9. Jobs for All Americans

[The 99 Declaration]

Passage of a comprehensive jobs and job-training act like the American Jobs Act to employ our citizens in jobs that are available with specialized re-training through partnerships between companies seeking employees and community colleges and other educational institutions. The American People must be put to work now by repairing America’s crumbling infrastructure and building other needed public works projects that must not be outsourced with cheap foreign labor and building materials. In conjunction with a new jobs act, re-institution of the Works Progress Administration, Civilian Conservation Corps and similar emergency governmental agencies tasked with creating new projects to provide jobs for the families of the 151 million People living in poverty and low income homes. Astonishingly, one in four children live in poverty in the United States while 8.6% of American adults are unemployed and 16.2% are underemployed and many others have simply given up looking for work. Special tax incentives to companies who partner with educational institutions to re-train workers in skills necessary for 21st century technologies, green energy, and new sources of American manufacturing to reduce reliance on imported goods. A democracy simply cannot survive with more than half of its population struggling to acquire basic needs such as food, shelter, education and health care while a tiny fraction of the population controls media, the political process and live in great wealth.

“In our day these economic truths have become accepted as self-evident. We have accepted, so to speak, a second Bill of Rights under which a new basis of security and prosperity can be established for all—regardless of station, race, or creed.

Among these are:

The right to a useful and remunerative job in the industries or shops or farms or mines of the nation;

The right to earn enough to provide adequate food and clothing and recreation;

The right of every farmer to raise and sell his products at a return which will give him and his family a decent living;

The right of every businessman, large and small, to trade in an atmosphere of freedom from unfair competition and domination by monopolies at home or abroad;

The right of every family to a decent home;

The right to adequate medical care and the opportunity to achieve and enjoy good health;

The right to adequate protection from the economic fears of old age, sickness, accident, and unemployment;

The right to a good education.

All of these rights spell security. And after this war is won we must be prepared to move forward, in the implementation of these rights, to new goals of human happiness and well-being.

America’s own rightful place in the world depends in large part upon how fully these and similar rights have been carried into practice for our citizens.”

-Franklin Delano Roosevelt, The Second Bill of Rights, January 11, 1944.

[christophercarney]

This one is very complex and can be quite convoluted. For me, it is almost as open ended as the "End the Fed" grievance, because although most of us recognize what the problems are, few of us know what even needs to be done to get back to the prosperous nation we once were, with 3-4% unemployment.

Which brings me to my first point. I think it's unrealistic to assume we could find jobs for every single American. That really shouldn't be the goal. I think the goal should be more like "Employing the maximum amount of people with the most productive jobs available", or something to that effect. The main reason is, not even the countries with the lowest unemployment rates have 0% unemployment. Not saying that it can't be done, just saying that it's never happened in modern history so it's therefore unlikely to happen at all.

There are other considerations that should be addressed when considering this issue. I won't go into details now but I'll mention a few: 1) outsourcing, 2) off-shoring, 3) currency manipulation (yes WE do it like China) which affects the trade imbalance, 4) corporate taxes and regulations, 5) loss of our manufacturing centers, and 6) "free" trade. There are probably many others but these should all be addressed in a comprehensive solution.

So you see this starts to get very complicated, but then again we're in a complicated mess aren't we?

As a final thought, here's how dire our employment situation is: We have 2-3 million fewer jobs now than we had 10 years ago, and yet we've added 10% to our nation's population. Whomever believes the inane 8.3% official unemployment number needs to give me a call because I have some swampland to sell.

[christophercarney]

Here is the only chart that matters regarding unemployment:

data.bls.gov/timeseries/LNS11300000

For everyone who thinks the "official" 8.3% inflation shows things are improving, the above chart tells a different story.

Naturally, labor participation rate, or the percentage of people employed in the labor force (ages 16-64) is one of the most ignored data point when the BLS puts out its employment numbers, yet it is the most significant.

Notice how the participation rate dropped off a cliff in 2008, and never came back. And it's still dropping, now below 64% for the first time.

How can this chart paint such a different picture than the official unemployment rate which continues to drop? That's a long answer, but suffice it to say there is no way to manipulate the labor participation rate.

[hendrimike]

isn't that because people that haven't found work for a long period of time are no longer counted in the unemployment rate?

thanks for that statistic by the way. it's a dandy.

[forbesmb]

To a degree, Mike.

The official rate doesn't count anyone who has not applied for unemployment or are no longer receiving it. It also doesn't account the partially-employed or the under-employed, which are other factors to consider in the "living wage" society. It is also interesting to note that part of the official rate is an estimate of those individuals transferring between jobs... sort of a guaranteed unemployment rate that is always present.

I'd have to crack my macro-economics book to get more in depth than what I can otherwise recall.

[christophercarney]

forebesmb is correct. The largest contributor to the discrepancy between the official and real unemployment rate is the fact that millions of people have maxed out their unemployment benefits and thus no longer count in the rolls. They actually don't count at all - as if they don't even exist.

Partially employed and under-employed are other problems to a lesser degree, as he also pointed out. We also have a relatively new phenomena of many people settling for lower wage jobs which they are overqualified for. This one doesn't necessarily show up in any statistic but it's important to note nonetheless.

There are a few other games the BLS likes to play in deriving the official unemployment number. A favorite is their use of "seasonally adjusted", where they magically reduce the number of unemployed based on seasonal factors (such as winter in the northeast on construction jobs). The idea of this is to smooth out dips or raises in the jobs lost for any given month, but oddly it almost works out to lower the overall rate.

Another favorite is known as the birth-death model, where the BLS literally guesses how many jobs were created in a given month based off a fictitious scenario of so many new businesses opening and employing new workers, yet it's so recent the new business and new jobs associated with that hasn't been reported to the BLS yet. Again, it always seems to work out so that it creates more jobs than would otherwise be indicated. You can tell how ridiculous this practice is because after a few months, the unemployment rate is almost always "revised" back up when these fictitious jobs never materialize.

Last, they changed the demography of how the BLS does its polling for determining the unemployment rate. Sometime during the Clinton administration (if I remember right) they changed the polling to sample less households in the inner urban neighborhoods. Since these areas typically are poorer and have higher unemployment rates, this change in polling naturally tends to reflect a lower overall rate.

There are sites which track what unemployment would be if none of these tricks were used, and if we counted the people who no longer count. I have read upwards of 16%, and up to 22% once you include the partial and under-employed.

[forbesmb]

I believe you're correct on the Clinton-era change in polling data.

I've always hated the numbers game with "official" government statistics. Statistics, as a mathematics branch, is problematic in that you can make your final outcome appear however you would want it to be, as long as you provide the right sets of information and remove others.

[hendrimike]

1 + 1 = 3 (if 1=1.5)