Category Archives: Employment

May 5, 2013

NYT: Real Unemployment at 21.9 Million

Posted on May 5, 2013 by ifnm| Leave a comment

On Friday, President Barack Obama’s Chairman of the Council of Economic Advisers Alan B. Krueger took a victory lap of sorts after the Labor Department’s jobs report showed the U.S. added 165,000 nonfarm payroll jobs in April.

“Today’s employment report provides further evidence that the U.S. economy is continuing to recover,” said Krueger.

But behind Friday’s Labor Department figures lies a stark economic reality: America remains in a downward jobs spiral.

Consider the following: according to the Labor Department, the U.S. added 165,000 jobs in April, but to return to pre-recession employment levels, the U.S. would need to add 208,000 jobs a month over seven years.

The government officially recognizes 11.7 million individuals as being unemployed. But as the New York Times notes, including “those who are underemployed—that is, adding in those workers who are part-time but want to be employed full time, and workers who want to work but are not looking—brings the total up to 21.9 million.”

Since President Barack Obama took office, 9.5 million Americans have fallen out of the U.S. workforce. Today, 89,936,000 people living in the U.S. no longer work.

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Posted in Democrats/Progressives, Economy and Debt, Employment, Obama, Radicals

April 13, 2013

Has the welfare state killed the work ethic? by Pat Buchanan

Posted on April 13, 2013 by ifnm| Leave a comment

Pat Buchanan interprets recent stats showing fewer Americans in labor force. Though we have been creating jobs for two years, even if at a torpid pace, the food stamps rolls have soared to 47 million at a cost of $80 billion.

That America created only 88,000 jobs in March, less than half the number anticipated, was jolting news, indicating the recovery the White House has boasted about may not be at hand.

But in that March jobs report, there was more disturbing news. While unemployment fell to 7.6 percent, the reason it fell is alarming.

Half a million U.S. workers (495,000) disappeared from the labor force. They dropped out. They are no longer even looking for a job.

Worse, this appears to be an inexorable trend. The participation rate of eligible workers in the United States has fallen to 63.3 percent, a level unseen since Jimmy Carter gave his malaise speech in 1979.

These folks, who have quit working and quit looking, who are they? How do they support themselves? What does this surging dropout rate from the workforce portend for America’s future?

Disproportionately, the dropouts are young, black, Hispanic, female, working class. Some have gone home to live with their parents and may have re-enrolled in school to re-enter the job market better prepared. But other indices are troubling.

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Posted in Employment, Entitlements, Pat Buchanan

April 10, 2013

Where Have All the Workers Gone? by Patrick J. Buchanan

Posted on April 10, 2013 by ifnm| Leave a comment

With the Baby Boomers going on Social Security and Medicare at a rate of 300,000 a month, and scores or hundreds of thousands going on disability rolls and quitting the labor force every month, what kind of future are we looking at?

That America created only 88,000 jobs in March, less than half the number anticipated, was jolting news, indicating the recovery that the White House has boasted about may not be at hand.

But in that March jobs report, there was more disturbing news. While unemployment fell to 7.6 percent, the reason it fell is alarming.

Half a million U.S. workers (495,000) disappeared from the labor force. They dropped out. They are no longer even looking for a job.

Worse, this appears to be an inexorable trend. The participation rate of eligible workers in the United States has fallen to 63.3 percent, a level unseen since Jimmy Carter gave his malaise speech in 1979.

These folks, who have quit working and quit looking, who are they? How do they support themselves? What does this surging dropout rate from the workforce portend for America’s future?

Disproportionately, the dropouts are young, black, Hispanic, female, working class. Some have gone home to live with their parents and may have re-enrolled in school to re-enter the job market better prepared. But other indices are troubling.

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Posted in Employment, Entitlements, Pat Buchanan

April 6, 2013

Immigration bill would import 1 million workers per year

Posted on April 6, 2013 by ifnm| Leave a comment

Amid the stalled economy, college graduates comprise roughly one-third of the minimum-wage workforce. Half of recent graduates are working in jobs sought by high-school graduates and dropouts, and roughly 20 million skilled and unskilled Americans lack full-time jobs.

The Senate’s draft immigration bill will provide 1 million visas for foreign workers each year, according to government data and news reports.

The 1 million inflow would provide companies with almost one foreign worker for every four Americans who turn 18.

The inflow would be high enough to fill up all the new non-farm jobs created during the last six months, and it is in addition to the routine annual inflow of 540,000 working-age immigrants.

The 1 million worker inflow would include at least 350,000 people capable of competing for middle-class skilled jobs sought by the 1.8 million Americans who graduate from university each year. Only about 10 percent of the visa workers are farm workers.

“I believe in a free-market, but this [inflow] will aggravate the problems for [American] graduates,” Richard Vedder, director of the libertarian Center for College Affordability and Productivity, told The Daily Caller.

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Posted in Economy and Debt, Employment, Immigration

April 5, 2013

City Recruits Minority Lifeguards Even if They Can’t Swim

Posted on April 5, 2013 by ifnm| Leave a comment

Though this is a local effort in one city, it’s also part of a national trend to boost the minority workforce at whatever cost. Under President Obama we have seen a lot of this at the federal level through a variety of specially-designed government programs that give ethnic minorities special treatment at all federal agencies as well as medical and agricultural fields, among others.

In a staggering case of affirmative action gone wild, officials in a major U.S. city are actually recruiting minorities to be lifeguards at public pools even if they’re not good swimmers. It’s all in the name of diversity.

