Student loan debt, now at $830 billion, has surpassed credit card debt—a statement not likely to have been heard 20 years ago. Student loans, unlike any other form of debt, CANNOT be forgiven via bankruptcy—these loans MUST be repaid. Is this the next bubble to burst?

Personally I think we will see our young fleeing the country to escape their debt.  Scroll half down and see who benefits from this debt, not only are we burdening our young with the Federal and State debts, we are backdoor using them as a source of income.  We sell them the dream, you’ve heard it over and over again on TV and radio, “people with degrees make…….. more than those who don’t”, and by the way we will help finance your dream.   But do they really?  Who is commissioning those studies and who is performing those studies?  Perhaps those who benefit from increasing student enrollment?  Perhaps.

The young don’t understand the soul crushing burden of debt, what’s a 100,000$ to a 18 year old?  What is truely scary is how many loans are made to 2 year college students that don’t finish, you got the debt and no degree.

And for many with degrees an economy in recession with few new jobs.

Why are you not supprised?

Change in Unemployment Rate By Country

By any measure this has been a hard and long recession, and many of us are not convinced it is over.  Particularly worrisome is the millions of men who have dropped off the face of employment statistics.  Men who have just disappeared.  No statistic the Federal Government keeps tracks them.  If they are working its in the cash underground or by barter or combination of or just wearing out the couch.  These men having exhausted their unemployment don’t even show in the state numbers.

Giving voice to this statistic is the Structural Unemployment number traditionally around 2%, representing the people who don’t work and aren’t looking for work, the long term unemployed.  The chart (Reuters) suggests this rate maybe more like 4.5% now twice the rate of any European country.

The share of American men aged 16 to 64 who are employed has fallen from nearly 85 percent in the early 1950s to less than 65 percent now.  This is a really big deal, millions of men have dropped out and are not participating in the American economy.  We have no experience with what the social ramifications will be, a huge rise in crime comes to mind.

Some estimates put every 1 in 5 young men out of work, and this does not include those in school, or who have part time jobs.  This is a critical time for those men, work habits are established and a career basis is formed.  The start of their life wealth is being seriously delayed, if it ever starts at all.

Chairman of the Texas Workforce Commission Tom Pauken writes:

One reason that men’s employment rate lags behind is that there has been negative growth in the types of jobs men historically have occupied. In the last 10 years, 5.5 million manufacturing jobs were lost. That’s one-third of our manufacturing base in an industry where men make up 70 percent of the workforce. In construction, where 87 percent of positions are filled by men, more than 1.4 million jobs went away during that time frame. Approximately 4.4 million jobs have been added in the education and health care sectors, but women dominate this growing field as they make up 77 percent of the work force.

Bringing manufacturing jobs home is more critical than ever, it’s a National Security issue.

Job Growth By State Since The "End" of the Reession

Regional and State Employment and Unemployment Summary (BLS.gov)

If you click on the graph to the right and expand or zoom in on Connecticut you can barely see a tiny bit of blue.  That blue represents job growth since the MAX jobs lost point during the 2007 Recession as of this past May 2011.  Note it’s the 2007 Recession and we are now obviously in 2011.  The top of the blue is the worst unemployment rate and the top of the red is where we are as of May this year.  Keep zooming in, I assure you there is SOME blue in the Connecticut bar, (yes a pun).

Also note only one state is worse in job growth.  Louisiana.

If you google.com “companies leaving Connecticut” it returns: 59,100,000 results in (0.10 seconds) including a link for this resource guide on everything you need to know, leavingconnecticut.com

To this I add, how could the housing market in Connecticut ever recover if we don’t improve our job growth?

$80 Billion in 8 Days.

Treasury’s release this afternoon of its Monthly Statement of Public Debt provides more insight into how much of those options Treasury has tapped so far. The following chart shows non-marketable securities held by the CSRDF each month since April of last year.

The G-fund was $73.3 billion as of May 31, down $56.0 billion from the end of April. As our next chart shows.

Zerohedge.com

Home values are still falling, but not as quickly as they were late last year. From March to April, the Zillow Home Value Index declined 0.77%, compared with a decline of 0.89% from November to December 2010.

While that’s a positive sign, home values are still falling too rapidly for the market to reach a bottom this year, says Zillow Chief Economist Dr. Stan Humphries in this month’s brief on the Zillow Research page. Declining rates of foreclosures and improving employment will be the keys to reaching the bottom, which we predict to come in 2012, at the earliest.

Still falling, just not as fast.

