The Death of U.S. Jobs ( The sky is falling alert )

Newsmax.com ^ | 06/07/2006 | Paul Craig Roberts

[SirLinksalot]

The Death of U.S. Jobs Paul Craig Roberts Wednesday, June 7, 2006 The May payroll jobs report released June 2 by the Bureau of Labor Statistics confirms the jobs pattern for the 21st century U.S. economy: Employment growth is limited to domestic services.

In May, the economy created only 67,000 private sector jobs. Job estimates for the previous two months were reduced by 37,000.

The new jobs are as follows: Professional and business services, 27,000; education and health services, 41,000; waitresses and bartenders, 10,000.

Manufacturing lost 14,000 jobs.

Total hours worked in the private sector declined in May. Manufacturing hours worked are 6.6 percent less than when the recovery began four-and-one-half years ago.

American economists and policymakers are in denial about the effect of jobs offshoring on U.S. employment. Corporate lobbyists have purchased fraudulent studies from economists that claim offshoring results in more U.S. employment, rather than less.

The same lobbyists have spread disinformation that the United States does not graduate enough engineers and that they must import foreigners on work visas. Lobbyists are currently pushing, as part of the immigration bill, an expansion in annual H-1B work visas from 65,000 to 115,000.

The H-1B is a nonimmigrant classification used by an alien who will be employed temporarily in a specialty occupation.

A specialty occupation requires specialized knowledge, along with at least a bachelor's degree or its equivalent. Such occupations include architecture or engineering.

The alleged "shortage" of U.S. engineering graduates is inconsistent with reports from Duke University that 30 percent to 40 percent of students in its masters of engineering management program accept jobs outside the profession.

About one-third of engineering graduates from MIT go into careers outside their field.

Job outsourcing and work visas for foreign engineers are reducing career opportunities for American engineering graduates.

They also are reducing salary scales.

When employers allege a shortage of engineers, they mean that there is a shortage of American graduates who will work for the low salaries that foreigners will accept.

Americans are simply being forced out of the engineering professions by jobs outsourcing and the importation of foreigners on work visas. Corporate lobbyists and their hired economists are destroying the American engineering professions.

American engineering is also under pressure because corporations have moved manufacturing offshore. Design, research and development are now following manufacturing offshore. A country that doesn't make things doesn't need engineers and designers.

Corporations that have moved manufacturing offshore fund R&D in the countries where their plants have been relocated.

Engineering curriculums are demanding. The rewards for the effort are being squeezed out by jobs offshoring and work visas. If the current policy continues of substituting foreign engineers for American engineers, the profession will die in the United States.

[1rudeboy]

Your discouraged workers would show up in either the BLS payroll survey or the Census' household survey, or both (I'm not sure). They would definitely show up in the little-used U-4. Unemployment compensation does not factor into the calculations, if I recall correctly. Did you learn that at school? I'm beginning to wonder whether you deserve a refund.

[coladirienzi]

Nice graphs,

Wages up 3.19% from 2001-2005. So, adjusted for inflation of at least 2.0% a year, at minimum, wages have actually DECLINED, albeit not as much as they did under that idiot Clinton.

Also, one of your charts shows average real hourly earnings at a little over $8.20/hr. At a standard 2000 hr work year, that is $16,400/year. There may well be pockets in rural North Dakota, or Arkansas, where you can scrape by on this, but you will be hard-pressed to live on that amount of money anywhere else.

Both of these charts are garbage. They just threw in everybody from the CEO to the high school kid working 12 hours a week delivering pizzas. Also they cherry-picked the numbers. 1995-2000, a period of rapid, though ultimately false growth is missing.

[1rudeboy]

Best take a closer look at the graph. And get your refund right away.

[ccmay]

The alleged "shortage" of U.S. engineering graduates is inconsistent with reports from Duke University that 30 percent to 40 percent of students in its masters of engineering management program accept jobs outside the profession.

Bullcrap. That is a total non sequitir. Whoever wrote it is a fool.

Engineering grads have a big leg up on admissions to law and medical schools. Wall Street is salivating for engineering grads too. I'm sure many "engineering management" grads go on to get an MBA. There are lots of jobs that pay better than a pure engineering position, and are not as hard either. Of course many engineers are going to do something else even if there is a shortage of engineers to fill the job pool within the field.

-ccm

[ccmay]

Best take a closer look at the graph.

Especially the multiple "Real" notations, and the part about "Series deflated using CPI-U-RS."

I concur with the recommendation for you to seek a refund.

-ccm

[Mase]

I suppose the 'little people' don't count in your feudal view of our society.

Do you consider the middle class to be a part of the group of "little" people you referenced? Does the information below lead you to believe that this large segment of our population is angry, starving and itching for a revolution, French style?

