Employment - Where the Jobs Are

If you are looking for work, there are places that are hiring at a marvellous clip. If you were looking to get into manufacturing or service, forget it. Those jobs are drying up in the face of ruinous taxes and burdensome regulation. If the words "ruinous taxes" or "burdensome regulation" caused a thrill to run up your leg, then take hope, your boat has come in. From Fabius Maximus, comes this little gem:

Yes sirree, when all else is circling the drain, the government is hiring, like never before. Thousands of people are needed to document the thousands losing their jobs, to hand them the paperwork necessary to collect unemployment, and process the avalanche of Boomers entering retirement.
For every person out there actually producing wealth, there is at least one person in government busy destroying it.

A friend of mine who once lived in India in the 60s told me a story about life there. It seemed that in India, government had grown huge, and private commerce was punishingly regulated, to the point that the dream of every Indian college grad was to get a government job, which pretty much came with tenure from day one, and kick back and shuffle paper with regular raises until you could retire.
This made government jobs attractive, and about the only way to get one was to have a relative in government pull strings to get you hired.
One young fellow approached his uncle who worked in one of the innumerable permitting agencies. The uncle told him that, alas, he was unable to hire the young man at the moment, but he was welcome to hang about in the office, so that when he was able to hire someone, the young man would be able to claim he had some experience, or at least knew the ropes. So he did.
What he observed was an endless parade of people entering the office with a thick handful of papers, and begin at the first desk, handing the papers to the drone seated there who would read the documents with great interest until he was passed a few rupees, whereupon he would stamp the documents, and sent the petitioner on to the next desk, where the procedure was repeated.
The aspiring drone, found himself a stool, a punjee, in Hindi, and seated himself on it between 2 desks to observe. Before too long, an applicant, numbed by the process, while moving from one desk to another, stopped at the fellows stool, and handed him his papers. The fellow, being a quick study, began studying the papers intently, while holding his hand out in a significant manner. When the petitioner put some money in his hand, he initialed the papers, and sent him on.
At the end of the day, our hero went straight to the office supplies store, and had an official-looking stamp made up, exclaiming his title to be Punjee Officer.
The next day, he was on the job, industriously inspecting and stamping papers, and collecting his fees with great enthusiasm, impressing his uncle with his "can-do" attitude, and soon landing a regular position.

India, at the time, was a client state of the Soviet Union, not so much that they espoused communism, but more to poke a stick in the eye of their former colonial masters, or anyone else who spoke English. With the collapse of the USSR, the attitude has changed, and capitalism is now much more acceptable.

It's the past there, the present in England, and the future here.

Hope it doesn't last very long.