JOBS DISASTER

New York Post ^ | January 10, 2004 | PAUL THARP

[sarcasm]

January 10, 2004 -- A big hole is tearing through the economy's sails, knocking Wall Street for a loop and dimming optimism for 2004.

The damage began yesterday when dismal employment numbers triggered an economic chain reaction that tore across markets and stunned even the most pessimistic economists.

[Biblebelter]

I trust FT's reporting, if anybody knows how to report unemployment it is the Brits, they have been dealing with it for a very long time.

[sawyer]

I just do not know but I do think that every President has changed how workers were counted to fit the results they wanted or to make them look better. Seems to me some one has always been yelling about that. My own belief is look at the cars being taken back and bankrupted people and numbers. For the life of me I can not believe that people working under the table can help any of us.

[CasearianDaoist]

No, not next week, it will be brutal, and believe me I have nothing but support for Bush's approach. The truth is the no one understands the extent of "off-shoring" and how much of that is really behind "productivity" increases. We have never seen this sort of thing on this scale before so it is quite hard to predict. I know, I am involved with it.

It may work out by second quarter, it may not. There are a lot of wild cards.

Believe me, missing that number by so wide a mark set everyone back to the drawing boards. Just watch the futures and the early market tomorrow night and early Monday morning. The US markets are in for one hell of a ride. I hope OPEC stays with the dollar because there will be real pressure to switch next week.

The lastest run ups have not been speculators but money that had gotten burned before and were waiting out the recession. If this chases them out for another year the recovery could be nipped in the bud.

I hope that there are some really good earning reports in the next two week as that would really help.

The Dow will go below 10,000 next week and could well go down more than 10%. I hope I am wrong but that is how it looks to me. THe NASDaq will certainly go below 2000 and could go down more than ten percent as well. As I said look for the Euro and $130.00. THe slide might might me to steep to allow the Japanese to prop up the Yen, whick could hit $106.00. These are terrible numbers for a "recovery" and could kill it for a couple of years.

This is serious stuff and could turn everything upside down for the economy and for Bush. And, believe me I am not pushing any "plan" that the democrats have because they do not have one. But it would be foolish not to see some real damage here. Of course the worst that could happen would be to raise taxes - that would start a depression.

[FITZ]

Here in the west part of Texas, we could have used far more than 1000 jobs just in one town alone, considering NAFTA put about 14,000 garment workers out of jobs and nothing else has come along for many of them.

It depends on where you live I guess --- some places are doing very very well I'm sure but some places are really hurting. There are only 33% of the population covered by private health insurance here --- this slow growth in jobs isn't going to help that.

[sarcasm]

It's gotten to the point where I don't believe any of the numbers produced by the government.

[FITZ]

Jobs go begging.

Maybe Bush needs to consider some kind of incentive or something to get the unemployed and welfare types who can't find jobs distributed better --- maybe get busloads of people going up to Massachusetts from areas of very high unemployment. Along the border more people keep coming in but the jobs aren't here --- if millions of low-skilled workers are needed, they have to get them to the places where they are needed --- not just barely inside the country where poverty is piling up fast.

[FITZ]

If an illegal goes to work, does that count as a new job or is it just ignored?

It seems like that would depend --- some of those illegals are dealing in stolen identity documents and taking official jobs that I think would be counted, some of the agricultural jobs maybe aren't being counted, or contract labor where there is a job but it's probably not counted. In some of those they use a mixture of legal and illegal labor --- it probably appears that the employees are extremely productive but there are illegals doing a lot of the work.

[oceanview]

and white collar tech is also bleeding due to offshoring, the 2004 corporate offshore plans start kicking in this month, the layoffs aren't even publicized anymore, it just continues unabated. the service sector and government aren't able to create enough jobs to make up for it.

if these jobs numbers in the monthly reports turn negative as 2004 moves on, Bush is in huge trouble.

[Leisler]

"Maybe Bush needs to consider some kind of incentive or something to get the unemployed and welfare types who can't find jobs distributed better ...",

Sam Kinnison, "Move to the food" notion.

I don't know what to tell people. We have unimagined highways, most everyone has a car, and if people can't figure their way to a job, when people come from all over the world to work here, well..something's wrong.

[sarcasm]

The Indian economy will be booming.

[Gritty]

I wonder how the jobs situation would look if the ten million or so illegals holding American jobs were gone and Americans were filling them instead?

A lot of these jobs are "good" jobs and a lot more would be if illegal workers were not artificially depressing the wages.

[FITZ]

There is a lot of federal money pouring into this region because of very high chronic unemployment and high welfare rates --- maybe instead of redistributing the money they need to redistribute the poor people so they will get up to states like yours that are doing so well and jobs are plentiful. We've got all these NAFTA displaced workers who haven't worked in years and if something isn't done they'll likely never work again. Many lost those jobs when they were over 40, now they're over 50 and still not working. Another 10 years or so --- they'll be retiring.

[sarcasm]

You can't mean that they are jobs that Americans will do.

[InvisibleChurch]

that's baloney

[sarcasm]

What's baloney?

[oceanview]

they come from all over the world to be dishwashers or cut lawns or put up sheetrock for $50/day and no benefits, or they come to work in the IT industry for half the prevailing US wage.

you want people to "move to the food"? what you are really asking them to do is "move to the crumbs". their choice will instead be to elect people who will provide their assistance by raising taxes.

this plan of Wesley Clark, to eliminate the income tax on people making below $50K and funding it with much higher taxes on those making more then $250K, don't laugh, that has alot of mileage in an economy like ours.

[FITZ]

My own belief is look at the cars being taken back and bankrupted people and numbers.

I was amazed when I saw our newspaper yesterday --- pages and pages of fairly new used cars and trucks --- I'll wait until the prices on those start dropping, there is almost no way a price on a two year old car or truck is going to stay so high when there are such a large number being sold now. It looks like people took on some pretty expensive vehicles and suddenly need to sell them.

[jpsb]

What we have here is the result of an insane free trade, export all jobs GOP policy. Until we kick the elites out of office expect more of the same. And yea, may as well open the open to 20 million cheap labor Mexican, that just that the country needs right now to depress wages on the few remaining jobs. Great thinking there Bush.

[sarcasm]

And yea, may as well open the open to 20 million cheap labor Mexican, that just that the country needs right now to depress wages on the few remaining jobs

The proposal is not restricted to Mexicans.

[Gritty]

You can't mean that they are jobs that Americans will do.

Of course I do.

There isn't a job being done by an illegal alien that an American couldn't or wouldn't do. It's all a matter of wage and availablility. It is also a matter of restrictive labor laws we have on the books which need to be eliminated so marginal workers, including teeneagers, can get them.

Illegal workers are not only distorting our economy but our entire balance of payments, tax revenues, and medical and social benefit systems.