The Jobs Crunch 1307
randall_burns writes "Neither major party is accurately describing or combatting the Jobs Crunch that Americans are facing. Bad immigration policy-and bad trade deals are combining to decimate the middle class in America."
Outsourcing (Score:5, Informative)
Wow, we're fucked (Score:3, Informative)
Re:low unemployment compared to europe (Score:3, Informative)
Re:All I know is... (Score:5, Informative)
The economy is strong, it's getting stronger [miami.com]
Labour Force Survey (Score:5, Informative)
There is a common measure of unemployment across Europe, the Labour Force Survey. The survey seeks information on respondents' personal circumstances and their labour market status during a specific reference period, normally a period of one week or four weeks (depending on the topic) immediately prior to the interview.
The LFS is carried out under a European Union Directive and uses internationally agreed concepts and definitions. It is the source of the internationally comparable (International Labour Organisation) measure known as 'ILO unemployment'.
On this measure the UK jobless rate is just under 5%, with France, Germany and Italy all at around the 9% mark.
Re:low unemployment compared to europe (Score:4, Informative)
That's not actually correct. It's been repeated a lot, but it's false. The Bureau of Labor Statistics uses a number of methods to determine the nationwide unemployment figure, not just unemployment insurance claims. They also use something called the CPS, the current population survey. It's a statistical sample in which respondents are divided up into three groups. If you've got a job, you're employed. If you don't have a job but are available to take one and actively seeking one, you're unemployed. If you don't have a job and you aren't unemployed, you're out of the work force.
The 5.4% number, which is the one we're talking about here, does not come from unemployment insurance claims. It comes from the CPS, which means it counts people as unemployed for as long as they are looking for work.
The BLS has a web site, and on that site they publish the monthly employment report, a document called the "Employment Situation Summary." It's got the percentages (5.4% unemployment, employment-population ratio of 62.4%, etc.) but it also has all the raw data you could possibly want. Go look it up sometime. It's pretty interesting.
Re:Outsourcing (Score:3, Informative)
Mostly it is the high cost of living in the US, partly driven by a reasonably extravagant lifestyle, but mostly driven the high cost of housing.
A while ago my brother and I both had reasonably well paying jobs, his in the US, mine in New Zealand. We were earning the same amount in local currency, but when converted by the exchange rate (the NZ dollar wasn't doing so well at the time) I was earning almost half as much as my brother. In terms of standard of living however, I was actually slightly better of because the cost of living in New Zealand was just that much cheaper. Compare that to India and we're talking another order of magnitude.
That sort of situation is always going to have a huge impact on low skill tech jobs because
(1) Tech jobs are more easily relocatable than most, because for a lot of it you're just pushing information around, so with global communication, the physical locality is just not important.
(2) There is a base minimum that you're going to have to pay someone if they're going to have any sort of standard of living in the US. If we're talking about low skill jobs that are not paying not far above that minimum level, it looks awfully expensive.
This situation is changing - the US dollar is dropping significantly against world currencies (but that in itself entails problems for the economy), but it still has a very long way to go before any kind of equilibrium is struck.
Jedidiah
Re:All I know is... (Score:5, Informative)
That's not correct. From http://www.snopes.com/science/stats/unemploy.htm [snopes.com]
Although this belief is widespread and has at times been reported as factual in the mainstream media, the truth of the matter is that unemployment statistics are gathered through a process of sampling a representative number of households; they are not arrived by counting the number of unemployment insurance claims made during a particular month. Data collected in the Current Population Survey (CPS), a monthly survey of over 60,000 households, is used for this purpose. From this data, an extrapolation is made about the unemployment status of the country as a whole.
Re:All I know is... (Score:4, Informative)
Lots of big, simple, promises. I don't like those. Mind you, I can not imagine anyone doing a worse job with our economy than GW has. So I don't know what to think.
Re:All I know is... (Score:3, Informative)
As a percentage of the population the middle class stands at its lowest point in American history. As a percentage of the population the number of lower-class and poor folks, along with the very rich, are at their highest points ever in American history.
