On Tue, 28 Apr 2015 17:19:28 -0400, "Jim Wilkins"
wrote:

"Ed Huntress" wrote in message
.. .

I think the idea is that there must be enough total jobs to employ a
substantial fraction of the population, but that they can include a
variety of types of new jobs -- each of which must require skills
that
are scarce.

Which, I believe, is a pipe dream. The writer has set up a
necessary,
but probably impossible, set of conditions to solve the employment
situation.

'Back to my sackcloth and ashes... d8-(

--
Ed Huntress

I don't remember from high school how many other people one
manufacturing job is supposed to support. IIRC the railroads figured
up to 10, the railroad employee plus one other family, when they
planned new towns along new lines, back before wives took jobs.

-jsw

I don't know of any source in which I'd have confidence, but the
job-multiplier number commonly used for manufacturing jobs these days
is 4. Whatever the real number is, it's high.

Just the supply chain alone makes it high, but that's also where it
gets difficult to measure. At the top of the supply chain -- the OEM
who sells the finished product -- the multiplier is much higher. At
the bottom of the supply chain, it's lower.

I try to stay away from it, because there is another complication: as
you reduce the number of employees needed to make something, the
multiplier appears to go higher. But that depends on how automated the
supply chain is. They vary a lot.

--
Ed Huntress