Source: ShadowStats.com

The National Federation of Independent Business (NFIB) will release their April survey on Tuesday, June 14th. Here is a pre-release of the employment results from NFIB: NFIB Jobs Statement: On Main Street, Job Creation is Collapsing

“After solid job gains early in the year, progress has slowed to a trickle … meaningful job creation on Main Street has collapsed.
…
[I]ndications of minimal future growth include the fact that in the next three months, 13 percent plan to increase employment (down 3 points), and 8 percent plan to reduce their workforce (up 2 points). That yields a seasonally adjusted net negative 1 percent of owners planning to create new jobs, a 3 point loss from April.
…
“Overall, reports of job reductions have returned to historically normal levels. However, the percent of owners hiring has not recovered to levels historically observed after two years of expansion. With one in four owners still reporting ‘weak sales’ as their No. 1 business problem, there is little need to add employees …”

For every 100 people employed last month, two will lose jobs and 3 will drop out of the labor force in next month.

Average tenure of a new employee is 3 years 2 months (includes CEO’s).

The hottest hiring in 2011 will revolve around “growth” and include leadership, business development, marketing, product development, account management, customer service, sales, acquisitions, and process improvements.

In America, there are over 26 million workers unemployed, underemployed, discouraged, or not actively looking.

The predicted number of jobs for Gen Y employees is 8 jobs before they’re 40 years old.

Reference recommendations correlate to results predictability of less than 9%.

For every 100 unemployed people last month, 17 have found employment and 19 have dropped out.

Over 35% of resumes are fraudulent, over 75% have mistakes or ‘little white lies’.

The unemployment rate for college graduates is 3.8%.

Rapidly Approaching Category 5

http://www.nap.edu/catalog/12999.html

Executive Summary

A Few Factoids

Thirty years ago, ten percent of California’s general fund went to higher
education and three percent to prisons. Today, nearly eleven percent
goes to prisons and eight percent to higher education.1

China is now second in the world in its publication of biomedical
research articles, having recently surpassed Japan, the United Kingdom,
Germany, Italy, France, Canada and Spain.2

The United States now ranks 22nd among the world’s nations in the
density of broadband Internet penetration and 72nd in the density of
mobile telephony subscriptions.3

In 2009, 51 percent of United States patents were awarded to non-
United States companies.4

The World Economic Forum ranks the United States 48th in quality of
mathematics and science education.5

Of Wal-Mart’s 6,000 suppliers, 5,000 are in China.6

There are sixteen energy companies in the world with larger reserves
than the largest United States company.7

IBM’s once promising PC business is now owned by a Chinese
company.8

The legendary Bell Laboratories is now owned by a French company.9

Hon Hai Precision Industry Co. (computer manufacturing) employs
more people than the worldwide employment of Apple, Dell, Microsoft,
Intel and Sony combined.10

No new nuclear plants and no new petroleum refineries have been built
in the United States in a third of a century, a period characterized by
intermittent energy-related crises.11

Only four of the top ten companies receiving United States patents last
year were United States companies.12

United States consumers spend significantly more on potato chips than
the government devotes to energy R&D.13

The world’s largest airport is now in China.14

In 2000 the number of foreign students studying the physical sciences
and engineering in United States graduate schools for the first time
surpassed the number of United States students.15

Federal funding of research in the physical sciences as a fraction of GDP
fell by 54 percent in the 25 years after 1970. The decline in engineering
funding was 51 percent.16

GE has now located the majority of its R&D personnel outside the
United States.17

Manufacturing employment in the U.S. computer industry is now lower
than when the first personal computer was built in 1975.18

In the 2009 rankings of the Information Technology and Innovation
Foundation the U.S. was in sixth place in global innovation-based
competitiveness, but ranked 40th in the rate of change over the past
decade.19

China has now replaced the United States as the world’s number one
high-technology exporter.20

In 1998 China produced about 20,000 research articles, but by 2006
the output had reached 83,000 . . . overtaking Japan, Germany and the
U.K.21

Eight of the ten global companies with the largest R&D budgets have
established R&D facilities in China, India or both.22

During a recent period during which two high-rise buildings were constructed
in Los Angeles, over 5,000 were built in Shanghai.23

In a survey of global firms planning to build new R&D facilities, 77 percent
say they will build in China or India.24

China has a $196 billion positive trade balance. The United States’ balance
is negative $379 billion.25

Sixty-nine percent of United States public school students in fifth
through eighth grade are taught mathematics by a teacher without a
degree or certificate in mathematics.26

Ninety-three percent of United States public school students in fifth
through eighth grade are taught the physical sciences by a teacher
without a degree or certificate in the physical sciences.27

(editor: Any wonder that our kids are not getting turned on to math and science!)

