More
Jobs Fictions
By Paul
Craig Roberts
September 09, 2018 "Information
Clearing House"
- According to today’s payroll
jobs report from the Bureau of Labor Statistics,
the economy created 200,000 new jobs in August.
These jobs, assuming that they exist, are
reported to be in low paid domestic service jobs
such as transporting and selling goods,
ambulatory health care services, and waiting
tables and mixing drinks. There are none in
manufacturing or in the “high tech clean
fingernail” jobs that neoliberal economists
promised the American work force in exchange for
letting the industrial and manufacturing jobs go
to Asia.
The
great mystery is how these jobs can possibly
have been created when the Bureau of Labor
Statistics Household Data (Table A)
https://www.bls.gov/news.release/empsit.a.htm
reports
that the civilian labor force declined by
469,000 in August from the level in the previous
month (July); that employment declined by
423,000 in August from the previous month; and
that 692,000 Americans dropped out of the labor
force in August. Year over year (August
2017-August 2018) 1,531,000 Americans have left
the labor force. This is inconsistent with a
booming economy at full employment.
It is
not explained how during August the Household
Survey found unemployment to rise by 423,000 and
the work force to shrink by 692,000 for a total
of 1,115,000 missing working people, but the
economy created 200,000 new payroll jobs.
According to the financial presstitutes, we have
a booming economy and labor shortages stemming
from a 3.9% unemployment rate, which if it were
real would probably be the lowest in my
lifetime. Economists are puzzled why there is no
upward pressure on wages when there are not
enough workers to go around. All of this mystery
is due to the fact that the unemployment rate
does not count workers who cannot find jobs and
have dropped out of the work force. If an
unemployed person has not looked for a job in
the past four weeks, the unemployed person is
not counted as unemployed.
The
Employment Situation Summary
https://www.bls.gov/news.release/empsit.nr0.htm
states that there are 4.4 million workers who
are involuntary part-time workers because they
cannot find full time jobs. So we have a booming
economy in which there are more workers than
full time jobs!
The
Employment Situation Summary also says that
there are 1.4 million workers who are not
counted as unemployed because they had not
searched for work in the 4 weeks preceding the
survey.”
The
financial presstitutes are not doing their job.
All the financial presstitutes do is to print
the headline on the press release that is handed
to them—200,000 new jobs in August.
Consequently, considering all the contradictions
in the BLS data and the inaccurate measure of
unemployment, we really have no idea of the
state of the economy.
Dr. Paul Craig Roberts was Assistant Secretary of
the Treasury for Economic Policy and associate
editor of the Wall Street Journal. He was
columnist for Business Week, Scripps Howard News
Service, and Creators Syndicate. He has had many
university appointments. His internet columns
have attracted a worldwide following. Roberts'
latest books are
The Failure of Laissez Faire
Capitalism and Economic Dissolution of the West,
How America Was Lost,
and
The Neoconservative Threat to
World Order.
Dr. Roberts asks for your support.
http://www.paulcraigroberts.org/pages/donate/
The
views expressed in this article are solely those
of the author and do not necessarily reflect the
opinions of Information Clearing House.
