A job at $75,000 a year with full benefits does not equal a job at $20,000 a year with no benefits. Yet the government statisticians treat them the same.

I we lose 100,000 high-paying jobs and gain 120,000 shit jobs at minimum wage, the government statistics will say we had a "net gain of 20,000 jobs," which is, of course, total bullshit.

Imagine that you take your new Lexus to the shop for maintenance. When you come back, they give you a 1998 Toyota Corolla. They might claim that you brought them a "car" and you got a "car" back. You would probably disagree.

This is why all the hip-hip-hooray talk about "job growth" is absolute nonsense.

When Reagan announced his new "service economy" in 1981 I knew that workers were screwed. I was at DOL and anyone paying attention in my profession knew what those code words meant. Yet voters have consistently voted GOP into power at key times since then. Now we have a GOP Congress again after all the damage they have done over the years.

The real truth is under the GOP guidelines only about 15% of the jobs will pay a living wage over the long term. We are still eliminating good jobs replacing them with bad. And the real brutal truth is that the GOP and its business allies favor a "contracted" and "subcontracted" labor force where there is NO traditional relationship with the employer.

As long as voters have the heebee jee bees over unions and pro labor policies it will only get worse. Just try to run a a pro labor pro regulation candidate anywhere and see what happens to you. You get trashed by the RW as a communist and voters run the other way.

Is that the GOP wants to redefine "job" to mean 40 hours a week. This is an attempt to derail the ACA. However, once they do that, it will throw all the job statistics into disarray. We will see a hemorrhage of "jobs" with each report. And to make sure that happens, should the bill pass without veto, Obama should issue an executive order to that effect.

I wrote a series of emails to a friend I called "The No Job Jobs Of The 21st Century". What the GOP does not tell workers is that they favor a "contingency" job system where there are NO full time jobs as we now know them. They believe workers should all be "independent contractors" kind of like actors. You essentially audition for a "limited term" contract where YOU PAY for all your own benefits. You cover what employers used to pay for through the government. You would get so many dollars for the contract and you would be responsible for all those expenses.

I saw some white papers during the Reagan years where the jobs of the 21st century would be these "contract" jobs and the work force would be a "contingency" work force. Right now about 40% of the job market is "contract labor."

Hong Kong continues to be the highest-ranked country for contingent workforce operations, followed closely by the United States and China, according to global HR consulting firm ManpowerGroup.

Manpower’s 2014 Contingent Workforce Index report concluded that while Hong Kong and the United States are both cost-effective markets, Hong Kong has the added benefit of higher productivity, defined as the amount of hours an employer can pay a worker at base pay.

According to the report, Hong Kong is attributed with a favorable regulatory environment, low cost of manufacturing labor and relatively high productivity due to no overtime, eight-hour workdays and six-day workweeks.

Manpower’s index measures the relative ease of sourcing, hiring and retaining part-time, temporary or contract labor around the world based on the availability, cost, regulation and productivity of each country’s contingent workforce

- See more at: http://www.shrm.org/hrdisciplines/global/articles/pages/hong-kong-engaging-contingent-labor.aspx#sthash.sqMInswm.dpuf


Bastards want to grind us down and kill us when we get old. Just a new kind of slavery.

when there isnt any benefit?
Sure it would be the moral thing to do but companies arent people and thus lack morals and ethics.
No, I suspect the only way we can get companies to raise wages is to give them and incentive and one way would be to do away with all their tax breaks they currently enjoy and tell them that if they want tax breaks then need to earn them by increasing the their employees wages so they are earning more than 200% over the poverty level.
The more workers they have that earn that much the bigger the tax break they can take.

The sig alone is worth the click.

being counted, millions more working part-time that say they need full-time work, and several million classed as not in the job market, yet when the survey comes, they say they want jobs. The relationship is still there - the jobs aren't. Because the effort has been put into making bank$sters richer, while throwing the lives of millions of people in the trash. (The plan's architect is interviewed here, while voters laugh at his face).

The one place that truly shows signs of a labor shortage. Employers are not competing for labor because there is no shortage. Hence stagnant wages.

from the blowback from the neoliberal plot to reduce oil prices in an attempt to get to Putin. The only sector in the US that is creating high-paying jobs. The rest are all shit, service industry jobs. When the petroleum industry starts laying people off, the economy will really go on the skids.

The way I look at it is this.... and this is strictly my on opinion... I think our cost of living in this country is way too high for decent jobs too return. We , as Americans expect the best, and money seems to be no object. Profits are being made by corporations now because not only are we buying the inflated priced stuff, but the workers are being paid less and doing more, and as we are coming out of a major downturn, people are afraid of losing what job they have. The lower and middle class are the job creators in this country by buying the goods being sold, but when these goods are overpriced, then buying trends downward, unless you are well off. While wages have stagnated, and social security payouts have remained stagnant, prices have risen on most things in this country. Although gas and oil have dropped, they will soon rise again as the weather begins to get better.

The education system is not producing enough home grown workers to fill the higher tech positions, so corporations are flocking to other countries for workers.... Heads up college students...not everyone can make it as an actor, or a fashion photographer, think very closely about your career goals. Actor = waiter in most cases...... but nurse, or engineer, or allied health workers in need for this aging baby boomers.

As soon as the 99% wake up a little more, that national policy will be changed.

stealing our ability to have a decent life so they can stash more money overseas than they could spend in their lifetimes. MFA corporatist politicians, tilting the deck so that only the rich can stand and the rest of us drown just so they can get more money. It drives me crazy how America has changed for the worse, starting with Raygun and coming to a crescendo with Citizens United, Hobby Lobby, and the end of the VRA.

Table A shows 111,000 more employed, but not-in-labor force increasing by 456,000. So this seems to be a mix factor and not a prevailing wage reduction.

http://www.bls.gov/news.release/empsit.a.htm

All the other factors look good - notice particularly the large reduction in the teen unemployment rate.