major drivers of unemployment and underemployment in America.

To help us break this idea down further in light of the new jobs report, we turned to Anthony Carnevale, director and research professor at Georgetown University Center on Education and the Workforce:

“As expected, this is a very favorable jobs report. Employment levels increased by 227,000 jobs, very much ahead of December’s gain of 157,000 jobs. The unemployment rate was little changed at 4.8 percent. Job gains occurred in retail trade, construction, and financial activities.

“Though we’ve had over 76 months of consecutive job growth, many Americans are still very pessimistic about opportunity. Trump voters especially don’t believe that they are better off from this near full employment report, and rightfully so. Many African American, Hispanics, as well as working class families are also feeling the pain of lost opportunity. Thus the challenge for the Trump Administration is not to create jobs, since the Obama Administration did that, but to create good jobs.

“This jobs report shows us that the quantity of jobs has increased, but the quality of those jobs continues to leave many Americans behind. The jobs that were lost in the last few years were not taken away by trade, but were eliminated by robotics and automation. The jobs that replace them require at least some college education beyond high school. While this does not necessarily mean a four-year degree, these jobs require some kind of education and training beyond high school with rare exceptions — 20 percent of young men in the trades can still make a decent living with solely a high school diploma. These are the new good jobs. What we’ve lost are high wage jobs at the high school level being replaced with high quality, high skill jobs at the sub-baccalaureate level. These jobs are now requiring postsecondary vocational certificates, test-based industry certifications and associate’s degrees.

“We have not yet confronted the quality issue of these new good jobs head on. We haven’t had this debate since the Carter era when manufacturing jobs were slipping so much that Ted Kennedy was able to challenge Jimmy Carter in the primaries based on a strategy to re-industrialize the country. Kennedy was going to build the economic strategy to get these jobs back through deliberate industrial policy where the government picks winners and losers. We may be heading for a revival of that industrial policy debate. We should be reminded that industrial policy already lost this battle to traditional Republican free market supply side economics in the 1970s.”

Dana Beth Ardi

Executive Committee

Dana Beth Ardi, PhD, Executive Committee, is a thought leader and expert in the fields of executive search, talent management, organizational design, assessment, leadership and coaching. As an innovator in the human capital movement, Ardi creates enhanced value in companies by matching the most sought after talent with the best opportunities. Ardi coaches boards and investors on the art and science of building high caliber management teams. She provides them with the necessary skills to seek out and attract top-level management, to design the ideal organizational architectures and to deploy people against strategy. Ardi unearths the way a business works and the most effective way for people to work in them.

Ardi is an experienced business executive and senior consultant who leverages business organizational transformation through talent strategies. She uses her knowledge and experience to develop talent strategies to enhance revenue and profit contributions. She has a deep expertise in change management and organizational effectiveness and has designed and built high performance cultures. Ardi has significant experience in mergers, acquisitions, divestitures, IPO’s and turnarounds.

Ardi is an expert on the multi-generational workforce. She understands the four intersecting generations of workers coming together in contemporary companies, each with their own mindsets, leadership and communications styles, values and motivations. Ardi is sought after to assist companies manage and thrive by bringing the generations together. Her book, Fall of the Alphas: How Beta Leaders Win Through Connection, Collaboration and Influence, will be published by St. Martin’s Press. The book reflects Ardi’s deep expertise in understanding organizations and our changing society. It focuses on building a winning culture, how companies must grow and evolve, and how talent influences and shapes communities of work. This is what she has coined “Corporate Anthropology.” It is a playbook on how modern companies must meet challenges – culturally, globally, digitally, across genders and generations.

Ardi is currently the Managing Director and Founder of Corporate Anthropology Advisors, LLC, a consulting company that provides human capital advisory and innovative solutions to companies building value through people. Corporate Anthropology works with organizations, their cultures, the way they grow and develop, and the people who are responsible for forming their communities of work.

Prior to her position at Corporate Anthropology Advisors, Ardi served as a Partner/Managing Director at the private equity firms CCMP Capital and JPMorgan Partners. She was a partner at Flatiron Partners, a venture capital firm working with early state companies where she pioneered the human capital role within an investment portfolio.

Ardi holds a BS from the State University of New York at Buffalo as well as a Masters degree and PhD from Boston College. She started her career as professor at the Graduate Center at Fordham University in New York.