Days before Christmas day and still reading the news when graphs and economics are what I encountered. Several articles tackled about graphs which actually started when BBC asked several economists to name their graph of the year. Some of the world’s top economists shared their insights in the financial developments particularly in the Eurozone by choosing a graph which they felt explained the currents events and what they can expect in the near future.

American newspapers and blogs did not want to be left without their own version and decided to ask their favorite economists, economic policymakers and investors to name their favorite graph of the year or the graph clearly influenced their thinking in 2011 with the reasons why it did. I have to say that Derek Thompson hit it on the head when he said “In a discipline where facts are murky and certainty is elusive, graphs offer a bright light of information and a small confidence that the world can be summed up between two axes.”

The economy and the changes with and around it is really a complex thing. Charts and graphs certainly make it easier for any layman and any person in industrial workwear interested enough to understand what is happening. Here are some of my favorites among the chosen graphs with the explanation from the expert who chose it as graph of the year for 2011. 

Peter Diamond, MIT

"This chart shows that a great deal of hiring is happening, as it does each month, that hiring per job opening is higher than it was when there was less unemployment, and that the ratio of quits to discharges, while still low, is recovering (a sign of better job opportunities). I infer that the low level of job openings is our key problem, reflecting inadequate aggregate demand and the need for significant fiscal stimulus."

Larry Summers, Harvard

"The near quadrupling in the share of men not working and the seemingly inexorable trend changes every aspect of society. Cyclical and structural changes are combining in a perfect storm."

Mark Zandi, Moody's

"Households are rapidly deleveraging and getting their proverbial house in order. The number of delinquent household loans has plunged from a peak of close to 35 million in early 2009 to less than 25 million in November."

Michael Greenstone, MIT, the Hamilton Project

"This chart shows how the jobs gap has evolved since December 2007 and shows three different scenarios for different rates of job growth. If the economy adds about 208,000 jobs per month, which was the average monthly rate for the best year of job creation in the 2000s, then it will take until February 2024 — over 12 years — to close the jobs gap."

Robert Frank, New York University

"My entry is the attached graph of what I call the Toil Index. It's an index I constructed to portray the most dramatic element of the middle-class squeeze -- the effort required to rent a house served by a school of average quality. "

Mike Konczal, Roosevelt Institute

"This graphic was originally part of a presentation two IMF economists gave in Cairo days before the Arab Spring happened. In the graph they showed 2008-era youth unemployment in the MENA region and warned about the long-term effects, both economic and political, of mass youth unemployment. I've updated it to include US youth unemployment in the Great Recession."

Source: Wonkblog

There have been 103,000 jobs outside of the farm sector that have been added in September, significantly better than expected but the unemployment rate of 9.1 percent remains the same. One of the sectors that have been hiring as I have written in my previous blogs is the temporary help services. And last month they added 19,400 new jobs again, slightly lower than in August but definitely more than that of July. The reasoning behind hiring temporary help services is because U.S. employers are still hesitant to commit themselves into hiring full-time personnel. They are still relying on short-term contracts because they are not yet that convinced that there will be a clear pickup in demand for their own services and/or goods. And because of that hesitancy, only temp staffing providers are happy and the level of unemployed remains at 14 million.

As of September, it is said that the long-term unemployment still remains to be a problem. The time frame of being without a job marked up a new record of 40.5 weeks and jobless Americans for more than 20 weeks increased to 6.24 million. Despite the creation of jobs, the jobs of those in industrial workwear in the manufacturing industry dropped by 13,000 jobs. According to experts, we cannot expect employers to step up on hiring unless there is a great demand for it. And no matter how many jobs were added last month it cannot keep pace with the growth in population and thus not enough to lower unemployment.

There is one thing though that may surprise us all. While there are 14 million looking for jobs there are actually 3,228,000 open jobs in Jul 2011 that needs to be filled up according to the Bureau of Statistics of the US Department of Labor. Though it may not be enough to give jobs to all those currently unemployed, it makes one wonder why these job openings are not being filled up to think that the unemployment line is really, really long.

