More
Fake Happy News About Jobs
By Paul
Craig Roberts
August
03, 2019 "Information
Clearing House"
-
The Bureau of Labor
Statistics reports that the US economy created
148,000 new private sector jobs during July.
The jobs number does not translate into
employed people as increasingly Americans hold
two or more jobs.
For example, the BLS reports that from
June to July the number of multiple job holders
rose by 233,000 which is 85,000 more than the
148,000 new private sector jobs.
What we are seeing is not more people
employed, but more multiple job holders. Since
May the number of multiple job holders has
increased by 534,000.
https://www.bls.gov/news.release/empsit.t09.htm
The claim of a falling rate of unemployment over
the past decade is inconsistent with the falling
labor force participation rate. Normally, when
employment prospects are good the labor force
participation rate increases.
To explain away the inconsistency,
economists claim that the decline in the labor
force participation rate reflects the increased
retirements of the baby boomer generation.
However, the
BLS reported that the labor force
participation rate for older workers of
retirement age surged to the highest level in 7
years.
So, what is really going on?
The answer is that retired people, thanks
to the Federal Reserve’s low to zero interest
rate over the last decade, cannot live on their
pensions and their savings.
They have to take part-time jobs to make
ends meet.
Younger people, however, cannot form
independent households on the basis of part-time
jobs, and as they have no pension income to
supplement the meager pay of a part-time job,
have dropped out of the work force.
The
reason the reported unemployment rate is low is
that the millions who have dropped out of the
labor force because they cannot find
life-sustainable employment are not counted as
unemployed.
What do these people do?
They live with parents or grandparents
and they work cash jobs house sitting, walking
dogs, cutting grass, and various handiman jobs.
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There
are many problems with the payroll jobs report,
and always are.
For example, the July report finds 16,000
new manufacturing jobs, but the manufacturing
index weakened for the fourth consecutive month.
How do manufacturing jobs rise when
manufacturing activity declines?
Another
anomality is the collapse of seven trucking
companies this year.
if the economy is so good, why has demand
declined for transportation to move goods from
producers to warehouses and from warehouses to
retail outlets?
Americans live in a world in which explanations
are controlled. The facts are whatever serves
the interests of the ruling elites. Identity
Politics serves to keep Americans disunited.
We hear far more about “white supremacy”
and “misogyny” than we hear about the agendas
that control our existence.
More
Fake News About Jobs:
Part 2
By
Paul Craig Roberts
August
03, 2019 "Information
Clearing House"
- Yesterday’s column
referred to a “rising labor force participation
rate” when it should have read “falling labor
force participation rate.”
Those of you who read the column before I
made the correction must have been puzzled, but,
little doubt, figured it out from the context.
One of
the main points of the article is that the
number of payroll jobs are not the same thing as
the number of employed Americans.
Jobs have been trending toward part-time
as this allows employers to avoid benefit costs.
In order to make ends meet, many
Americans work two or more part-time jobs.
Therefore, the announcement on Friday of
148,000 new jobs does not mean 148,000 more
employed Americans.
There
is another problem with the payroll jobs.
Although the figure is nonfarm and does
not include imported agricultural labor, it does
include immigrants on work visas, such as H-1B
and L-1 visas.
This means that job gains in information
technology and software engineering, for
example, might be job gains for immigrants on
work visas and not for American citizens.
As the
payroll jobs number reflects reported
information on payroll taxes and unemployment
insurance, citizens and immigrants are lumped
together.
The percentage of new jobs taken by
immigrants on work visas is not broken out.
The
householdl survey number, however, does estimate
the numbers of foreign-born and American-born
employees, but it does not specify the legal
status of the foreign-born, that is, whether
they are naturalized citizens, green card
holders, or immigrants on work visas. The
household survey numbers are interesting. There
are 27.1 million foreign-born employees with
jobs in the US and 131.2 million native-born
American employees. This means that foreign-born
employees are 20% of American-born employees.
That foreign-born employees comprise
one-fifth of American-born employees reflects
either a high rate of immigration or a large
number of foreign workers issued work visas.
In
response to yesterday’s column, a reader wrote
that he had seen a report last Thursday that the
House of Representatives has passed a bill to
allow unlimited numbers of people from India and
China to be granted work visas for US
programming jobs.
The reader concludes that his job will
soon be history and he will disappear into the
ranks of the uncounted American unemployed.
When it
happens to them, Americans finally understand,
regardless of the controlled explanations of The
Matrix in which they live, that their government
does not ever represent them.
It represents profits—the profits of
companies that produce profits by lobbying and
legislating against Americans.
Assessing this information, the conclusion is
that it is a waste of time and money for
Americans to learn programming from a US
institution.
Instead, they should acquire Indian
citizenship, get a degree from an Indian
university, and apply for a US work visa.
Dr. Paul Craig Roberts was Assistant Secretary of
the Treasury for Economic Policy and associate
editor of the Wall Street Journal. He was
columnist for Business Week, Scripps Howard News
Service, and Creators Syndicate. He has had many
university appointments. His internet columns
have attracted a worldwide following. Roberts'
latest books are
The Failure of Laissez Faire
Capitalism and Economic Dissolution of the West,
How America Was Lost,
and
The Neoconservative Threat to
World Order.
Donate
and support Dr, Roberts Work.
The
views expressed in this article are solely those
of the author and do not necessarily reflect the
opinions of Information Clearing House.
