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?
We're short of these things because of 1990's cutbacks of military spending combined with our desire to spend money on free viagra for seniors.
Our overstretch of the military is due to pure political, rather than economic or structural, reasons.
Thanks. This is a sore subject for many. Whatever our problems with outsourcing and such, it is difficult to see how protectionism and subsidization of certain industries will make things better.
This is but one scar of many on America due to liberalism and the nanny state. This is not the greatest generation of Americans, it may be the worst. There is still time to save ourselves but time is running short.
You are absolutely correct, and it's one point on which my Ohio buddy and I part company.
The Bachelor Degree has devolved into a "get your card punched" ritualistic dance.
It simply reduces the number of applications that lazy personnel people have to burrow through (in our consistently low unemployment economy ... /sarc).
"Well[,] you should hire this particular skill set and at the same time tell us the buildings that they design so that we can avoid them."
I wouldn't hire a mathematics major to design a building (and neither would my father-in-law, the architect), but I wouldn't hire an MIS major either. My point is simply that the more you specialize in your "human capital" the greater employment and compensation risks you are exposed to in the future. For architects and, as post # 159 indicates, accountants, the job market is (and has been) very good; for MIS graduates and aerospace engineers, it isn't. There are winners and losers in the labor market, as in other markets, and it's very difficult to forecast accurately what the "hot" fields will be when you reach mid-career age. So, diversification is a prudent strategy.
Not even close to true, we no longer have the ability to maintain a Navy as large as the we we had 10 years ago. Soon the Chicom Navy will be larger (better?) then ours. Why? Because we don't build ships here anymore, just two (real) Shipyards left, Ships are made of steel and need steel armor, but we don't make (real) steel here any more either, our smart bombs require somekind of high tech magnet, but we don't make that here any more, that got shipped to China last year, so now we buy our smart bombs guidance components from the Chicoms. Ain't free trade great.
In WW2 we have numberious fleets with 400/500 ships. Overwhelmed our enemies, but we gave away our industrial base so those days are gone. Today Japan/Germany could probably beat us. Both are far greater industrial powers. Thanks alot free traders.
Only partially true.
The potential employer can test for shortcomings in reading or math the same as the colleges. They simply dump their responsibility off on higher education (which, of course, they are delighted take on) at a TERRIBLE economic cost to society!
" ... we don't build ships here anymore, just two (real) Shipyards left ..."
This is because, as Modernman stated in post # 201, a *political* (and military) decision was made, right or wrong, to maintain a 300-ship Navy rather than a 600-ship Navy. There simply isn't enough Navy shipbuilding to sustain more than two "real" shipyards, and it's likely that the two remaining ones will eventually merge. (They are already involved in alot of joint design and construction work for the next generation of nuclear subs.) So, the decline in shipbuilding infrastructure is a *result*, not a *cause", of our military resources being stretched thin.
Slowly now ....
T h e___e c o n o m i c ,___s t r u c t u r a l___r e a s o n s___f l o w___f r o m___t h e___p o l i t i c a l !
1998: 24.18%
1999: 23.53%
2000: 22.79%
2001: 21.17%
2002: 20.37%
2003: 19.84%
Below is each subcategory of manufacturing data and the associated percent increase or decrease between 1998 - 2003.
Wood products: 1.43%
Nonmetallic mineral products: -5.80%
Primary metals: -22.77%
Fabricated metal products: -3.88%
Machinery: -9.48%
Computer and electronic products: -4.46%
Electrical equipment, appliances, and components: -14.16%
Motor vehicles, bodies and trailers, and parts: -2.53%
Other transportation equipment: -5.18%
Furniture and related products: -1.31%
Miscellaneous manufacturing: 22.67%
Food and beverage and tobacco products: 8.00%
Textile mills and textile product mills: -15.99%
Apparel and leather and allied products: -19.36%
Paper products: 2.89%
Printing and related support activities: -5.03%
Petroleum and coal products: 77.88%
Chemical products: 9.61%
Plastics and rubber products: 12.43%
The site I used for reference had data through 2003 but I believe the trends have continued.
With the exception of the energy and petro-chemical industries our manufacturing output has been dramatically decreasing as measured by percentage of GDP. The argument that we are losing jobs in manufacturing due to productivity is inaccurate. Our economy cannot continue to be the best and strongest in the world at this rate. A period of extreme negative adjustment lies ahead.
Reference date from: http://www.bea.gov/bea/industry/gpotables/gpo_action.cfm?anon=217&table_id=5214&format_type=0
Yeah, I sad that, right after I said:
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.
Tax Reform will make Mr. North Carolina move competitive
Regulation Reform will make Mr. North Carolina move competitive
Tort Reform and Liability Reform will make Mr. North Carolina move competitive
He still has problems with wage and benefits costs that are quite a bit more substatial than his overseas competitors.
Yes, significant reforms need to take place, and, if and when they does, some of the problems disappear.
No amount of reform will remedy the fact that assembly type manufacturing jobs are going away and the ones that are left don't pay $25-$30 per hour with full medical and a great pension. Because of robotics and cheaper labor elsewhere, those days are gone.
IT jobs that don't require onsite presence will be going overseas ... unless and until American workers are willing to do them for a lot less than they used to pay ... there are no viable alternatives to this reality w/o gov't intervention and I, for one, am against that solution.
Please clarify. What, exactly. is it that you are wringing your hands over? We haven't had a radically left wing administration for decades.
Such diatribes put me in mind of Shakespeare's "full of sound and fury, signifying nothing".
Suppress your obsession with liberals and open your eyes to the path onto which so called conservative poseurs have led you!
The explanation for this is that the rest of our economy is growing faster than our manufacturing sector. That doesn't mean that, overall, manufacturing is shrinking in this country.
So full of doom and gloom. You know, the glass is also half full. For those who develop highly specialized skills that are in demand, the cost of getting someone to clean their bathroom and car them "sir" on a regular basis will go waaaay down.
And your point is? We have made a political decision to have a smaller military. This has led to less defense contractors.Our smaller military is not the result of a shrinking economic or structural background.
Again, the solution is to spend more money on the military (if that is something this country wants). If that happens, you'll see an expansion of naval shipyards. Without a customer, it is unrealistic to expect the existence of 1980's level naval shipbuilding.
Wrong the decline in shipbuilding in the USA (once the worlds leading ship builder) is free trade, we don't build ships anymore, we send shipbuilding to asia, years and years ago, now we can't maintain our own Navy any longer.
Fascinating point.
We are the ONLY first world nation that has bought in on this free traitor craziness!
Could it possibly be because it profits only the mega rich political contributors?
YOU SAID..."Because of robotics and cheaper labor elsewhere, those days are gone."
You dont quite get my point.
With the proper policies in place over here FIRST...not only would production be more efficient in this country...the development and manufacture of high tech machines to replace low tech production methods would also be encouraged.
Those factory workers..instead of doing piecemeal textile manufacture...might be building high tech machines on a line...which in turn we would sell to those would be CAFTA countries to increase their standard of living.
Win-Win all around.
Now...with these short sighted solutions...some win now...in the short term...but we all lose out...in the long term.
That means everyone who pays taxes...such as you and I. More socialism...more unions....and then Hillary to the rescue.
Count on it.
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