In a recent article on CNBC that tried to answer the discrepancy of 3.4 million job openings that is not being filled up when there are 14 million unemployed. They list down possible combination of factors that can most likely answer this which are:

• long-term unemployment killing skills
• a lousy housing market hurting labor mobility
• extended unemployment benefits likely having an impact on at least some folks’ choices in what jobs they’ll agree to take and when (though he noted that this might be extremely unpopular to say so)

Interviews with CEOs in CNBC though are telling them the same story which is: they are unable to find workers whose skills would match the job so they are unable to fill the job openings. Their article listed down companies with thousand job openings including:

• Siemens with 3,000 job openings that are not being filled up
• Cummins told CNBC that they cannot find skilled worker for their manufacturing plants. And looking at their website I see jobs posted this month such as:  

• • Catalyst Element Engineering
  • PML Technical Specialist
  • Director- Technology Architecture
  • IT Manager ERP and Supply Chain
  • IT Capacity Management and Planning Systems
  • IT Projects and Integration Leader
  • IT Operations Delivery Leader

Obviously, these are skilled jobs that need experienced job applicants.  While it might be notoriously difficult to match applicants to positions in high-tech fields the unfilled job positions are in need of workers in industrial workwear specifically in manufacturing, trades people and even truck drivers. From July of 2010 to July this year the job openings in trade, transportation and utilities went from 416,000 to 778,000. 

Filling up these job openings would help the economy a great deal. Unfortunately because the positions ask for experience or skill itself then there is also a great need to train people. The training is actually a part of the government’s stimulus plan but only a small portion has really been spent on it. Corporations need to participate by having internal training programs and even helping smaller companies by training people. The other fix cited was for the government to ensure fewer dropouts from high school. The more teenagers drop out of school the lower their chances are of getting a good job and ultimately losing their own enormous earning potential and economic prospects, and not being able to contribute to society. In fact they also become a massive drag on the economy. 

According to a study made by the Alliance for Excellent Education, cutting even just half of the dropout rate in one high school could result annually to $4.1 billion in additional earnings, 30, 000 additional jobs, and $5.3 billion in economic growth. That’s how much important it is to reduce the dropout rates in high school. Currently, the jobless rate of high school dropouts is 4% more than those of the high-school with diploma. 

What the economy needs right now is to move on and we can only do that if we have more people working. Corporations need to train the workers they need. And the government should also be able to supply workers that have the basic educational building block to guarantee that they can be trained.

Again, everyone who wants a job can have one whether it’s going to be in corporate uniforms or industrial workwear it has to be where your skills matches what is required by the job. Some people though do not agree with this idea. Well I beleive that education is important and when working trainings certainly help a lot because it gives you more knowledge on how to do things better.

For decades United States and the Soviet Union were considered the superpowers because these are the dominant states that have proved themselves capable of casting great influence in global politics. After the Cold War, it appeared that only the United States fulfill the criteria to be considered the lone world superpower.  Although the criteria of a superpower are not clearly defined and thus they may differ, essentially being a superpower meant being able to project power measured along the four axes: military, economic, political, and cultural or soft power

And so Americans are used to being No. 1 in almost all aspects including world’s businesses, athletic endeavors, education, power, technology, and many more. The United States has long been considered the greener pasture and the dream of those who live in the Third World is to migrate to the US because this is where they will see, feel and experience their success. But pundits are now saying that America being the current superpower no longer holds true and that today’s complex global marketplace and the rising interdependency between the world's nations has made the belief of a superpower an idea of the past and that the world is now multipolar. This means that it is believed that there is a distribution of power in more than two nation-states having equal amounts of influence economically, culturally, and even in the military.

With America’s manufacturing industry moving overseas in the 70’s in order to cut-costs, this contributed to the rise of the economy of Japan, and more recently, of China and Mexico where they can find inexpensive labor. Suddenly, high-priced manufacturing jobs were no longer available for American workers in industrial workwear and everything else around declined along with it including as education and the health care system.

The era when the US was 1st in everything is over. American children are no longer the best educated in the world. In fact the world education ranking made by Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) put the US at 14th place with Korea and Finland on top. We also no longer produce the healthiest population. Our economy is at standstill with unemployment rate at 9.2 percent as was last reported June of 2011. The US GDP no longer grows as quickly as it once did. Although America is fighting to remain competitive globally still many factors like current deficit, growing national debt, unemployment, and lack of government fund for R&D, contribute to a crippled economy.