These are facts. They aren't up for debate. Employment rates don't matter a whole lot if all you're doing is turning former middle-class folks into poor folks, while making rich folks richer. For the vast majority of the population things are considerably worse than they were four years ago.
Don't make the mistake of thinking that I'm blaming Bush for all of this. He is a tool, no doubt about it, but while Bush has done nothing but make things worse it was Clinton who really accelerated the process. And Clinton inherited the mess from Bush and his inane fiscal policies, who in turn got it from the Reagan crowd with their idiotic 'trickle-down' policies. Our government has been screwing things up royally since the Carter years, regardless of whether the Democrats or the Republicans have been in charge.
Neither party has done anything to improve the situation, nor will they so long as they are, or answer to, the people who profit from this situation. I don't expect Kerry to do any better; I only hope that he deadlocks the government and thereby prevents it from doing any more harm.
Jesus, I'm getting depressed just thinking about how low my expectations have dropped....
Max
All you know is nothing... (Score:5, Informative)
In 1933...
When FDR entered office the unemployment rate was 25%, with an underemployment rate of 50%. He had to close the banks to stop from them from failing. Germany that year would appoint an austrian named Adolf Hitler as their leader. Veterans the previous year had rioted in washington. If you want to make the argument that FDR had prolonged the depression through bad policies...you can make that argument but calling the economy of 1933 "a routine recession" is idiocy.
Second of all the relocation camps didnt happen until TEN YEARS LATER in the middle of a little conflict called "world war II".
Other than not knowing anything about history, economics, or politics the author of this comment seems relatively well informed.
more about VDare (Score:5, Informative)
--
Simon
Re:All I know is... (Score:5, Informative)
A depression is when you lose yours.
Yeah, good saying.
Let me add what Reagan said in 1980: "A recovery is when Jimmy Carter loses his." (sorry, I'm really a Democrat.)
But just so you know, there is actually a big difference. In a recession, the value of the dollar in your pocket goes DOWN. In a depression, the value of the dollar in your pocket goes UP. It's astounding how few [people|economists] know this.
You think inflation is bad? Try deflation, the oppostite, when prices go down.
Loans are defaulted, because people suddenly owe more, and can't pay. Interest rates go up, since cash itself is more likely to increase in value than an investment. You're used to getting raises, to keep up with inflation... how would you like it if your boss gave you a timely drop in salary, to keep up with the drop in the cost of living? That's deflation, and it happened during the last US depression in the 30s. There has not been a depressed economy since then (possibly excepting New Zealand and Finland.)
A recession is not a small depression.
yo.
Holy crap (Score:5, Informative)
I can guarantee you if a Democrat gets in again you'll be sliding deeper and deeper.
Almost four years later you're still trying to blame Clinton? And what are we sliding deeper into? When Clinton was president the economy was booming, people had jobs, we had a budget surplus. America was a lot stronger under Clinton than it is under Bush. If Clinton was running against Bush then dubya wouldn't have a chance.
I will say this, though. This time around we can blame the supreme court. But if Americans actually elect that idiot, then we deserve what we get the next four years.
Re:That IS correct (Score:2, Informative)
That's not correct
You are misinterpreting the point. Though the "collecting unemployment" part may be incorrect and not a factor in determining unemployment rate (as per the snopes article you cited), it is correct that people who have "simply given up" are not counted.
Unemployment rate:
The unemployment rate represents the number unemployed as a percent of the labor force.
Labor force (Current Population Survey):
The labor force includes all persons classified as employed or unemployed in accordance with the definitions contained in this glossary
Unemployed persons:
Persons 16 years and over who had no employment during the reference week, were available for work, except for temporary illness, and had made specific efforts to find employment sometime during the 4-week period ending with the reference week. Persons who were waiting to be recalled to a job from which they had been laid off need not have been looking for work to be classified as unemployed.
http://www.bls.gov/bls/glossary.htm [bls.gov]
also look up "Discouraged Workers".
