Posted on 02/17/2006 6:05:43 AM PST by A. Pole
The Bureau of Labor Statistics recently re-benchmarked the payroll jobs data back to 2000. Thanks to Charles McMillion of MBG Information Services, I have the adjusted data from January 2001 through January 2006. If you are worried about terrorists, you don’t know what worry is.
Job growth over the last five years is the weakest on record. The U.S. economy was more than 7 million jobs short of keeping up with population growth. That’s one good reason for controlling immigration. An economy that cannot keep up with population growth should not be boosting population with heavy rates of legal and illegal immigration.
Over the past five years, the U.S. economy experienced a net job loss in goods-producing activities. The entire job growth was in service-providing activities—primarily credit intermediation, health care and social assistance, waiters, waitresses and bartenders, and state and local government.
U.S. manufacturing lost 2.9 million jobs, almost 17 percent of the manufacturing workforce. The wipeout is across the board. Not a single manufacturing payroll classification created a single new job.
The declines in some manufacturing sectors have more in common with a country undergoing saturation bombing during war than with a super-economy that is “the envy of the world.” Communications equipment lost 43 percent of its workforce. Semiconductors and electronic components lost 37 percent of its workforce. The workforce in computers and electronic products declined 30 percent. Electrical equipment and appliances lost 25 percent of its employees. The workforce in motor vehicles and parts declined 12 percent. Furniture and related products lost 17 percent of its jobs. Apparel manufacturers lost almost half of the workforce. Employment in textile mills declined 43 percent. Paper and paper products lost one-fifth of its jobs. The workforce in plastics and rubber products declined by 15 percent. Even manufacturers of beverages and tobacco products experienced a 7 percent shrinkage in jobs.
The knowledge jobs that were supposed to take the place of lost manufacturing jobs in the globalized “new economy” never appeared. The information sector lost 17 percent of its jobs, with the telecommunications workforce declining by 25 percent. Even wholesale and retail trade lost jobs. Despite massive new accounting burdens imposed by Sarbanes-Oxley, accounting and bookkeeping employment shrank by 4 percent. Computer systems design lost 9 percent of its jobs. Today, there are 209,000 fewer managerial and supervisory jobs than 5 years ago.
In five years, the U.S. economy only created 70,000 jobs in architecture and engineering, many of which are clerical. Little wonder engineering enrollments are shrinking. There are no jobs for graduates. The talk about engineering shortages is absolute ignorance. There are several hundred thousand American engineers who are unemployed and have been for years. No student wants a degree that is nothing but a ticket to a soup line. Many engineers have written to me that they cannot even get Wal-Mart jobs because their education makes them overqualified.
Offshore outsourcing and offshore production have left the United States awash with unemployment among the highly educated. The low measured rate of unemployment does not include discouraged workers. Labor arbitrage has made the unemployment rate less and less a meaningful indicator. In the past, unemployment resulted mainly from turnover in the labor force and recession. Recoveries pulled people back into jobs. Unemployment benefits were intended to help people over the down time in the cycle when workers were laid off.
Today, the unemployment is permanent, as entire occupations and industries are wiped out by labor arbitrage, as corporations replace their American employees with foreign ones. Economists who look beyond political press releases estimate the U.S. unemployment rate to be between 7 percent and 8.5 percent. There are now hundreds of thousands of Americans who will never recover their investment in their university education.
Unless the BLS is falsifying the data or businesses are reporting the opposite of the facts, the United States is experiencing a job depression. Most economists refuse to acknowledge the facts, because they endorsed globalization. It was a win-win situation, they said.
They were wrong.
At a time when America desperately needs the voices of educated people as a counterweight to the disinformation that emanates from the Bush administration and its supporters, economists have discredited themselves. This is especially true for “free market economists,” who foolishly assumed that international labor arbitrage was an example of free trade that was benefiting Americans. Where is the benefit when employment in U.S. export industries and import-competitive industries is shrinking? After decades of struggle to regain credibility, free-market economics is on the verge of another wipeout.
No sane economist can possibly maintain that a deplorable record of merely 1,054,000 net new private-sector jobs over five years is an indication of a healthy economy. The total number of private-sector jobs created over the five-year period is 500,000 jobs less than one year’s legal and illegal immigration! (In a December 2005 Center for Immigration Studies report based on the Census Bureau’s March 2005 Current Population Survey, Steven Camarota writes that there were 7.9 million new immigrants between January 2000 and March 2005.)
The economics profession has failed America. It touts a meaningless number, while joblessness soars. Lazy journalists at The New York Times simply rewrite the Bush administration’s press releases.
On Feb. 10, the Commerce Department released a record U.S. trade deficit in goods and services for 2005—$726 billion. The U.S. deficit in advanced technology products reached a new high. Offshore production for home markets and jobs outsourcing has made the United States highly dependent on foreign-provided goods and services, while simultaneously reducing the export capability of the U.S. economy. It is possible that there might be no exchange rate at which the United States can balance its trade.
[...]
America's population is reaping its reward for willing collaborating in the greatest Ponzi scheme of all time -- the systmatic looting of the nation's wealth and currency by the Federal Reserve.
