Best of Blogs for Week of September 2nd

Every Friday afternoon I share some of the more interesting or notable posts that I have seen in the personal finance blogs and other sources for the past week

TheBigPicture answers the question  How Much Has America’s Net Worth Recovered?

MyMoneyBlog discusses Mosaic: Crowdfund Solar Projects With Just $25, Earn 5% Interest

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Poverty Rate is Inflated by up to 0.7% Due to College Students

A recent Planet Money article A College Kid, A Single Mom, And The Problem With The Poverty Line said that : "U.S. Census Bureau recently reported that more than half of all college students who are living off campus and not at home are poor."    That shouldn't be a surprise to anyone that a lot of college students have low income.   But what they really mean is that the US government adds these college students to the official tally of people in the nation that are below the poverty line.  

I also found a Census blog post on it here When Off-Campus College Students are Excluded, Poverty Rates Fall in Many College Towns  Here is the full Census report on the topic : Examining the Effect of Off-Campus College Students on Poverty Rates

If you are in college and you don't live with your parents or in a college dorm then you are counted as a household.   College students living on their own who have low income below the poverty line are added to the number of people in the nation officially deemed as living in poverty.    If you live with your parents then you're included in your parents family and the poverty rate is based on your families entire household with your parents income.   The Census excludes people living in college dorms from the poverty statistics.   But if you live off campus and don't live with family then you're considered your own household and your poverty rate is figured based on your own income.

 If you look at table 2 in the Census report it tells us that 51.8% of college students not living with parents or on campus are below the poverty rate.    That is not surprising.    But there are actually 2-3 million such people in the nation and it adds up.   Table 2 also shows that the impact on the poverty rate in the U.S. of excluding college students living on their own would be a -0.7% difference.

As of 2009-2011 figures the official poverty rate was 15.2%.    But that includes college students living on their own.    If college students living on their own were excluded from the poverty tally then the poverty rate would change by -0.7% and would have been 14.5% instead of 15.2%.   

It makes an even bigger difference if you look at local areas like college towns.   The Census report says : "For example, Monongalia County, West Virginia where the University of West Virginia is located , had its poverty rate drop from about 23 .0 percent to 12.6 percent."     But there are not a lot of counties in the nation that see large changes.  

Should they include college students living alone or not?     Well I think it depends.   If you happen to live alone in an apartment your rich parents pay for and you make $8 an hour working 10 hours a week for spending money then I don't think you should be added to the governments official tally of the ranks of the poor.     But if you're a 29 year old who is officially independent from your parents and paying your own way through community college on 30 hr/week minimum wage job then yes maybe you should be in the poverty ranks.    I don't know but I would suspect that most college students are not really independent.

It seems clear to me that including college students living in off campus housing is inflating the poverty rate in the nation.   I'm not sure how much of the 0.7% difference is really students who get support from their parents.     I think they should exclude any college student who can be claimed as a dependent by someone else.    I'm assuming that the Census survey that figures the poverty rate doesn't ask if you can be claimed by someone else.    If your parents are claiming you as a dependent then I really don't think you should be counted in the poverty figures for the same reason that they already exclude college students living on campus or living with family members.


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Are Employees Unskilled or Picky or are Employers Too Picky?

Notice :  this is a semi-rambling, venting and opinionated article.  Just giving you fair warning.

I ran across this article Why Millions of Job Openings Are Unfilled which seems to claim in general that many jobs aren't filled due to lack of skilled applicants.   They talk of "scores of employers practically begging for new hires to fill openings to no avail". I'm not sure if they realize that score means 20 and that scores means 40 or more.   So in relation to the USA economy thats a minuscule drop in the bucket. But thats OK I will set that nitpicking aside for now so I can get on to the bigger complaint.

Here's the bit I really wonder about...

They have this quote : 

"Another cause of the supply-demand imbalance is a persisting stigma towards blue-collar jobs. Many people simply believe that certain jobs are "beneath them" and simply aren't interested.

Krystal Wells, owner of Portland, Ore.-based cleaning service The Other Woman, recalls how difficult it has been to find good workers to join her staff.

"I have gone as far as contacting over 400 different individuals that I took the time to read their profiles to see if from what I read they would be a fit and custom pick the people who most fit this job to call," Wells said. "After all the people I contacted, I had one person that was interested and never showed up to the interview."

