Hump Day roundup

Every so often I collect a few topics worthy of comment but resisting a single theme. This is one of those times.

Esperanza y acción
If you're not moved by what's going on right now at the San Jose mine complex in Chile, have someone check you for a pulse. As I post this, 17 of 33 trapped miners have been hauled to the surface.

It's absolutely riveting stuff.

After rescuers established contact with the miners some weeks ago, Jorge Galeguillos sent a letter up to his brother, a fellow miner. He wrote this account of the August 5th collapse:

"We had been up to the workshop and as we were driving back down, a slab of rock caved in just behind us. It crashed down only a few seconds after we drove past. Just ahead I saw a white butterfly. After that, we were caught in an avalanche of dirt and dust. I couldn't see my hand in front of my face. The tunnel was collapsing..."

In a culture as superstitiously Catholic as the Atacama region of Chile, that "white butterfly" is bound to become the next BVM-on-toast -- that is, people all over the world will see an angel in an insect.

Whatever.

Oh, don't get me wrong -- the tale of a butterfly flitting about deep underground is a real head-scratcher and, if it's true, it's pretty damned cool. I just don't feel the need to concoct divine explanations.

I'd rather marvel at the triumph of hope and, more important, the actions of men.

Perspectives on employment
Yesterday I ran across a couple of briefing papers from the Economic Policy Institute. EPI may be a left-leaning think-tank -- "Government must play an active role in protecting the economically vulnerable, ensuring equal opportunity, and improving the well-being of all Americans" -- but numbers don't take sides.


According to an analysis of data from the Bureau of Labor Statistics and the Census Bureau, since the beginning of the recession the U.S. economy needed to add 3.4 million jobs simply to keep pace with population growth. Instead, we lost 8.1 million jobs -- which means that there's a gap of 11.5 million jobs.

Put another way, the U.S. economy would have to add 11.5 million jobs just to get back to December 2007 employment levels.

No one truly believes that those jobs will be coming back any time soon. I say that most won't come back at all.

We also could look at the ratio of job-seekers to available jobs -- currently 4.6-to-1, by EPI's estimate -- and other fascinating stats, but I'm going to toss three numbers into a context that's a bit easier to wrap our brains around.

Coming up with 11.5 million jobs (to achieve pre-recession payrolls, as noted above) is equivalent to employing the entire population of Ohio.

6.1 million American workers -- roughly equal to the population of Indiana, our 14th-largest state -- have been unemployed longer than six months.

26.3 million Americans are either unemployed or under-employed. Only one state's population (California, 33.9 million) exceeds that number, which is greater than the combined populations of Pennsylvania and Illinois.

That sure puts things into perspective, doesn't it?

Macro economy vs. Mike Rowe economy
Mike Rowe, like Rush Limbaugh and Glenn Beck, is an entertainer. Unlike those talk-radio blowhards, however, Rowe has a useful agenda, one that could actually benefit this country.

A couple of years ago, the likable host of Dirty Jobs conceived mikeroweWORKS.com. Rather than trying to describe his vision for the project, I'll encourage you to take ten minutes out of your life to watch Mike’s Mission Video -- it's well worth your time.

I happened to catch an interview with Rowe on CNN yesterday afternoon, which is how I found out what (besides Dirty Jobs and Ford spots) he's up to. Here are a few snips.

"I don't know that we've lost the jobs so dramatically as we have lost touch with the people who do the jobs. But of course that's always the first step in marginalizing something. ... A growing skills gap, a crumbling infrastructure. And just a general dysfunctional relationship with dirt. There really are a couple of different pieces of this country that are not connected."

"...if we don't do something soon, we really are going to be dealing with fewer steam fitters and pipe fitters and electricians and plumbers and carpenters. And that's going to be a real, real problem."

"We've got this idea that a four-year degree is basically the only ticket to happiness and success. And when you celebrate one form of education at the expense of all the other ones, you really do the whole country a disservice. ... So many of the things we define as problems -- infrastructure, manufacturing, the skills gap, I think they're really symptoms of this larger problem that so many of us are just disconnected from the people who haul our water."

That's good stuff there, coming from a good guy. And it's not a bunch of ideological, anti-elitist bullshit, either -- it's pro-work.

Mike Rowe has a grip. I'm going to spend some more time over at mikeroweWORKS.com and see what else I can learn.

Backyard wallpaper
Walking out into this morning's cool air and brilliant sunshine, I looked up through the canopy of our ash tree. I dashed back inside, grabbed a camera and managed to capture what I saw before the light changed on me. The image, below, is now the wallpaper on my PC.