Money should be an actual asset (e.g., a valuable metal) or a receipt for the same on deposit with the U.S. government. Under the Constitution, the government is required to do this. But instead, with the public's compliance, and willing complicity from BOTH parties, the fe[de]ral government has switched to a system where money is printed at will. Over the years, the amount of "money" in circulation has swelled. In the United States, everything now costs more, thanks to the continual flood of fake, baseless money. It is any wonder that countries NOT awash in fake money, can perform tasks for less money? No. And there you have it.
bump
That's quite possibly true if they chose to attend a tony expensive school from which they got an education that was likely no better than they could have gotten at a State School for a considerable sum less.
Our #1 son was accepted at all three of the universities to which he applied in 1998. Two were private and over $30K a year. The third was UMass Amherst, which offered him a full scholarship. It took him about two seconds to decide the wisdom of the state school. For one thing, our kids pay for their own college education. We co-sign loans, etc, but they are ultimately responsible; it makes them take it seriously. Also, at the time, he wasn't sure exactly what major he wanted, so he figured why pay $30K a year to figure that out. He did his BA, then went on to Law School, from which he graduates this year. He already has a job lined up for the Fall!
Our #2 son realized the best school for his subject, Computer Science, was Carnegie Mellon, so he's now in debt, and in Grad School, for which, thankfully, he got a Fellowship. But when he gets a job, he'll pay his loans back, slowly maybe, but eventually. We're actually paying off a couple of the higher interest ones, and putting it on the family tab, for him to pay off as he goes.
LOL...Thanks for posting that
The very reason why industry has made the switch to robotics and automation. "Organized" labor can only blame themselves for making it so costly and difficult for most company to maintain a labor force. (GM is a classic example.)
If the government or unions try to force business to pay, business will simply go elsewhere or close their doors.
"The goverment should not be in the jobs business. they should fight wars build roads and stay the hell out of the way."
thank you sopwith
If the babyboom generation starts retiring in 2 years and they were 78 million people stronger than the next generation, what would we do with the surplus of jobs that we would theoretically have? Outsourcing is actually helping balance us out in some aspects. Do not read into that that I am a proponent of general outsourcing. There are some benefits to it but it can be taken too far. Strictly from a numbers game, we either outsource some, because of the boomers, or we import workers. Theoretically we may have a downturn in # of jobs and/or population when the boomers start to die off in massive numbers. It is going to be a very interesting demographical change to watch. Thoughts?
I would note that:
It's not the "offshore outsourcing" and "offshore production" that have left these folks unemployed . . . it's the severe career limitations that come with a high degree of specialization among these "highly educated." The dirty little secret in this country is that too much formal education is actually a career impediment, not an asset.
I don't know about this. Sure, I think it is somewhat of a contributing factor, but does the nation need more folks with MBA's, Political Science and Art degrees? Those are not particularly specialized.
My advice to folks would be to obtain some good experience in the hard sciences, math, medical, skilled trades, etc. Find an occupation that cannot be outsourced - and yes, there are PLENTY of such careers. Students should be asking themselves what they can do with an English or History degree in today's workforce. Not that those are bad degrees to have, but students should not be led down the primrose path that a B.A/M.A in English is going to pay $$$ like a B.S in Nursing, etc.
Maybe the UAE will start hiring for new positions at our ports.
Most of them end up doing the same thing they did at their jobs, but on a contract basis for a higher price. Of course, they don't have the security and benefits of the corporate cocoon, but being able to send in a fat invoice makes up for that.
But I do know one guy, 48, who was a computer programmer. His wife was doing the accounting for a dot-com in which he had an interest, and they branched out to do other companies. When the profits became greater than his salary, he quit to do it full-time.
Thank-you. Seems to be some big government types here.
If you like fake money, you'll love China. Everything is fake there. The pretend to pay the workers, pretend to take out loans, pretend to make a profit, but none of it is real.
The best I can figure is that they're all working for us, for free.
You want to see job losses in the manufacturing sector? Look at China.
The fact is, manufacturing jobs in the entire world are disappearing due to increases in productivity. The majority of people in this country used to work in agriculture, but increases in agricultural productivity mean we produce much more food than we ever did, using only a couple of percent of the workforce. Manufacturing is going through the same thing.
And there's no way to stop it.
That likely will change when you lose your source of income...
When interviewing prospective hires in my engineering field, simple common sense and the ability to be flexible are far more important to me than advanced knowledge in one specific area of engineering.
Gosh, I would rather be out of work than dead if I had the choice. But then that is just the way I think, you must feel different.
Go back and read my specific comments in Post #27. If Roberts is an economist and this is the kind of half-@ssed analysis he's capable of, then he must have gotten his economics degree from a Crackerjack box.
I don't dispute your characterization of him, but after reading a number of columns like this in recent years I'm convinced his mental capabilities have slipped markedly since his days in the Reagan administration.
"The Bobby Fischer of Economics" is probably an apt description of him.
Any time.
"In the long run, we are all dead."
--John Maynard Keynes
The thing that worries me most however, is the fact that the up and coming generation of students are most overwhelmingly socialist/Marxism.
Sean Hannity did street interviews with young people in New York City recently. Cold chills went up my neck as each and every one of the students interviewed, had a completely twisted view of what conservatism is as well as they directly quoted Karl Marx. When Hannity pointed that out to them, they said "KOOL!" or they had no idea that they had just quoted him.
These same young people overwhelmingly said that the government owed them education, food, clothing, housing and employment.
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.