Posted on 07/27/2005 6:21:50 AM PDT by A. Pole
The June payroll jobs report did not receive much attention due to the July 4 holiday, but the depressing 21st century job performance of the U.S. economy continues unabated.
Only 144,000 private sector jobs were created, each one of which was in domestic services.
Fifty-six thousand jobs were created in professional and business services, about half of which are in administrative and waste services.
Thirty-eight thousand jobs were created in education and health services, almost all of which are in health care and social assistance.
Nineteen thousand jobs were created in leisure and hospitality, almost all of which are waitresses and bartenders.
Membership associations and organizations created 10,000 jobs, and repair and maintenance created 4,000 jobs.
Financial activities created 16,000 jobs.
This most certainly is not the labor market profile of a First World country, much less a superpower.
Where are the jobs for this year’s crop of engineering and science graduates?
U.S. manufacturing lost another 24,000 jobs in June. A country that doesn’t manufacture doesn’t need many engineers. And the few engineering jobs available go to foreigners.
Readers have sent me employment listings from U.S. software development firms. The listings are discriminatory against American citizens. One ad from a company in New Jersey that is a developer for many companies, including Oracle, specifies that the applicant must have a TN visa.
A TN or Trade NAFTA visa is what is given to Mexicans and Canadians who are willing to work in the United States at below prevailing wages.
Another ad from a software consulting company based in Omaha, Neb., specifies it wants software engineers who are H-1B transferees. What this means is that the firm is advertising for foreigners already in the United States who have H-1B work visas.
The reason the U.S. firms specify that they have employment opportunities only for foreigners who hold work visas is because the foreigners will work for less than the prevailing U.S. salary.
Gentle reader, when you read allegations that there is a shortage of engineers in America, necessitating the importation of foreigners to do the work, you are reading a bald-faced lie. If there were a shortage of American engineers, employers would not word their job listings to read that no American need apply and that they are offering jobs only to foreigners holding work visas.
What kind of country gives preference to foreigners over its own engineering graduates?
What kind of country destroys the job market for its own citizens?
How much longer will parents shell out $100,000 for a college education for a son or daughter who ends up employed as a bartender, waitress or temp?
I dont, but this other person does. Just was on a thread were this person discussed a topic on muslims. All defending Islam a religion of peace. Just to let you know
The company kills two birds with one stone, creates a lower payroll and meets the diversity quotas!
You just described the last eight years or so of my life. Layoffs survived, layoffs not survived, and about 20 VP's who still, apparently, haven't been revealed for the idiots they are as they're off ruining other companies. Where I was, the big word was "reorganization," which everyone came to know meant layoffs. There was always some vague justification for it, but when you're reorganizing every six months, you're not giving the any organization a chance to succeed. All you're doing is perpetuating chaos.
Then they wonder why morale sucks.
Well said.
Personally...Im getting pretty tired reading all the platitudes and bullsh$t from people on these types of threads... many of whom probably never opened a calculus textbook, and dont have a clue as to what it takes to do science research...and create, design, and build high tech.
This isn't 1941. We don't need fleets of thousands of aircraft, ships and tanks. We don't need a giant draftee army. Should we be spending more on defense? Absolutely. But saying we should put the nation on a war basis is a meaningless term, in this day and age.
Are you a "real" person or are you responding from the basement of the White House?
What paranoia. I'm sitting about three blocks from the White House, if you need to know.
I believe outsourcing is a trend that will eventually fade away, especially in regards to customer service. I predict within a couple years you will see companies touting the fact that all customer service calls will be handled within the U.S.
The market will eventually work this out. It may take a while, but it will come.
That's a good question. It floors me that people are willing to place all blame college graduates and culture, but if anyone places even a minimum of blame on corporate greed, it automatically makes that person a socialist.
I was a graybeard in Grad School (Computer Studies) at about that time. Lots of Asian kids in my classes. Don't remember any real geniuses but what what sticks in my mind was that the smarter Asian kids pulled the less bright ones through the courses (yes, Virginia, there are "less bright ones). And, of course, no nationalistic tendencies there!
I was working and supporting a family and most of the American kids were working part time jobs. I saw no indication that the foreign kids had anything to do but study.
The smartest kid by far I ever encountered in several years of Grad study was young American engineer who practically taught the Abstract Algebra class we were in.
There are many smart American students, but Asians tend to be smarter at math on average than Europeans and Americans.
B'zzzt. Wrong, do you even know what "advanced" means?
"BUGGY-WHIP" Boogeyman ALERT, ALERT, ALERT!!!!
You have no idea how high a technology is currently involved in textile millinery...and the supporting manufacturing infrastructure.
Instead, American workers are building high-tech, high value-added items such as BMW's, 747's and medical devices.
Let's consider these examples in order:
BMW. Much of the BMW sub-componentry is imported from Germany . The plant in South Carolina is largely an assembly operation. And do you know why BMW built its plant in the U.S.? Because our labor was cheaper than theirs.
