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https://financialpost.com/fp-work/americans-with-degrees-unemployed-workers
Thursday's labour figures showed young Americans are bearing the brunt of the recent rise in joblessness
Americans with four-year college degrees now comprise a record 25 per cent of total unemployment, underscoring a sharp slowdown in white-collar hiring this year.
Government-shutdown delayed monthly figures published Thursday by the United States Bureau of Labor Statistics showed the unemployment rate for bachelor's degree-holders rose to 2.8 per cent in September, up a half-percentage point from a year earlier. Other levels of education, by contrast, registered little or no increase over the same period.
There were more than 1.9 million Americans aged 25 and over with at least a bachelor's degree who were unemployed in September — one in four of the total number of unemployed. Before 2025, the ratio never reached such a high in data going back to 1992. Younger, recent college grads have also been struggling to find work.
Rising unemployment among the college-educated "should further fuel AI-related job loss fears," Michael Feroli, the chief U.S. economist at JPMorgan Chase & Co., said Thursday in a note following the release.
The milestone comes amid a raft of high-profile layoff announcements from major corporations including Amazon.com, Target Corp. and Starbucks Corp. A recent report by the outplacement firm Challenger, Gray & Christmas indicated job-cut announcements last month were the highest for any October in more than 20 years, fuelled by plans to replace positions with artificial intelligence.
(Score: 3, Informative) by aafcac on Saturday November 29, @09:37PM (8 children)
That was 20 years ago, these days things have advanced a bit. A modern plant uses a combination of AI and the physical properties of the materials to sort them. There's still a lot of limitations, but it's why they want you to leave the cap on plastic bottles that you send to them, they'll float those things as a primary method of separating them as they're one of the things that floats, they can then use mechanical means to remove the bottles from the other stuff that floats, but it's a lot easier than a mechanism that also has to deal with everything else.
There are some videos on YT of inside a sorting plant and it's pretty impressive, IMHO, it's still not really good enough to do single stream, but it is rather impressive.
(Score: 1) by khallow on Sunday November 30, @03:33AM (3 children)
When they aren't dumping it [reddit.com] in the landfill. /sarc
(Score: 2) by aafcac on Sunday November 30, @04:53AM (2 children)
That is true, the other issue is that the standards are higher for actual recycling and there has to be somebody that's willing to buy the recycled materials. Reducing and reusing remain more helpful strategies for a reason.
(Score: 1) by khallow on Sunday November 30, @05:35AM (1 child)
(Score: 2) by aafcac on Sunday November 30, @08:29PM
I think they likely will eventually, but the manufacturers really need to step up their game and stop making a bunch of products for customers that aren't recyclable because they mixed a bunch of different plastics together. I like to recycle, but the rules about what is and isn't recyclable are just too complicated. When I was a kid, there was a bunch of stuff that just had to be tossed. But, I knew generally if it was glass, paper or metal that it would definitely recycle and if it was plastic, you just looked at the numbers to see whether or not it could be. These days, I get a complicated picture with a bunch of examples of what does and doesn't recycle without any real guidance as to how to really know, and if too much recyclable material is in the garbage there are fines and they can refuse to pick it up. But, the rules are so complicated that I don't understand how they expect normal people to know whether or not that plastic can be recycled.
(Score: 2) by bussdriver on Sunday November 30, @10:37AM (3 children)
I remember the single-stream fight. fools. We still have it and it contaminates and costs so much. The scam was China made it all possible as they'd get paid for the return of shipping boats loaded up with trash; then they would supposedly sort and recycle it. Later, they stopped wanting our unsorted trash so we had to sort it because the public was spoiled and the special trucks were gone. Technology made it not so bad but it's still foolish and expensive. Turns out we TRASH most plastics because only the easily sorted items actually get it. For a while they tossed bottles that were not pre-cleaned. All the other stuff is just theoretical recycling. At least a chunk of it is burned.
We don't have brains enough to ban and regulate. For example, green PET bottles can't recycle with clear so Japan regulates the coloring of types of plastic but we won't do anything. We used to have deposits and glass bottles... we also don't tax materials based upon recycling costs. Disposal should be included in the price at least then the market would reflect actual costs. Idiot nation.
(Score: 1) by khallow on Sunday November 30, @05:01PM (2 children)
Regulating the color of plastics? What about that indicates "brains enough"?
My view on this is that when your business model requires such a ridiculous level of regulation and freely given goodwill of people subject to this mess, then you need a new business model. How much indifference, much less active sabotage, will it require in order to render any plastics recycling effort useless?
If you can't make single stream work, then wait until you can.
(Score: 2) by aafcac on Sunday November 30, @08:33PM (1 child)
It's not ridiculous, it's far easier to ensure that things leaving the factory are properly labeled than expecting customers and businesses to know if it's recyclable or not. This burden should always have been on the manufacturers and factories to address as comparatively little of the problem is the direct result of customers.
I totally agree with you about single stream, I genuinely wish I could go back to sorting into 3 bins with relatively clear rules about what goes in which bin. I do think that eventually single stream will get good enough, but things like ensuring that the materials come out of the factory in an easier to sort way is key to getting that working more quickly.
(Score: 1) by khallow on Tuesday December 02, @03:38AM
The labels are accurate though. The dyed plastic is indeed recyclable. It's just that the recycling infrastructure doesn't want to recycle the plastic in question.