BLS's own "U-6" includes those who gave up (Score:3, Informative)
Re:All I know is... (Score:5, Informative)
Japan was depressed economy just a few years ago. Here is a brief of Japan's economy from the economist:
Japan's economic slump began with a stockmarket crash in 1989; persistent deflation then lowered wages and discouraged investment. For years the Bank of Japan took a passive approach before aggressively boosting the money supply to keep the yen weak in February 2003. That, combined with cost-cutting by Japanese exporters, has led to a rise in business profits and in the stockmarket. The government now believes it can halt deflation by 2006 (the OECD disagrees). Some companies have been able to clean up their debt, banks are looking healthier, and there are even signs that consumer spending, low during the slump, might rise again.
In the long run, however, Japan needs reforms: an ageing population will shrink productivity, raise health-care costs and further burden the costly public pension system (though some economists have argued that Japan's public debt--161% of GDP in 2003--is not as crippling as it looks). Junichiro Koizumi, the prime minister, promised painful economic reforms in 2001, but his efforts have been half-hearted. Reformed and galvanised, Japan's unproductive service industries could take up the slack of future economic slowdowns and lessen the burden on export-led manufacturing.
Federation for American Immigration Reform (Score:2, Informative)
I generally agree with their policies, as an american programmer and worker.
http://www.fairus.org
Speaking as a Swede who's emigrated to the US... (Score:2, Informative)
- Extremely compressed salary distribution. Raising your yearly pay with just a few thousand dollars will take you from the lowest to the highest tenth of earners. High minimum wages also mean that a lot of service jobs never get done, or get done but not taxed. There's a reason you see so many Swedish brain surgeons paint their own fence instead of hiring someone to do it.
- Progressive tax rates and communal service fees, severely limiting any incentive to better yourself wage-wise.
- Extremely rigid firing rules, which leads to employers being very reluctant to hire, and workers to change jobs, since that'd put them first in the firing line.
- Oodles of red tape and confiscatory taxation rules for small companies, thus disicentivizing anyone wanting to start their own business.
In summary then, you have a textbook recipe for economic stagnation. If you lack all ambition, then by all means you'd thrive in this system. If not, I'd stay well away.I will say that one thing that still puzzles me is why US executives still need golden parachutes. In Sweden, it makes sense since they're the only ones that typically can be fired at will, but in the states, "fair" isn't the first word I'd use to describe that practise. And yes, I'm a "worker"...
Re:Nice flamebait re: FDR (Score:5, Informative)
Basically President Woodrow Wilson "decided" that Haiti would be a strategic port in case of war, and pretty much directed the US to take over the country. FDR lead the occupation of that country and was effectively the "administrator of Haiti" during that occupation. By many accounts, it was a boondogle of Iraq proportions (prison abuse scandels, contract skimming scandels, etc.) At one time he tried a "gore-ism" claiming that he single handedly wrote the Haiti constitution.
As president FDR, during the London Economic Conference in 1933 which called to coordinate efforts stabilize the world wide economy, he pretty much unilaterally pulled out angering and alienating all the European delegates and eventually leading to the breakdown of the conference. Some historians feel that this breakdown of this conference contributed to prolonging the recession/depression in europe and led to the rise of dictators in some countries which eventually led to WWII.
As part of the "good neigbor" policy of the FDR administration, he helped to push through the Reciprocal Trade Agreements Act of 1934, which tried to increase export trade and decrease tariffs into the United States with central and south american countries. I'm sure some of the "job protectionist anti-wto democrats" would take great issue with that type of stance today.
Later on in his tenure as president (after he broke the 2-term "tradition"), FDR had quite a few run-ups with the supreme court and was probably the only president with enough gall to try to stack the court (by trying to simply appoint new justices instead of waiting for them to retire and maintaining the "traditional number"). Not really the spirit of the law type person (I guess since he never got to practice law, he wasn't too concerned about all this law stuff).
History has a mixed report on FDR, certainly the US was in need of a change during that time to shake things up, but it's hard to know if any of his policies were really effective since the general consensous is that it was really the WWII that had the bigger impact on the state of the country at that time than anything FDR did.