• in 1967 only one in 25 families earned an income of $100,000 or more in real income, whereas now, one in six do. The percentage of families that have an income of more than $75,000 a year has tripled from 9% to 27%.

• The percentage of families with real incomes between $5,000 and $50,000 has been falling as more families move into higher income categories -- the figure has dropped by 19 percentage points since 1967.

• The middle class has not been "shrinking" or losing ground, it has been getting richer. For example, the Census data indicate that the income cutoff to be considered "middle class" has risen steadily. Back in 1967, the income range for the middle class (i.e., the middle-income quintile) was between $28,000 and $39,500 a year (in today's dollars). Now that income range is between $38,000 and $59,000 a year, which is to say that the middle class is now roughly $11,000 a year richer than 25 to 30 years ago.

• The upper-middle class is also richer. Those falling within the 60th to 80th percentile in family income have an income range today of between $55,000 and $88,000 a year, which is about $24,000 a year higher than in 1967.

• Median household wealth for 2004, is estimated at $105,000 in 2004. This is almost double the median family-wealth level of 1983 and nearly triple the level of 1962.

• The media and the poverty lobby have seized upon the news that the poverty rate has spiked upward to 12.7% in 2004, up from 11.3% before the recession. This rise was widely reported and condemned, but again this is a short-term phenomenon attributable to the aftershocks of the recession. What was not widely reported was that the 12.7% poverty rate was the lowest coming out of any recession in the last 25 years, and that the poverty rate has been lower than 12.7% in only five of the last 25 years. It certainly is better than the 15.1% rate poverty-rate peak in 1993.

The Great American Dream Machine

[1FreeAmerican]

I am no longer an electrician- I'm an electrical contractor. That means I run my own business and have guy's that work for me. I can do this after only 4-5 years exerience(depending on the state) and I acually grossed 250K the first year. This work has always beat the hell out the possible wages I could earn with my EE degree, and the potential is much greater...ie Federal and State jobs.

[Mase]

RE: By not counting you it makes whatever administration is in power look good, and THAT is what it is all about.

This canard seems to surface on just about every discussion about how the rate of unemployment is calculated. There's a charlatan named John Williams making a fortune selling doomers a book on shadow government statistics and his belief that our government is intentionally ignoring five million discouraged workers. Thankfully NR debunked that myth some time ago.

NR believes that the people who brought us this nonsense are the same folks who who predicted the Bush tax cuts would ruin the economy.

Here's their tactic: Yes, the unemployment rates are dropping, but that's not because people have found jobs; it's because people have given up looking for work." It's a perfect retort, except for one thing: The percentage of unemployed people who have given up looking for work is low, by historical standards, and has recently been dropping. We know this, because the Bureau of Labor Statistics, the same agency that counts the number of unemployed people, also counts the number of discouraged workers — or the number of people who have given up looking for work and say they have done so because they believe there is no appropriate work to be found.

Here's what the BLS found: Only about a third of a percent of American workers are classified in the "discouraged" category. That's right: Ninety-nine and two-thirds percent are not discouraged. This is hardly the teeming mass of employment despondency that we have been led to believe is out there.

The Myth of the Discouraged Worker (Have American workers been giving up in the Bush economy?)

I have to wonder if coladirienzi also predicted that Bush's tax cuts would ruin the economy and, like John Williams, is fabricating his desired outcome rather than dealing with the way things are.

[1rudeboy]

Thanks. There is a reason I defer to you on the unemployment-rate-calculation arguments . . . you have far more information at your fingertips than I.

[1rudeboy]

Speaking from personal experience, I can tell you that the engineering/science grads at my law school had/have an easier time of it than the liberal arts grads.

[1rudeboy]

If you are not man (nor woman) enough to challenge my statistics or insult me in public, STFU. You will not receive a Private Reply . . . I save those for folks who have the balls to take me on in the open forum.

[Mase]

So the coward LostInTheWoods sent you a private reply too? If he had the testicular fortitute to debate on the open forum, I'd gladly give him a much needed lesson in Statistics. Apparently, he could also use a lesson in how to click on a link to learn the source of the statistics.

There's only one reason we never see him on these economics threads and that's because he is clueless. Just another loser masquerading as a conservative posting from the offices the DNC or his mommy's basement. What an idiot!

[MikefromOhio]

JOhn Paul Craig Phillip Rogers or whatever his name is can shove it.

The economy is just fine.

Assuming that inflation stays at bay and gas prices remain reasonable, things will continue to hum right along.

[MikefromOhio]

Electrical engineers build weapons.
Civil engineers build targets.

And computer engineers build the computers so that the pilot can select which window to put the bomb through :)