There are now industries where the US no longer remains the top producer. For the better part of the century, the US has been the world’s single greatest producer of food. Though we still lead the production of commodities but improved farming practices and more advanced seed have allowed an increase in the yield per acres in countries like Vietnam, China and Russia. In other industries though we have been overtaken by China, Japan, and Russia making one wonder when they will finally overtake us. Economists are speculation how long it will take China to overtake the US since it has passed Japan for the No. 2 spot.

Here are some other industries the US is no longer the top producer:

Beer Production
Position: 2nd
Leader: China, with 423 million hectoliters in 2009
U.S.: 229 hectoliters in 2009

In 2000, US generated 232 million hectoliters while China only produced 220 million. In just nine years, Chine has doubled its production output to 423 million hectoliters while the American output has in fact decreased by 3 million to 229 million. One factor to consider is that the drinking population of China is 4 times larger than the US.

High-Technology Exports
Position: 2nd
Leader: China, $381 billion in 2008
U.S.: $231 billion in 2008

The World Bank describes high-technology exports as “products with high R&D intensity, such as in aerospace, computers, pharmaceuticals, scientific instruments, and electrical machinery.” The United States prides itself in all fields but Chinese high-tech imports have increased more than 50% and the US remains first place only in the pharmaceutical industry.

Coal Production
Position: 2nd
Leader: China, with 3.3 billion short tons produced in 2009
U.S.: 1 billion short tons

Coal production in America is now a distant second to China which has three times more production at 3.3 billion. This is because America is no longer the world’s largest manufacturing company so the U.S. is no longer the largest consumer of energy for manufacturing purposes. While the American coal production has decreased over the years, the Chinese production continues to increase.

Lettuce Production
Position: 2nd
Leader: China, with 12.9 million metric tons
U.S.: 4.1 million metric tons

The food consumption of 1.3 billion Chinese is significantly higher than that of the US. The very high food demand has caused the domestic production of many crops in China to rise including lettuce.

Rice Production
Position: 11th
Leader: China, with 166 million metric tons produced between 2009 and 2010
U.S.: 6.9 million metric tons

China’s rice production at 166 million metric tons is 20 times more rice than the US. The U.S. rice production account for only 1% of the world’s total. With only 6.9 million metric tons production, it is not even in the top ten compared to the rest of the world but is the 3rd leading rice exporter since there is not much demand for it in the country. Of the total rice production 20% is exported.

Pork Production
Position: 2nd
Leader: China, with 51.5 million metric tons produced in 2010
U.S.: 10.2 million metric tons produced in 2010

The US continues to produce the most of agricultural commodities and also the largest consumption especially for beef and veal. The US pork production of 10.2 million though is less than a fifth of that in China with 51.5 million metric tons of pork.

Wind Energy Generated
Position: 2nd
Leader: China, with 42 gigawatts generated in 2010
U.S.: 40 gigawatts in 2010

Auto Industry
Position: 2nd
Leader: Japan, with 17 million autos produced by Japanese automakers in 2009
U.S.: 12 million autos produced by American automakers in 2009

Commercial Aircraft Production
Position: 2nd
Leader: Airbus (Europe) based on 574 orders in 2010
U.S.: Boeing, with 530 orders in 2010

Oil Production
Position: 3rd
Leader: Russia, with 10 million barrels produced each day
Saudi Arabia, with 9.7 million barrels per day
U.S.:  9 million barrels produced each day

Summer means vacation for school children and certainly a time to spend lazing around the house or the beach in shorts and cool and comfortable summer tees and tank tops to counter the rising temperature.  But for those in their business suits, you wonder whether you will ever feel as cool as these kids and if it’s possible to make your business casual as casual as can be.

Some may think that it’s okay to take a vacation from professionalism just like these kids take time off their school uniforms. Wrong! No matter how warm the weather is, there is no reason to take time off your business clothes and despite feeling like you are wearing a suit of armor instead of a business suit, you can still make a strong statement in the workplace. Taking a vacation from professionalism by coming to the office in shorts or tank tops sends a message to your boss and clients that you are not fully engaged with your job. It would seem to others that you would rather be lounging at home than doing your job, especially if you are the only one wearing it. According to the experts, 82% of human resources professionals believe that the way you dress affects your place at work.

Even if your office practices the “casual Friday” policy for the summer, it is important to know what constitutes summer business casual. It is everybody’s responsibility to know what she or he can and cannot wear even when their office relaxes their dress code over the summer. If you are just starting your career it would be important to understand the company’s policy for summer office attire. If it is not discussed with you then learn to ask about it rather make the mistake due to ignorance.