By the way, one of FDR's biggest legacies is the Federal Income Tax (instead of a traditional property tax or wealth tax). Although originally targetted only at the wealthy, has since become essentially a tax on the middle class. Of course the wealthy get to defer their income by purchasing property which goes up in value w/o being taxed, and since the relative tax burden of income vs property has shifted, they in fact get a defacto tax break. Yeah, that morgage interest deduction is a token that gets thrown the middle class's way, but if you look at the percentage of wealth of individuals and the percentage of federal income tax collected from those individuals, you can easily see how the Federal Income tax has slowly but surely become the tax on the middle class that keeps the poor from entering the middle class and the middle class from becoming more wealthy (by introducing an artificial economic class structure in its progressive rate structure).
Re:All I know is... (Score:3, Informative)
the prime rate for loans is currently around 4.5%. do you know what it was in 1980? 20% [stlouisfed.org]! 20% prime rate, plus inflation, plus stagnant economy. i remember trying to get a job after high school back then - *very* demoralizing. employers were nakedly contemptuous of job applicants because so many of them swarmed like flies around every job opening.
it can get a lot worse than it is now.
Re:We WANT high labor costs! It's a Good Thing! (Score:2, Informative)
Labor costs are the PROFITS of the worker.
You are sorely mistaken on this point. Labor costs only hurt the business that workers work for; they don't benefit the worker in any way. Particularly when you're talking about labor costs in the for of taxes, there's no benefit to the worker. Hurting the business a worker works for is of course a negative thing. Ever heard of layoffs?
Look, the highest standards of living in the world are in the social demcracies of Europe...
Measuring the "standard of living" is a totally impossible thing to do. Different people have different priorities and mean different things when they say "standard of living". Is the gap between rich and poor in Sweden lower than in the US? You betcha. Would I rather live there than in the US? You're out of your mind.
I don't think that number is right. But those European nations do have higher minimum wages than in the US; they also have higher unemployment, lower job growth and lower overall economic growth. Go figure.
Fortunately, over 90% of Americans are WORKERS. Your problem is that you have been tricked by investor/corporate propaganda into thinking that YOU are an INVESTOR
Did you know that over 85% of all statistics are made up? Almost everyone I know is an investor of some sort. Do you have a savings account? Thne you're an investor. Ever heard of employee stock programs? Employee ownership programs?
The reason the 3rd world IS the 3rd world is that they have LOW LABOR COSTS. That is the DEFINTION of being 3rd world.
Wow, that's a pretty strict definition of 3rd world. If that's the only definition, then the US should strive to be 3rd world.
The reason many of the countries in NW Europe have the highest quality of life is because they have the HIGHEST COST OF LABOR. And it aint no accident. The two concepts are DIRECTLY RELATED.
I don't think you even know what the term "cost of labor" even means. Go troll somewhere else.
"self-employment" doesn't mean income (Score:2, Informative)
"Self employment" means I am ineligible for unemployment benefits even though I may be experiencing zero income for a year or more and paying more taxes than "other employed" people when I do make money.
"Self employment" is the second to last resort of the socially sadistic. The last resort is to actually imprison people -- and that is exactly what the article points out is happening. This takes things from being socially sadistic to being sexually sadistic.
Don't be surprised if one day you find yourself skinned and rolled in salt.
H-1B Numbers Incorrect (Score:2, Informative)
Confused with the TLAs? Me too!
yeah, right, whatever. (Score:3, Informative)
Hmmm, and who are those "political candidates" that you "trust and believe in"? Why do you not just name them instead of typing all of that?
"Ahem. Did you not receive a tax cut? Thank you."
Yep, from the Federal government. But it wasn't much of a tax cut and I have paid MORE in total taxes because Bush is running of the deficit and dumping the problems onto the states who then have to find ways to pay.
Sorry, I'm paying higher taxes.
"And what's more, your argument here is predicated on the "given" that the Government owns all of everything, and that tax cuts "cost" the Government in lost revenue. I don't know about you, but I want to keep *more* of the money I make. I want to "allow" the government to take only that which is necessary to provide what the Constitution says it should--and not a penny more."
