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?
False. Not in manufacturing. We're the global 90-pound weakling. The newer better mousetrap gets invented by some guys in Silicon Valley, and then immediately manufactured elsewhere. E.g., say the high-density Plasma or LCD monitors and televisions. Most of the underlying technical advances were made here and in Japan. But they never get made here. Straight to China (with its huge tariffs, and government-oppressed wages), Taiwan, South Korea, and Thailand. Even hyper-automated Japan is being priced out of the market.
How many more "nails" do we have to lose, i.e., "want", before you guys wake up?
"More BS from Paul Craig Roberts.."
Would you care to elaborate?
I work at a technology company of 300 employees. We added approximately 30 high tech jobs in Q2. We are back to not being able to find qualified candidates. Hillary must be the ghost writer in this article.
the growth of higher-paying hourly jobs is outpacing that of lower-paying jobs for the first time in nearly four years
Wow!
Stop the presses!
Seriously, if this represents great news, what's your idea of good news ..... the price of gruel has gone down?
As long as they're willing to shuffle their kids off to college simply because it's the thing to do after high school, while at the same time paying no attention to this alarming trend.
Thanks for interjecting some reality into this thread. The fact that U.S. manufacturing output *per worker* is so high is not exactly a "problem" for our society - it's what gives us such a high standard of living. I'm not advocating we ignore the losses suffered by individuals whose jobs are lost through technological change, increased international trade, or deregulation of industry. There may be a sensible role for government to step in and subsidize retraining and relocation for them, along with providing *temporary* income support. The Bush Administration introduced a plan whereby, under certain circumstances, you can "cash out" your unemployment compensation entitlement to pay for such retraining costs.
As for the alleged dearth of high-paying jobs for recent graduates, my father-in-law says it's extremely difficult for his small architectural/engineering firm to find qualified new hires for less than $100,000 a year.
There are always going to be people who bet on the wrong horse when they pick a college major. Remember aerospace engineers in the early 70's? More recently, MIS majors? I know this is going to seem terribly old-fashioned, but there is still value in a diversified, rigorous liberal-arts background (not, of course, the mushy-headed stuff taught now in comp lit departments). Maybe diversification is even more valuable today than it was in the past because of the faster pace of change.
The information economy becomes bankrupt. Just as the whole dot.com was a dot bomb (as Warren Buffet says, the biggest in his long lifetime), so will this economic shibboleth that we can outgrow manufacturing...and we all will suffer. Even the guys who think they are controlling the tiger.
I apologize for not knowing, not being in the software industry, but I got the impression they were speaking of the hotter skills in demand from US clients outsourcing their projects. Twenty-five hundred a month was their direct quote, and they even mentioned that they had some Europeans on their roster in Bangalore, who had come there to find work. I can only relay what I heard from them...
If, by that, you mean the Bill Gates wannabes who despise working Americans, I think that's most of us.
Is Jimmy Carter President again?
Sorry, nll, my bad. (But italics is our friend). ;-)
She could not possibly be worst then Bush, the Bush presidency makes the Clinton presidency look good.
"If, by that, you mean the Bill Gates wannabes who despise working Americans, I think that's most of us."
May be you, but not me.
There's a group of rabble here who actually think that there's honor in being a working man. We're a minority, but we won't go away.
Will we become "America, the land of opportunity for non-Americans, Americans need not apply"?
Thank God for Presidential term limits.
Given a little more time he'd make LBJ look good!
So, these students from Pakistan and India were probably either paying their own way ...
Ha! I also doubt that this supposition of yours is correct. (Turnabout is fair play). As for their governments giving aid, of course, I am sure many of them did have that. As for the U.S., I know for a fact we were also giving them the teaching assistant jobs which they were manifestly inept at...bypassing superior U.S. candidates for limited niches. Whatever the corrupting influence factor was, Cash cow or PC or what-have-you, the "fix" was in.
Are you nuts?
The best and brightest U.S.-born students will never have a problem getting good paying work in this country.
The mediocre and average, on the other hand...
Yea, that's why we had to buy bullets from China for our troops in Iraq.
Cold hard fact.
We are going from a nation of engineers to a nation of servants. Is this your idea of upward mobility ?
When a nation is on the way up the servant population shrinks.
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