In the video included with my post David Stockman Tells It Like It Is, Aaron Task talked to the former Reagan OMB director about America's alleged economic recovery. In particular, Stockman had analyzed the BLS jobs numbers and found them wanting—
... the headline [for the November jobs report] was weak, but the underlying detail was even weaker... we haven't really had a jobs recovery. And the way you see that is to recognize we have a bifurcated job market. At the bottom there are 65 million jobs, what you might call breadwinner jobs, the middle income economy (in construction, manufacturing, etc.)..
Those 65 million jobs pay $45,000-50,000 a year, you can support a family, you can get by, maybe save a little bit. How many jobs in that sector, that's half of the 130 million we have in the non-farm payroll ... were created in in November? Zero. How many jobs did we create in that group since last December? Over the 11 months of the so-called recovery? ... Zero. How many jobs in the middle-income economy did we lose from the peak in December, 2007 to the bottom in December, 2009 ... 6.5 million, 10% of all the jobs in that sector...
[My note: I transcribed Stockton's remarks. The transcript is accurate but not always literal. I have also included the latest U.S. median income data from the Census Bureau below.]
Stockman then points out that America's private-sector created no breadwinner jobs between the year 2000 and December, 2007. Where are the new jobs?
All the jobs are being created in what I call the part-time economy. Restaurants, bars, retail sales clerks, repair clerks, maids, and temp employment agencies... The problem there is that the average compensation for thoses jobs according to the BLS is $20,000, average hours, 26-67 hours, they're not full-time regular jobs, you can't support a family... 80% of the jobs that have been created (since December, 2009) have been in that category...
Now the New York Times has documented what we might call the temporary job economy. The quote and graphic are from Weighing Costs, Companies Favor Temporary Help—
Temporary workers are starting to look, well, not so temporary.
Despite a surge this year in short-term hiring, many American businesses are still skittish about making those jobs permanent, raising concerns among workers and some labor experts that temporary employees will become a larger, more entrenched part of the work force.
This is bad news for the nation’s workers, who are already facing one of the bleakest labor markets in recent history. Temporary employees generally receive fewer benefits or none at all, and have virtually no job security. It is harder for them to save. And it is much more difficult for them to develop a career arc while hopping from boss to boss...
This year, companies have hired temporary workers in significant numbers. In November, they accounted for 80 percent of the 50,000 jobs added by private sector employers, according to the Labor Department. Since the beginning of the year, employers have added a net 307,000 temporary workers, more than a quarter of the 1.17 million private sector jobs added in total...
To the more than 15 million people who are still out of work, those with temporary jobs are lucky. With concerns mounting that the long-term unemployed are becoming increasingly unemployable, those in temporary jobs are at least maintaining ties to the working world...
This year, 26.2 percent of all jobs added by private sector employers were temporary positions. In the comparable period after the recession of the early 1990s, only 10.9 percent of the private sector jobs added were temporary, and after the downturn earlier this decade, just 7.1 percent were temporary [graph left]
Temporary employees still make up a small fraction of total employees, but that segment has been rising steeply over the past year. “It hints at a structural change,” said Allen L. Sinai, chief global economist at the consulting firm Decision Economics. Temp workers “are becoming an ever more important part of what is going on,” he said.
If this shift in hiring patterns does indeed reflect a "structural change" in America's economy, and I believe it does, then jumping from one temp job to another will become a permanent state of affairs for many American workers. Whereas Stockton's "breadwinners" have a modicum of job security, pay somewhere near the nation's median wage and some benefits, these new workers will have no job security, pay well below (about half of) the median wage, and no benefits.
When I talk about the ongoing destruction of our Middle Class and poor people as America's biggest product, these kinds of shifts in hiring—or simply no hiring at all—form the mechanism which drives these deplorable trends. This is why I do not tolerate cheerful bullshit about where America is headed. And neither should you.
Pretty soon, the U.S. will be indistinguishable from China. The U.S. is creating a convenient migratory workforce it can pull of the shelf when it needs it. In China they call the migrant workers "dust." That's fitting for the U.S. temporary workforce. Just as the the collapse of the Twin Towers created mountains of "dust," so too, is the collapsing of the U.S. economy creating mountains of "dust."
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=prSuvqaGI_s&feature=channel
I'm expecting the U.S. to roll out the Execution Vans shortly. Talk about a speedy trial and sentencing. I love the comment to the following article. It's good to keep a sense of humor when facing such unfolding tragedy.
http://current.com/news/91663737_mobile-execution-vans-in-china.htm
Soon, we will be worth more dead than alive. Our organs will be increasingly prized.
http://www.dailymotion.com/video/xc9dfb_brutal-ccp-harvesting-selling-organ_news
It reminds me of this absurd satire which, obviously, is no longer so absurd.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aclS1pGHp8o
Posted by: Morocco Bama | 12/22/2010 at 11:08 AM