What's really going to spark the job market...

... OK, so I used to think that about a year from now, you are going to see a massive game of musical chair where throngs of people would go from job to job in a six month period because of...

a) The natural order of things. People just leave jobs. Think back five years ago, how many people are still at those companies. At SoulCrush, there are two in my group of eight that are still there.

b) People are blaming the messenger. Even if their company wasn't responsible for the crappy condition the company is in (economic conditions/bad luck/poor management), it doesn't matter, they're pissed, and they need a fresh start. They blame the company for pay-cut/no raises, increased workloads, decreased friends at work, decreased happiness at work, etc.

c) The natural throngs of re-hiring that companies would do when the economy bounced back. The ides was that if you had one person doing the job of three, then you would expect the company to add at least one more person to help.

I no longer think that these things are going to be what pulls the job market back up to where it ought to be.

I think two things are going to shepherd the job market back to proposerity...

1) The increase in green technologies. No one cared nearly as much five years ago, even two years ago as they do now on the being green. There will be green jobs created that will start a bit of light shifting in the job market that might free some opportunities up in the job market.

2) And more importantly: the stock market. The stock market was at 14,000 points at it's height before the badness that occurred. Then the, "My 401-k is now a 201-K" jokes started flying. But if the stock market can scratch 14,000 again, my thought is that the Baby Boomers - many of whom were thinking of calling it a career at some point between 2008 and 2014 - will start re-considering retirement as a possibility when the stock market is back up to the level that is was when they were in that frame of mind. Now that they don't have to work anymore... they won't. And they'll leave. And then those jobs will get created.

HOWEVER, this doesn't necessarily mean that all Baby Boomers that thought of retiring will be able to do so. Many of them will have to work past the 14,000 re-climb because they've gotten stuck having to empty their 401-k's in order to make ends meet.

Just a thought, feel free to ridicule.