WSET.com - ABC13Labor Day Pains by David Tate

Once again Labor Day is upon us. Ironic it comes just a day after the jobs report came out showing unemployment still hovering over 9%. It's also a day removed from the news that national unemployment may finally get back to pre-recession numbers in 2017. 2017 (I just had to say that again).

So what is it going to take to get people back to work? The middle class has been gutted as jobs are shipped overseas. Those good paying jobs have been replaced by service jobs that underemploy our neighbors and deprive them of health insurance. Part time is the new full time. Hate to sound pessimistic... but I am.

My Dad is just as cynical, which he has earned. After 36 years in the bowels of a GM foundry, who can blame him after all his earned benefits were stripped away during bankruptcy. He knows the writing on the wall which he summed up in a story he told me recently.

He told me about the late-80's; walking into a new foundry for the first time and seeing lines of people doing all sorts of different jobs. 15-years later as he retired, there was one worker for every 75 feet of assembly line... and they were operating the robots that took those jobs.

So while we've exported jobs and cut them by the millions through technology... who has the answer for where and how those jobs will be replaced? With the auto industry no where near what it once in the United States, the question isn't really how to create jobs as much as the question is, "What industry will be the new dawn for the American worker?"

That is the million dollar question.