Monday, February 28, 2011

New Job Growth is Poor Job Growth

http://www.nelp.org/page/-/Justice/2011/UnbalancedGrowthFeb2011.pdf?nocdn=1

Findings from this report from the National Employment Law Project include the following:

"In the private sector, there is a striking imbalance between where the recession’s job losses occurred, and where the growth of the past 12 months was concentrated:

 Lower-wage industries constituted 23 percent of job loss, but fully 49 percent of recent growth

 Mid-wage industries constituted 36 percent of job loss, and 37 percent of recent growth

 Higher-wage industries constituted 40 percent of job loss, but only 14 percent of recent growth"

Meanwhile, the unemployed lose benefits and enter into the ranks of the impoverished.

U.S. unemployment is actually much worse than the official numbers suggest. In 2008, Kevin Phillips documented in Harpers "why the economy is worse than we know." John Williams at Shadow stats provides more accurate numbers.

So, unemployment is worse than we know and job growth is primarily in low wage sectors.

America is being "structurally adjusted
" just as developing economies were by the IMF and World Bank in the 1980s and 1990s. What that means is Americans can expect lower living standards and decreased government investments in social welfare and education.

Corporations, on the other hand, can expect less taxes, as illustrated in this passage by Chuck Collins:
http://www.otherwords.org/articles/pay_up_corporate_tax_dodgers
"Goldman Sachs took a $10 billion taxpayer bailout but then gamed its effective tax rate down to one percent through what its shakedown-artist executives call "changes in geographic earnings mix." Shame on them. Pay up. "

An excellent summary of how low those taxes are going for US corporations is available today at Zero Hedge in an article on why soaring corporate profits are indebted to high unemployment (as worker wages are squeezed)
http://www.zerohedge.com/article/guest-post-corporate-profits-soaring-thanks-record-unemployment

Of course, an alternative exists. Americans can stand up for their rights and for the American Dream and demand (through non-violent resistance) policies and programs that put workers to work and that support our collective welfare, rather than simply adding to the coffers of the top 5% of the populace.

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