ECONOMY - No Work for You

[Triana]

ECONOMY
No Work For You

The employment numbers announced Friday showed the job sector is growing weakly, as "the nation's employers displayed an unexpected reluctance...to hire more workers." The NYT reports, "the work force grew by only 57,000 jobs last month...only a third of what most forecasters had projected." Said economist Bill Cheney, chief economist at John Hancock Financial Services Inc., the news "is like getting just the Christmas present you wanted, but two sizes too small." With new entries into the job market, economists say 200,000 to 300,000 new jobs have to be added each month "to significantly lower the unemployment rate and sustain a labor market recovery." Instead of hiring new workers, employers are "trying to squeeze every ounce they can from their existing employees," according to economist Nariman Bahravesh. Overtime is up (though workers might not get compensated for it in the future if the Bush Administration gets its way), as is the use of temporary employees (who get reduced benefits), while wages are rising more slowly than the rate of inflation.

WAL-MARTIZATION OF AMERICA: Aaron Bernstein writes in Business Week that we are experiencing the "Wal-Martization" of America – "hiring temps and part-timers, fighting unions, dismantling internal career ladders, and outsourcing to lower-paying contractors at home and abroad." As he notes, "More than a quarter of the labor force, about 34 million workers, are trapped in low-wage, often dead-end jobs." What does that mean? "The result has been an erosion of one of America's most cherished values: giving its people the ability to move up the economic ladder over their lifetimes."

http://www.americanprogress.org/site/pp.asp?c=biJRJ8OVF&b=6228#3

[grannylib]

1. Just as the current misadministration wants it...they want to put people

out of work, empty the treasury and rule the world...they really make no secret of that...

[tom_paine]

2. Yep, just as the Imperial Family wants it

Nothing to add, grannylib. You said it all.

Back to the 1890s! Perhaps back to the 1590s...the Mad Reign of Emperor George P. Caligula should tell us more about that.