OK first of all they refer to "contacting over 400 different individuals" that she "took the time to read their profiles".    I"m not really clear whats going on there.    That sounds like she's skimming Linked-in or something looking for possible candidates.   Then she says she was looking to "custom pick the people who most fit this job to call".    It really sounds like this woman didn't put out a job ad but instead went browsing somewhere for people she might hire.  I don't know what she was looking at.  Theres no mention of where these profiles were.   I'm really confused.    Maybe she's reading the profiles of 400 applicants?    If she got 400 applicants then couldn't find someone to hire then that doesn't mean that people think the job is "beneath them" but instead means that there are literally 100's of people wanting that job.   But that doesn't match what they said, cause they are saying that many people think this job is beneath them.   So there must not be 400 applicants and so she's just browsing Linked in?    I'm confused.    If you want to hire someone you don't just go ask 400 strangers if they want to work at your company.  You post an ad to Craigslist or wherever and then sort the replies.   Pure and simple.


And the thing is that the woman is looking for people to clean houses.   I have to think that if you're looking to hire people to clean houses and you browse 400 profiles to look for the "custom fit" for the job that you *might* just be a little too picky about who you hire.    That sounds more like the job search process some Fortune 500 companies put into hiring their CEOs.

Of course there is no indication of what she wants to pay them and I have to wonder if its a minimum wage job.    I found the companies website and it doesn't list a wage and says the work is 25-30 hours with 1 week of vacation after a year and no mention of any other benefits.   I don't know, and its quite possible that she wants to pay handsomely.   But it doesn't say that anywhere.  It doesn't say "and I was going to pay $15/hr or $20/hr".    Sounds more like lowish pay with virtually no benefits and not even full time hours.     Now thats common enough for house cleaning work I'd guess, but its not really going to entice the best applicants.

I honestly doubt there are a lot of people who prefer to clean houses for a living.   Some people do enjoy that work and it can be a fine job for those who do it but I think most people really prefer other jobs if they can get them.    So yes I bet that most people aren't interested in such a job.    As an employer seeking to hire people for this work you have to understand that kind of thing.  You aren't going to get a line of 100 highly skilled people lined up with awesome resumes begging to work hard for relatively low wages.    Maybe I'm assuming too much here but the woman talks of reviewing 400 profiles (a lot of hunting) in order to get a "custom pick" for her job which sounds to me like someone who's really very particular and picky about who they want to hire.  As an employer its easier to be super picky when you have a ton of interested applicants but you don't have that luxury if there aren't as many interested people.     If you really do insist on being very particular about who you hire and only want to make sure you get the absolute best people then you really do have to pay more.   I see no mention of paying more and honestly I have to assume that the opposite is likely the case and I'm guessing its low pay.

You know what they could do to find fill that job opening?   Stop being so picky or pay more.   Its not that hard to figure out.

The article is looking at the number of unfilled jobs and trying to explain why they are unfilled.    A couple years ago I looked at that topic myself and I wrote :


Why 3.2 Million Unfilled Jobs Isn't as Big as It Sounds

Open jobs are a natural part of the work place turnover.    People come and go and jobs aren't filled immediately so there is always going to be a certain number of open jobs.   It normally takes a month or two to fill a job so there's always some empty jobs as they are emptied and filed on an ongoing basis.   

This is a simplistic way to look at it :   Is McDonalds hiring people right now?    Yes McDonalds is probably hiring.   Why is that?  Because someone is always in the process of leaving McDonalds because they have high turnover.   So that 'help wanted' sign at McDonalds does not mean that American workers  lack the skills to work at McDonalds.   Now lets just extend that idea across the entire economy and there will be naturally 2-3% of jobs open at any given time.   Its not an indication that workers are lacking the right skills.  

And actually the number of job openings goes up when times are better.  We had about 4 Million job openings back in 2007 when unemployment was under 5%.   It wasn't a problem back then.   Nobody was trying to claim there was a giant skills gap.    Its not really necessarily a problem now either.   You can't just magically fill 100% of the job openings immediately.  

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Rental Comp Data for August 2013

Its been over half a year since I reviewed the rental price comparisons for our rentals.   Last time was at the start of the year : Rental Comp Data for January 2013

Here is the data from Rentometer.com   for our properties.

	A	B	C	D	E
	3bed	3bed	1bed	1bed	3bed
	house	house	apt	apt	house
10%	$700	$770	$400	$400	$950
20%	$795	$799	$425	$435	$963
median	$905	$925	$500	$480	$1,095
80%	$1,100	$1,100	$535	$600	$1,238
90%	$1,195	$1,150	$625	$625	$1,295
# prop	31	38	27	29	53
dist	0.5	0.8	0.6	1.3	0.4

Note that these are in different locations.

Generally the rents are up :

	A	B	C	D	E
Nov-11	$895	$875	$495	$495	$1,095
Aug-13	$905	$925	$500	$480	$1,095
change	1.1%	5.7%	1.0%	-3.0%	0%

Thats pretty healthy trend.   The 'B' property is in an area that has been hit hard with foreclosures and has rebounded lately some.  So its nice to see it up.   However back in 2011 the median rent there was $995, so its still not where it was.   


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