747's. 25 years ago we had Lockheed, McDonnell-DOuglas and Boeing all building commercial airliners, and no legitimate foreign source. Today, we have AirBus, where every single plane benefits from a 30% subsidy, with governmental "startup" "loans" that AirBus has never repaid..."loans" which paid for all the industrial plant, the R&D, and product development. All written off. Today, McDonnell-Douglas's commercial planes are gone. Lockheed's are gone. And Boeing, which gets no startup loans, or operating subsidy, the survivor, has been eclipsed in quantitative sales by AirBus two years running...much to the glee of France.
The 747 was built at the end of the 60's and early 70's...out of Boeing's own pocket. A huge roll of the dice with the Shareholder's money. And it was rewarded. But After 9-11 the company has openly discussed termination of any further 747 production, due to the paucity of orders. A plant which could build dozens at once, is reduced to having a handful liesurely go through the lines...and most of them just are just freighters, not passenger.
AirBus has been given over $10 billion in loans by the government consortium for its next big project, the "747-Killer" the A-385 super-jumbo. The 800-capacity jet which they hope (you can just see Chirac drooling) will destroy Boeing's commercial operations altogether. Fortunately, Boeing is not done yet. Although grossly handicapped by our government's free traders willful ignorance, wishful thinking and refusal to punish the market distortions of the foreign interference behind AirBus, they have a business plan which may keep the company alive. They have sacrificed their intellectual seed corn to several other countries...and enlisted their countries protectionist subsidies...for both bankrolling the tooling development of the new 787 "Dreamliner", and assure enough orders for the plane to be viable. They have given Japan the Wing contract for building the new carbon-fiber wingbox (far more advanced than Airbus's A-385...which is 7 tons overweight)..and will teach them all Boeing knows about wings and carbon fiber. Japan will buy a bunch of these planes. Meanwhile, China will make the Tail stabilizers. And Italy will make the center fuselage sections. Boeing will have a greatly reduced role in manufacture: Landing gear, the nose fuselage section, the tail section and integrate the avionics and assemble the snap-together modules.
Oh, how the mighty have fallen! We had during the 80's approximately 800,000 people employed in aerospace. Today, it is less than 125,000. And it promises to shrink further. E.g., GWB is insisting on going along with Clinton's-orchestrated outsourcing of U.S. defense procurement. He recently directed that an inferior (10 year old technology), British-made helicopter (Westland, built with UK Government money) be chosen over the brand-spanking new U.S. competitor (Sikorsky, developed with its own money) be chosen as the replacement for his Marine-One Helicopter fleet. He also will prematurely terminate in 2007 the US-built F-22 (95% US parts), and is instead going ahead with the vastly less-capable flying pig-farm, the F-35 which has in many cases (depending on version), less than 50% U.S. content...this desite the fact that 90+% of the R&D behind the F-35 is supplied by the U.S...not the foreign partners. He threatened to veto Duncan Hunter's (R-Chairman, House Armed Services Committee) Defense Bill mandating 65% domestic content in our defense procurements...until he got his anti-U.S. way.
As for medical devices: Great, if we were turning into the Borg! Consider this: How many of our people actually need to have ear and heart or prosthetic devices? And where is the money coming from for the devices? Insurance and Medicare mostly, is it not? These are not the kinds of things your populace routinely can afford out of their own pockets, or would seek for their regular needs. They are necessarily a narrow niche. And they aren't a normal market where people say, oh, I think I will get a Medtronic or Guidant pacemaker today. And I doubt the growth potential here. Hence, it may well not a sector that will really lift the whole economy. In fact, with Social Security and Medicare going bust...the latter sooner than the other, don't count on their being anything like the current market, let alone a bigger one in the future.
Meanwhile, everyone practically needs transportation, and clothes, and personal electronics (stereo, video, communications, information storage, and computing) however. And it is precisely these wrongly-disparaged "Buggy Whip" industries which we are allowing to be selectively seized by foreigners.
On the other hand I never encounter so many strange people in my life time than I did when I went to school in America. Students from China and India can be extremely strange. Especially the Chinese, just like they are from another planet. The same goes with East Europeans from former soviet republics. Where I went to school I always hung out with Norwegian and American students.
What do you suggest in an ecomony where as good, if not better trained and equiped employees can and will work for smaller wages to do the same work that used to be done here?
Seems to me that someone manufacturing a commodity in North Carolina is S.O.L. if that same commodity can be made somewher else, shipped here and still be sold for less because his total labor/regulatory/medical/legal/etc. cost renders him non-competitive.
You can bark at "us guys" all you want ... spell out an alternative that works in today's world.
Exactly. For the first five years out of engineering school, most of my work didn't require much more than a high school education.
Gee, yuh think?
That being said, that really doesn't translate to the manufacturing sector as a whole.
Yeah, we can always send our troops into battle naked and shoeless.
Just how old are you (chronologically, I'm convinced on mentally)?
We were the ARSENAL of freedom during WW II because we had industries to convert to war time production!
You free traitors are long on shallow cliches and short on common sense.
Actually, I suggested he might work for a year and I also mentioned the military option for the experience and discipline he needed. Coming from a small rural school to a major university was also part of the equation.
Go back to where you came from darkie from a foreign country. ;-)
And you Buchaninites are short on facts and long on personal insults. Which probably explains why your political agenda is so popular.
I dunno .... China?
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