Bush job "growth" weakest on record [hard numbers]
Boy Toy
Nuking the Economy
By PAUL CRAIG ROBERTS
http://www.counterpunch.org/roberts02112006.html
[Computer, Science, Engineering jobs disappearing]
Last week the Bureau of Labor Statistics 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 US
economy came up 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 US 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.
US manufacturing lost 2.9 million jobs, almost 17% of the
manufacturing work force. 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% of its workforce. Semiconductors and electronic
components lost 37% of its workforce. The workforce in computers and
electronic products declined 30%. Electrical equipment and appliances
lost 25% of its employees. The workforce in motor vehicles and parts
declined 12%. Furniture and related products lost 17% of its jobs.
Apparel manufacturers lost almost half of the work force. Employment
in textile mills declined 43%. Paper and paper products lost one-fifth
of its jobs. The work force in plastics and rubber products declined
by 15%. Even manufacturers of beverages and tobacco products
experienced a 7% 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% of its jobs, with the telecommunications
work force declining by 25%. Even wholesale and retail trade lost
jobs. Despite massive new accounting burdens imposed by
Sarbanes-Oxley, accounting and bookkeeping employment shrank by 4%.
Computer systems design and related lost 9% of its jobs. Today there
are 209,000 fewer managerial and supervisory jobs than 5 years ago.
In five years the US 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 over-qualified.
Offshore outsourcing and offshore production have left the US 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 US
unemployment rate to be between 7% and 8.5%. 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 US 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 benefitting Americans. Where is the benefit when
employment in US 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 February 10 the Commerce Department released a record US trade
deficit in goods and services for 2005--$726 billion. The US deficit
in Advanced Technology Products reached a new high. Offshore
production for home markets and jobs outsourcing has made the US
highly dependent on foreign provided goods and services, while
simultaneously reducing the export capability of the US economy. It is
possible that there might be no exchange rate at which the US can
balance its trade.
Polls indicate that the Bush administration is succeeding in whipping
up fear and hysteria about Iran. The secretary of defense is promising
Americans decades-long war. Is death in battle Bush’s solution to the
job depression? Will Asians finance a decades-long war for a bankrupt
country?
Paul Craig Roberts was Assistant Secretary of the Treasury in the
Reagan administration. He was Associate Editor of the Wall Street
Journal editorial page and Contributing Editor of National Review. He
is coauthor of The Tyranny of Good Intentions.He can be reached at:
paulcrai...@yahoo.com
"KATO"
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