[Peace-discuss] More jobs down the tube

[Ricky Baldwin]

Today's news: "Private employers cut 250,000 jobs in November, the most in seven
years, a report by a private employment service said on Wednesday," (Reuters, 12-3-08).


And the experts are still "revising upward" their totals from previous months, including:
 
Aug. 2008 – 127,000 for the month (revised upward from earlier announcements)

 
Sept. 2008 – 284,000 for the month, incl. 201,000 service
jobs (revised upward from earlier announcements)

Sept. 2008 – Hewlett-Packard 25,000 announced
Sept. 2008 – unemployment hits 5-year high 


This is *official* unemployment, meaning unemployment *claims*, which only counts people who are eligible - a category which shrank notably in the Reagan years, artificially lowering the reported unemployment rate.  It only includes people who are currently looking for work, but who have been looking for only a few months (in other words, their benefits haven't run out yet), they aren't students (even taking one class, even a night class, even a vocational class), they are 100 percent unemployed (because working even 1 hour a week disqualifies you).  Moreover, they recently had a job, where they had worked for long enough and enough hours per week to qualify - and they still only get a fraction of their former pay, from which they paid into the system (it's unemployment *insurance* after all, not welfare).
It doesn't count millions of people who have given up looking, are working even a little, or who are otherwise "unavailable for work" for *any part of the day*, e.g. taking care of kids.

 
Oct. 2008 - Citigroup 22,000 cuts announced
Oct. 2008 – manufacturing 90,000 actual cuts
Oct. 2008 – leisure & hospitality 16,000 cuts
Oct. 2008 – construction 49,000 cuts
Oct. 2008 – professional & business services 45,000 cuts
Oct. 2008 - retail 38,000 cuts
Oct. 2008 – temp jobs 50,800 cut
Total for Oct. -  200,000
predicted, 240,000 actual for the month; 1.2 million cut for the year(most - 651,000 -
in the preceding three months, each of those months higher than the last)
Oct. 2008 – unemployment hits 14-year high


Again, this is *official* unemployment, i.e "claims."  “The so-called under-employment rate, which
counts those part-time workers, as well as those without jobs who have become
discouraged and stopped looking for work, rose to 11.8% from from 11%, matching
the all-time high for that measure since calculations for it began in January
1994.” - CNN
 
Nov. 2008 – Circuit City 7,300 announced (17 percent of its
domestic workforce)
Nov. 2008 – Hartford Financial 500 announced
Nov 2008 – GlaxoSmithKline 1,000 in sales positions announced
Nov. 2008 – Fidelity Investments 1,300 announced
Nov. 2008 – Mattel 1,000 announced
Nov. 2008 – Ford 2,600 announced  (+ total auto sales in US at 25-year low)
Nov. 2008 – Sun 6,000 (18 %)
(total tech sector 2008: 140,000; 107,300 in 2007; 131, 200
in 2006; 174,744 in 2005; 700,000 in 2001 when “dot-com bubble burst”)
Nov. 2008 – Applied Materials 1,800 announced  (12 %)
Nov. 2008 – National Semiconductor 330 announced
Nov. 2008 - Citigroup 53,000 announced  (20 percent so far since 2007)
 
Our future?  300,000 job
losses a month predicted (CNN) - they can always "revise this up" later; Cisco Systems, Qualcomm, Nokia may announce layoffs
before the end of the year due to losses; and of course 2-3 million jobs lost if even one of the Big Three goes belly up.

By the way, I noticed in all that hoopla last week that the recession was finally "official" - and backdated to December 2007 - the same group said, in answer to a reporter's question, they have "no official definition" for the predicament that dare not speak its name: "depression."


      
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