You need to look at the deficit then. Or don't you understand that BORROWED money needs to be paid back.
Bush is just shifting the FEDERAL tax burden.
"As far as the health of the economy goes, from what I can tell, the left is using historical figures and the right is using current trends."
Current trends are based upon historical figures.
The only difference is WHEN you start the chart.
Republicans want to start the chart when the situation was WORSE so any improvement, no matter how slight, APPEARS to be an OVERALL improvement.
Democrats want to start the chart when things were much BETTER so any improvement APPEARS to be an OVERALL loss.
Personally, I'll take the Democrat's approach.
"Bush is doing a "decent" job helping the economy to recover in a tough time, that's how I read it. The current trends are good, and that is well...good. Sorry, you can't disagree with this, it's an actual fact."
Ummm, "good" is not a term usually associated with the word "fact". The term "good" is a judgement call.
So it is NOT "an actual fact".
"Whoah Nelly! Now you're going a bit off the deep end. I think you have stepped from debate into the realm of fiction. When you get back to earth, let me know and we can continue."
You seem to be more than a bit mis-informed on that. It has been on his agenda. Even his own people admit that he was asking about it.
"Sorry, they did find WMD's...hate to break it to ya."
No they did not. Not in the respect that Bush was talking about. All they found were the remains from before the PREVIOUS war. You seem to be a bit out of touch with current events.
Re:All I know is... (Score:4, Informative)
The truth on H-1B is that the US Government begain for the first time enforcing the law in mid March of 2004! Not before. Before that it was wide open. The visa totals were as much as 100,000 higher than the law allowed. For about 2 months they enforced this law and those were the best two months of job creation in the Bush Presidency. Then they started cheating. They issued over 200,000 renewals and wavers on J-1 which leads to H-1B allowing people to stay here and look for work when out of status on J-1. They also opened the Illegal Immigration by stopping enforcement.
Currently US Illegal Immigration is running at a level 3 times that of 2001! The Bush Administration is cheating H-1B and L-1 etc by bargaining numbers into the FTA's (Free trade agreements) they are having with about 50 nations. This is opening the barn doors wide open.
The USA in the 911 report noted that in January 2001 The Bush team discussing terrorism noted that there was no way any measures would be effective against terrorism unless America's porous border situation was brought into check. Translation it means that nothing is of any value in the War on Terror unless we fix illegal immigration by stopping it. The Bush team is claiming to be fighting a war on terror that they know that they are not even fighting.
As to prosperity. The foundation of prosperity is a Secure Nation.
Some resource URLs on the economy (to save) (Score:2, Informative)
Reality Check: Going Nowhere: Workers' Wages Since the Mid-1970s http://www.tcf.org/Publications/EconomicsInequalit y/wasow_nowhere.pdf [tcf.org]
Economic Injustice for Most http://www.tcf.org/Publications/EconomicsInequalit y/cwlmorris813.pdf [tcf.org]
Bush's War on the Middle Class: A Special Report http://www.prospect.org/web/page.ww?section=root&n ame=ViewPrint&articleId=7635 [prospect.org]
American Families at Risk http://www.prospect.org/web/page.ww?section=root&n ame=ViewPrint&articleId=7625 [prospect.org]
Middle Class and Going Broke http://www.tcf.org/Publications/EconomicsInequalit y/warren_prospect.pdf [tcf.org]
Schools of Hard Knocks http://www.prospect.org/web/page.ww?section=root&n ame=ViewPrint&articleId=7637 [prospect.org]
Why Governors Are Seeing Red: A New Reality Check http://www.tcf.org/Publications/EconomicsInequalit y/hall_redstate.pdf [tcf.org]
Reality Check- The New American Economy - A Rising Tide that Lifts Only Yachts http://www.tcf.org/Publications/EconomicsInequalit y/wasow_yachtrc.pdf [tcf.org]
Reality Check: Life and Debt - Why American Families are Borrowing to the Hilt http://www.tcf.org/Publications/EconomicsInequalit y/baker_debt.pdf [tcf.org]
Hidden Agenda- The convention trumpets compassion, but the real Bush agenda is clear: Use tax policy to starve the government even more.