People make the mistake when talking about business casual. "You don't want the emphasis placed on the word 'casual' instead of the word 'business’,’” says Sherry Maysonave, author of Casual Power. “Casual could be jeans, sneakers, T-shirts and shorts, whereas business casual is a relaxed version of business dress. It’s how you might dress to go out to a nice dinner on the weekend, not how you would go to the grocery store.” If it’s something that you wear everyday when going to your friends house then that is not business casual.

Women have a bigger problem or challenge in this case because a woman’s business attire is different from social attire and what we often see in fashion are good for social events or parties but not for the workplace. On the other hand, what men wears in a social event or party could also be worn in the office. But certain rules stay the same and that is the less skin showed in a workplace the better it is. Showing off your well-toned bodies in tight-fitting dresses, short-shorts and uber-tight tank tops no matter how trendy, is more appropriate for your free time and not during work hours, no matter what kind of workplace you are in. 

[RH-RH61] - Red House Ladies 3/4-Sleeve Dobby Non-Iron Button-Down Shirt

Each office might have specifics but one cannot go rule with a rule of thumb which is that business casual may include chino trousers; pencil skirts; relaxed button-down shirts; and linen, polo or knitted shirts. And each company has their own rules but there are some fashion statements that both men and women (especially those just starting their careers) should avoid even during summer:

• Revealing attire – mini skirt and plunging necklines or midriff top or sheer dress without the appropriate undergarments.
• Shorts or Capri pants or denim cutoffs (no short-shorts ot super-baggy shorts)
• Sleeveless shirts or tank tops 
• Halter tops, strapless or spaghetti straps
• Sweatpants, jogging suits or any workout attire
• T-shirts with offensive, derogatory or racist slogans or logos
• Flip-flops

RED KAP WORK SHIRTS

Starting today, Uniform Point Blog will feature something new on our website every Monday. As Uniform Point continues to expand its inventory there will always be something new which we might overlook simply because there is really more than enough products for everyone and for each of our customers’ specific needs.

Today we feature two work shirts from one of the most trusted and sought after provider of work clothes – Red Kap. They are well-known for providing defect-free and comfortable clothes for work. Their company profile definitely says it right when they say “from boardroom to the factory floor millions of people go to work in our apparel every day”. Since it was founded, Red Kap continues to grow and diversify to suit the needs of their customers and for the ultimate goal of making uniforms comfortable. 

The Red Kap work shirts continue to be benchmarks of quality, durability and functionality

[RE-ST62] - Red Kap Mens Utility Short Sleeve Work Shirt (starting at $16.95)

Formerly known as Big Ben® this work shirt by Red Kap is perfect for builders, carpenters, tradesmen, and more. It is a durable work shirt with two button-thru flapped pocket storage having the left pocket pencil stall. It has topstitched collar, lined with sewn-in stays and seven buttons for closure. It's offered in a pre-cure durable press and dyed-to-match buttons for a polished look. It also has double back yokes and a long tail for shaping. Spend all your time getting things done - this shirt takes care of itself with soil release finish. The fabric used for this is of polyester-cotton, 5.5 oz no-iron twill. Look no further for a work shirt with softness of home wash. Available in color black in size S – 4XL with size range of:

 This work shirt is available in other colors including: Charcoal, Khaki, Navy, Olive Green and Silver

[RE-SC14LB] - Red Kap Mens Western Style Long Sleeve Dress Uniform Shirt (starting at $21.45)

This Red Kap men’s dress uniform shirt with a classic Western style look and updated details will come through for you every time for work and casual wear. The authentic western pointed front and back yoke and six simulated pearl grippers (snaps) for closure plus button at neck and pocket flaps add sophistication to this top. This work shirt has long set-in sleeves and two-piece lined collar with sewn-in stays and lined cuff with double gripper closure. It has two spade style pockets with functional flaps and simulated pearl grippers and a bartacked pencil stall in left pocket. Additional detail such as a center pleat placket and a separate two-piece yoke makes it look really classy. Made with 65% Polyester/35% Cotton blend and 4 oz. Chambray fabric.  It is available in Light Blue in sizes S to 3XL.

Size Chart:

Customize these work shirts with Uniform Point's low-cost embroidery services and see your name, title and company's logo for a 24/7 walking advertisement.