What ails the US job market

'Mitt Romney will fight for every American job." This recent advertisement referring to Chrysler's plans to shift jobs to China kicked off one of the many slanging matches between US presidential candidates Barack Obama and Mitt Romney. Throughout the election campaign both candidates talked about creating more jobs, the most discussed topic in the election campaign, by reviving the manufacturing industry.

Now that the US election is over and Obama is firmly back in the Oval Office, many would dismiss the Obama-Romney debates over jobs and China as usual campaign rhetoric.

But still - as Dieter Ernst, a senior research fellow at the East West Center, Hawaii, said recently - we need to know the challenges the US faces in job creation. In a recent presentation, "Industrial Innovation and Employment", at a seminar of new generation policymakers, Ernst attributed the persistent unemployment in the US to a significant erosion of international competitiveness and innovation barriers such as lack of investment.