are we really free?

So much unrest and strife in the world and so little coverage by our "Free Press". 

But we're not going to convince folks that their news is controlled. 

 

Carl Jarvis

 

Subject: Gov't jobless stats increasingly,out of step with workers' reality

http://www.themilitant.com/2012/7647/764701.html

The Militant - December 24, 2012 -- Gov't jobless stats increasingly out
of step with workers' reality
The Militant (logo)

Vol. 76/No. 47      December 24, 2012


(lead article)
Gov't jobless stats increasingly
out of step with workers' reality

  While statistical measurements of "productivity" and workers' "real
wages" should be taken with a grain of salt, graph illustrates a growing
gap between
the two, as pressure on profit rates spur bosses to squeeze more from
labor while driving down the costs.
BY BRIAN WILLIAMS
Official unemployment figures declined slightly to 7.7 percent in
November from 7.9 percent in October. But these numbers cranked out by
the U.S. Labor
Department have no correlation to the actual jobs crisis facing working
people—more than 23 million can't get a full-time job, while many
employed face
speedup and boss assault on wages and working conditions.

According to the Labor Department's news release, "payroll employment
rose by 146,000 in November." But the department's own figures also say
that the
total number of people employed in the country actually declined by
122,000.

How is this magic trick accomplished? In large part by "disappearing"
350,000 workers from the official workforce, which means they are no
longer counted
when figuring employment rates. Among them are 166,000 workers the
statisticians added in November to a category they consider too
"discouraged" in their
job prospects to bother counting.

  After dramatic decline, employment to population ratio has hovered
around same low level for the last three years.

The employment to population ratio—a straight percentage of the total
population that is employed—provides a more accurate gauge of those
without work.
Unlike the official unemployment rate, it is not easily masked by
removing discouraged workers from the job figures or other methods. In
November the ratio
declined by 0.1 to 58.7 percent, meaning a slightly smaller percentage
of the population is working than the previous month.

After a sharp decline of 5 percentage points between 2007 and 2010, the
employment to population ratio has hovered around the same spot for the
last three
years. This represents not only the lowest rate in decades, but an
unprecedented amount of time without any sign of even a temporary recovery.

"Many millions of Americans, in particular less-skilled men, are leaving
the workforce, a phenomenon the country has never seen before on the
present scale,"
wrote Jonathan Rauch in a Dec. 5 article in the National Journal titled
"The No Good, Very Bad Outlook for the Working-Class American Man." This
situation,
he states, might "bring social unrest and class resentment of a
magnitude the country hasn't known before."

What the statisticians refer to as productivity in U.S. factories
increased at a 2.9 percent annual rate in the third-quarter of 2012, its
fastest rate
in two years, reported the Labor Department. One of the main ways bosses
are raising labor productivity—more goods produced in less time—is by
making employees
work harder, faster, under more unsafe job conditions. Fewer workers are
pressed to crank out more work while millions search for work.

"Productivity is rising handsomely, but compensation of workers isn't
keeping up," writes Rauch. In fact over the past three decades it "has
hardly risen
at all." Between 1948 and 2011 productivity rose 254.3 percent, while
average hourly compensation has only gone up 113.1 percent, according to
the Economic
Policy Institute.

"From the end of World War II through about 1980, almost two-thirds of
every dollar of income generated by the economy flowed to workers in the
form of
wages and benefits," writes Rauch. "Beginning around 1980, workers'
share began to slide and, in the past decade or so, has nosedived to
about 58 percent."


Meanwhile, manufacturing declined in November to its lowest level in
more than three years, according to the Institute for Supply Management.
While retail
trade employment rose by 53,000 last month, in preparation for holiday
sales, manufacturing jobs declined by 8,000 and construction by 20,000.


Related articles:
'Cliff' or no cliff, workers go to the wall



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