http://www.prospect.org/web/page.ww?section=root&n ame=ViewWeb&articleId=8449 [prospect.org]
The Great Tax Shift-The Bush administration claims that the guiding principle for its fiscal policy has been "lower income taxes for all, with the greatest help for those most in need," as the White House Web site puts it. The reality is starkly different. http://www.prospect.org/web/page.ww?section=root&n ame=ViewPrint&articleId=7641 [prospect.org]
RetirementSecurity http://www.tcf.org/Publications/RetirementSecurity
Diverting the Social Security Debate
Over the 75-year period for which the Social Security system's trustees are required to plan, Social Security in its present form will fall out of balance. We can restore balance with moderate changes to the program's revenues, its benefits, or the returns on its accumulated assets. But the longer the decision to do so is postponed, the greater the required adjustments.
http://www.prospect.org/web/page.ww?section=root&n ame=ViewPrint&articleId=7642 [prospect.org]
Setting the Record Straight: Social Security Works for Latinos-
Some sugge
Comment removed (Score:4, Informative)
Re:So when will Kerry (Score:2, Informative)
If you recall, Senator Kerry's wife was originally married to Senator John Heinz, a Republican from Pennsylvania, but then he died in a plane crash and subsequently married John Kerry.
Neither John nor Teresa have any real control over where Heinz' factories are. But, it is not uncommon to blame the Senator for all sorts of things that are not his fault or doing.
Japan has had no depression (Score:1, Informative)
The people who say this are always those who know nothing about Japan. Sure, the stock market bubble collapsed, and the Keynesian indicators American economists look at pointed to trouble.
The thing is, none of the normal Japanese people noticed. I have plenty of Japanese friends, and their standard of living remained higher than ours the entire time. There's never been significant unemployment; there are always 11 jobs for every 10 applicants.
A Japanese friend of mine came to Canada for a few years to study music. When she decided to move back and get a job, we asked her how long she thought it would take. She looked surprised. "I'll get one the same day I look, of course!" And she did, too.
Talk of a Japanese recession is just FUD from American economists who don't want you know how bad things actually are in the US.
Progressive view of Milton Friedman is uneducated (Score:5, Informative)
"Since the employer pays a token fee for a guest worker visa, the employer is essentially using the public resource of immigration rights as a partial compensation--a practice even pro-business economists like Milton Friedman admit is a de facto corporate "subsidy"."
Friedman is *not* a "pro-business" economist. He is a pro-free-market economist -- and there is a difference. Pro-business economists prefer policy that explicitly favors businesses. Pro-free-market economists favor policy (or more-often, a deliberate lack of policy) that favors a freer, more-open marketplace, or the elimination of policies which oppose the goal of a free-market -- even if that more-open marketplace comes at the expense of the desires of some businesses.
Friedman would support fewer regulations on the financial industry, for instance. Yet, having worked in a big financial firm myself (which shall remain nameless), some of these companies actually support increased regulation -- because they know it benefits their cause of making a profit. In this way, Friedman could be alternately described as anti-business -- or, more-correctly, a neutral onlooker who prefers a free-market to outright pro-business policies.
Not that I would expect the illiterates of free-market economics (i.e. "progressives" or "socialists" or "Greens" or whatever they're calling themselves this week) to actually understand the difference between "markets" and "business"...
Comment removed (Score:5, Informative)
Re:You've been listening to Rush Limbaugh again... (Score:1, Informative)
4% is actually can be quite a large 'block' of voting power in that company. Much like the HP thing a few years ago. Founding 'family' members have QUITE a bit of sway. While in HP's case it did not work out well for them they made their case...
Comment removed (Score:3, Informative)
Re:Holy crap (Score:3, Informative)
So please, stop this none-sense that Clinton was some kind of economic miracle worker. He wasn't. Most the Clinton era prosperety came from the internet bubble. Which means false prosperety.
GWB certainly could have done better. But let's keep things in perspective.
BTW: yes, I'm the same guy from yahoo.