Watching the Economy Crumble

HUMAN EVENTS ^ | Aug 9, 2005 | Paul Craig Roberts

[Willie Green]

The United States continues its descent into the Third World, but you would never know it from news reports of the Bureau of Labor Statistics' July payroll jobs release.

The media give a bare-bones jobs report that is misleading. The public heard that 207,000 jobs were created in July. If not a reassuring figure, at least it is not a disturbing one. On the surface, things look to be pretty much OK. It is when you look into the composition of these jobs that the concern arises.

Of the new jobs, 26,000 (about 13 percent) are tax-supported government jobs. That leaves 181,000 private sector jobs. Of these private sector jobs, 177,000, or 98 percent, are in the domestic service sector.

Here is the breakdown of the major categories: 30,000 food servers and bartenders, 28,000 health care and social assistance, 12,000 real estate, 6,000 credit intermediation, 8,000 transit and ground passenger transportation, 50,000 retail trade and 8,000 wholesale trade.

(There were 7,000 construction jobs, most of which were filled by Mexicans.)

[woofie]

Jobs are bad

[inquest]

Poor countries simply don't have large service employment.

But it's about the only employment they have, other than subsistence farming (and I don't know if that's counted).