Of the Big Three American automakers, one is now owned by a firm in
Italy (after having been previously sold by a German firm), and another
is 60 percent owned by the United States government.28

The United States ranks 27th among developed nations in the proportion
of college students receiving undergraduate degrees in science or
engineering.29

Forty-nine percent of United States adults do not know how long it
takes for the Earth to revolve around the Sun.30

The United States graduates more visual arts and performing arts
majors than engineers.31

The total annual federal investment in research in mathematics, the
physical sciences and engineering is now equal to the increase in United
States healthcare costs every nine weeks.32

Bethlehem Steel marked its 100th birthday by declaring bankruptcy.33

The United States ranks 20th in high school completion rate among
industrialized nations and 16th in college completion rate.34

In less than 15 years, China has moved from 14th place to second place
in published research articles (behind the United States).35

China’s real annual GDP growth over the past thirty years has been 10
percent.36

According to OECD data the United States ranks 24th among thirty
wealthy countries in life expectancy at birth.37

For the next 5-7 years the United States, due to budget limitations, will
only be able to send astronauts to the Space Station by purchasing rides
on Russian rockets.38

The average American K-12 student spends four hours a day in front of
a TV.39

China’s Tsinghua and Peking Universities are the two largest suppliers
of students who receive PhD’s—in the United States.40

Sixty-eight percent of U.S. state prison inmates are high school dropouts
or otherwise did not qualify for a diploma.41

The United States has fallen from first to eleventh place in the OECD in
the fraction 25-34 year olds that has graduated high school. The older
portion of the U.S. workforce ranks first among OECD populations of
the same age.42

When MIT put its course materials on the worldwide web, over half of
the users were outside the United States.43
Six of the ten best-selling vehicles in the United States are now foreign
models.44

Since 1995 the United States share of world shipments of photovoltaics
has fallen from over 40 percent to well under 10 percent—while the
overall market has grown by nearly a factor of one hundred.45

Among manufacturers of photovoltaics, wind turbines and advanced
batteries, the top ten global firms by market capitalization include two,
one and one United States firms, respectively. The other firms are from
China, Denmark, France, Germany, India, Spain, Taiwan and the U.K.46
An American company recently opened the world’s largest private solar
R&D facility . . . in Xian, China.47

By 2008, public spending in the United States on energy R&D had
declined to less than half what it was three decades ago in real purchasing
power. By 2005, private investment had declined to less than
one-third of the total.48

A single Japanese automobile model constitutes about half of the U.S.
hybrid market.49

Last year Mitsubishi introduced the world’s first mass-produced allelectric
car.50

A Japanese company produces over 75 percent of the world’s nickelmetal
hydride batteries used in vehicles.51

Japan has 1524 miles of high speed rail; France has 1163; and China
just passed 742 miles. The United States has 225. China has 5612 miles
now under construction and one plant produces 200 trains each year
capable of operating at 217 mph. The United States has none under
construction.52

Roughly half of America’s outstanding public debt is now foreignowned—
with China the largest holder.53

The increase in cost of higher education in America has substantially
surpassed the growth in family income in recent decades. United States
current and former students have amassed $633 billion in student loan
debt.54

There are 60 new nuclear power plants currently being built in the
world. One of these is in the United States.55

In 2008, 770,000 people worked in the United States correction sector,
a number which is projected to grow. During the same year there were
880,000 workers in the entire United States automobile manufacturing
sector.56

Between 1996 and 1999, 157 new drugs were approved in the United
States. In a corresponding period ten years later the number dropped
to 74.57

All the National Academies Gathering Storm committee’s recommendations
could have been fully implemented with the sum America spends
on cigarettes each year—with $60 billion left over.58

Youths between the ages of 8 and 18 average seven-and-a-half hours
a day in front of video games, television and computers—often
multi-tasking.59

In 2007 China became second only to the United States in the estimated
number of people engaged in scientific and engineering research and
development.60

In January 2010, China’s BGI made the biggest purchase of genome
sequencing equipment ever.61

In May 2010, a supercomputer produced in China was ranked the
world’s second-fastest.62

Almost one-third of U.S. manufacturing companies responding to
a recent survey say they are suffering from some level of skills
shortages.63

According to the ACT College Readiness report, 78 percent of high
school graduates did not meet the readiness benchmark levels for one
or more entry-level college courses in mathematics, science, reading
and English.64