The Ranks of the Underemployed Continue to Grow

[brentspeak]

http://money.usnews.com/money/careers/articles/2011/10/19/the-ranks-of-the-underemployed-continue-to-grow?google_editors_picks=true

The Ranks of the Underemployed Continue to Grow

By Ben Baden

October 19, 2011

While the number of unemployed workers has held steady at around 14 million in recent months, another telling measure of frustration in the labor market—the number of underemployed individuals—rose for a third consecutive month in September, by almost a half of a million people.

Almost 9.3 million Americans are considered underemployed, defined by the Bureau of Labor Statistics as working part-time for economic reasons, such as unfavorable business conditions or seasonal declines in demand. That's up from just over 8 million in July, but down from a peak of about 9.5 million in September 2010. In addition, about 2.5 million individuals are considered "marginally attached to the labor force," meaning they were not in the labor force, wanted and were available for work, and looked for a job sometime in the prior 12 months. (They are not counted as unemployed because they had not looked for a job in the past four weeks prior to the survey.)

Put together, almost 26 million Americans are either unemployed, marginally attached to the labor force, or involuntarily working part-time—a number experts say is unprecedented.

"The labor force is substantially underutilized relative to what we experienced in most of the post-World War II period," says Patrick O'Keefe, director of economic research at accounting firm J.H. Cohn and former deputy assistant secretary in the U.S. Department of Labor.

Obama, by http://www.huffingtonpost.com/tim-robertson/obamas-free-trade-sleight_b_993403.html">enthusiastically chomping at the bit to sign the US Chamber of Commerce/GOP-supported job-offshoring "free trade" bills -- is doing his individual part to ensure that America's permanent depression continues.

[ellisonz]

1. I don't think these numbers are hardly ever accurate.

These three particular trade bills have relatively little to do with the overall economic picture.

[brentspeak]

2. Please demonstrate, in detail, why you think the numbers in the article "are hardly ever accurate"

When you're done with that, please explain why the trade bills, which Obama has spent two years lobbying for, have "relatively little to do" with the economic picture.

Thanks in advance.

[ellisonz]

3. Doesn't count large segments of the population accurately...

...I think the numbers are much higher: http://www.dailyfinance.com/2010/07/16/what-is-the-real-unemployment-rate/

Our trade with South Korea, Panama and Columbia is insignificant compared to our trade with China. My belief is that our unequal trade relationship with China is the biggest problem. They manipulate the value of their currency, don't honor intellectual property rights, trash their environment, and treat their workers cruelly. It's even more insignificant to what's going on with the top 1% in this country. If you knew the history of isolationism and tariff policy in this country you'd be astounded by how neither policy has benefited the American people.

All three of the passed trade agreements have clauses for all or some environmental, trade, and labor protection.

http://www.ustr.gov/uscolombiatpa/facts
http://www.ustr.gov/uskoreaFTA/key_facts
http://www.ustr.gov/uspanamatpa/facts

You might want to stop talking out of your behind on this issue and do some homework (that goes for many others here too)...

:hi:

[brentspeak]

4. Your "homework" consisted of linking to official White House propaganda?

The key to quickly identifying how little you understand the trade deals beyond your familiarity with the official feel-good talking points is your belief that the legislation somehow contrasts favorably with the China trade situation. You evidently were completely unaware that KORUS' http://www.sice.oas.org/trade/nafta/chap-041.asp#A403">"35% rule" actually further cements China's upper-hand over the US because it enables Korean-exported products to now be http://www.sice.oas.org/trade/nafta/chap-041.asp#A403">as much as 65% made-in-China yet still be labeled and sold tariff-free on the US market as "made in Korea". Furthermore, South Korea is almost as much a http://economyincrisis.org/content/korean-currency-manipulation-threatens-us-economy">currency-manipulator as China is -- and KORUS does nothing to address that.

Laughably, the White House's "Tax Transparency" link concerning the Panama trade deal fails to mention that the deal's tax exchange agreement Panama signed onto is http://www.rollcall.com/issues/56_112/Panama-Free-Trade-Agreement-205007-1.html">utterly voluntary and has no real enforcement at all; the trade deal expands and codifies into legal stone the practice of US corporations and shady individuals using Panama as a massive tax evasion sanctuary.

Yes, I'm quite aware of the history of the United States' history of tariffs and isolationism: 1) how the near-total removal of the nation's tariffs over the past 30 has rapidly destroyed the nation's once-thriving economy as a whole; and 2) how the word "isolationism" is inappropriately thrown about as a bogeyman when discussing trade issues.

[ellisonz]

5. Even more evidence we need better regulated trade...

...but throwing out the baby with the bathwater is just bad diplomacy. Personally, I'd judge economic exchange between China and South Korea to be a good step in isolating North Korea even further.

We need to stop currency manipulation through the WTO. Globalization is here to stay. It's how we deal with it that matters. I'd rather have a basis in the agreements to work from than no agreements at all leading to enmity and dissolution.

Woodrow Wilson made a drastic lowering of tariff rates a major priority for his presidency. The 1913 Underwood Tariff cut rates, but the coming of World War I in 1914 radically revised trade patterns. Reduced trade and, especially, the new revenues generated by the federal income tax made tariffs much less important in terms of economic impact and political rhetoric. When the Republicans regained power after the war they restored the usual high rates, with the Fordney-McCumber Tariff of 1922. When the Great Depression hit, international trade shrank drastically. The crisis baffled the GOP, and it unwisely tried its magic one last time in the Smoot-Hawley Tariff Act of 1930. This time it backfired, as Canada, Britain, Germany, France and other industrial countries retaliated with their own tariffs and special, bilateral trade deals. American imports and exports both went into a tailspin. Franklin D. Roosevelt and the New Dealers made promises about lowering tariffs on a reciprocal country-by-country basis (which they did), hoping this would expand foreign trade (which it did not.) Frustrated, they gave much more attention to domestic remedies for the depression; by 1936 the tariff issue had faded from politics, and the revenue it raised was small.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tariff_in_American_history#1913_to_present

Trade wars are lose-lose. We ought to be asking why the United States is not able to compete within a global economy and take steps to remedy it through investment in education, research and development, and internationalism. That's how we prosper in the 21st century. Not through a crude 19th-20th century approach to the problem by restricting trade and encouraging retaliation.

We disagree, that's okay, reasonable people can have reasonable disagreements.

[brentspeak]

6. "Trade wars are lose-lose...globalization is here to stay"

Meaningless global elitist cliches that are commonly parroted by people who are either mostly immune to the effects of job-offshoring or are otherwise profiting from the lack of one (i.e., investors who own stock in corporations whose products are manufactured in cheap labor locations). And you are quoting a Wikipedia article that is heavily edited by right-wing individuals to reflect their preferences for offshoring labor away from US shores.

Signing onto lop-sided trade deals which are falsely labeled as "free trade" has already proven to be the real "lose-lose" trade situation. NAFTA has been in effect for seventeen years, and, along with the China MFN disaster, the result has been a steady obliteration of the US economy through offshoring of various US industries to Mexico -- as well as a corresponding gigantic rise in illegal immigration from south-of-the-border into the the United States. And contrary to your implication, these multinational-lobbied-for agreements are never modified in any meaningful way for the sake of working Americans. Please explain to us how a hypothetical "trade war" with cheap-labor nations who hold massive trade surpluses over us would be in any way worse that what is currently taking place.

The bottom line is this: the American economy has been permanently destroyed because of Republican and "centrist" Democratic-pushed trade agreements. Job-offshoring agreements are not "trade", no matter how many times propagandists like to claim otherwise.