You can’t make this stuff up. It’s a real-life story out of Phoenix, the capitol of Arizona and the nation’s sixth-largest city. It has more than 1.4 million residents and, among its official mottos is “value and respect” of diversity. This means “more than gender and race,” according to the city’s official website. It also encompasses “uniqueness and individuality” and embracing differences. “We put this belief into action to provide effective services to our diverse community.”

Evidently officials are willing to compromise those “effective services” at 29 public swimming pools spread throughout the city. To diversify the lifeguard force, Phoenix will spend thousands of dollars to recruit minorities even if they’re not strong swimmers, according to an official quoted in a news report. Blacks, Latinos and Asians who may not necessarily qualify can still get hired, says the city official who adds that “we will work with you in your swimming abilities.”

There’s a good reason the city is hiring lifeguards that can’t swim. Public pools are largely used by Latino and African-American kids, but most of the lifeguards are white and this creates a huge problem. “The kids in the pool are all either Hispanic or black or whatever, and every lifeguard is white and we don’t like that,” says a Phoenix official quoted in the story. She added that “the kids don’t relate; there’s language issues.”

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Posted in Affirmative Action, Democrats/Progressives, Employment, Multiculturalism, Obama, Radicals

April 3, 2013

Sen. Graham helps import Jamaicans for work at elite country club

Posted on April 3, 2013 by ifnm| Leave a comment

In exchange for easing the import of foreign workers Graham received greater support from the business community, including political donations from Kiawah’s manager and owner.

The 2012 PGA golf championship showcased the green links, yellow sands and blue skies at the beachside Kiawah country club in South Carolina.

But it also exposed the political maneuvering that annually brings about 170 low-wage black workers from Jamaica into South Carolina for temporary jobs that could otherwise have gone to local South Carolina workers.

Those low-wage workers helped the club’s financial returns, and indirectly, also helped South Carolina’s Sen. Lindsey Graham, who has long pushed for an immigration rewrite that would import more low-wage foreign workers.

In February, Graham told a Rotary Club lunch in Easley, S.C., that he helped get H-2B guest-worker visas for the country club’s 2012 season.

“Graham said the Kiawah Golf Club advertised for 600-700 service positions in advance of hosting the PGA,” said a report by the South Carolina website Easley.Patch.com.

“They got 9 [American] applicants for these jobs,” Graham said. “Three of them failed the drug test. They ran out of visas … I had to go to beg the Department of Labor to give them a waiver so they could get people from Jamaica to come in here and service the PGA.”

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Posted in Employment, Immigration, Radicals, Republicans/Neo-Cons

April 1, 2013

Labor, big business agree on key part of immigration reform, but final deal still faces hurdles

Posted on April 1, 2013 by ifnm| Leave a comment

The AFL-CIO and the Chamber had been fighting over wages for tens of thousands of low-skilled workers who would be brought in under the new program to fill jobs in construction, hotels and resorts, nursing homes and restaurants and other industries.


March 27, 2013: In this photo on the Twitter account of Ariz. GOP Sen. John McCain, he and Sen. Charles Schumer, D-N.Y., left, stand with U.S. Border Patrol agents in Nogales, Ariz.

Organized labor and big business have reached a deal on a new, low-skilled workers program that will help clear the way for Capitol Hill immigration reform, but President Obama and a leading Republican senator maintain cautious optimism about a final deal.

The deal was reached during a Friday night phone call between AFL-CIO President Richard Trumka and U.S. Chamber of Commerce chief executive Tom Donohue, according to several news organizations and confirmed by Fox News.

The deal was brokered by New York Democratic Sen. Chuck Schumer, who also was on the phone call and is one of eight senators working on bipartisan reform legislation.

“This issue has always been the dealbreaker on immigration reform, but not this time,” Schumer said.

“The strength of the consensus across America for just reform has afforded us the momentum needed to forge an agreement in principle to develop a new type of employer visa system,” Trumka said in a statement late Saturday. “We expect that this new program, which benefits not just business, but everyone, will promote long overdue reforms by raising the bar for existing programs.”

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Posted in Amnesty, Business, Employment, Immigration, Unions

March 31, 2013

American labor takes an ‘amnesty’ hit

Posted on March 31, 2013 by ifnm| Leave a comment

Now, more Americans are treading water in the very part of the job market that is most vulnerable to immigration. Given the current economic downturn, people with advanced degrees are searching out low-skilled, low-wage jobs. Increasing competition with low-skilled immigrants would further crowd the narrow avenues of subsistence.

Senate Republicans in the “Gang of Eight” have rejected straightforward language, suggested by labor advocates as part of an amnesty proposal, that would have had visas issued “only when the employment of foreign workers will not adversely affect the wages and working conditions of similarly situated workers in the United States.”

The visas at issue largely concern low-skilled workers, and some scholars say rejecting the idea amounts to a betrayal of American working people.

Professor Vernon Briggs, a Cornell labor economist, tells WND that “[a]mnesty for illegal immigrants sanctions the overt violation all of the nation’s worker protection laws.”

Briggs, who focuses on the economic impact of immigration, argues that, “[t]he toleration of illegal immigration undermines all of our labor. It rips at the social fabric. It’s a race to the bottom.”

This downward pressure on wages operates in tandem with an upward pressure on social services and welfare spending, critics complain.

“Assimilating into the welfare system,” according to Harvard economist George Borjas, is too often the trend.

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Posted in Amnesty, Economy and Debt, Employment, Immigration

March 30, 2013

MPs want immigrant ban to save British jobs

Posted on March 30, 2013 by ifnm| Leave a comment

Britain should be able to block immigration from other EU countries during the current period of high unemployment, according to a group of influential MPs.


The joint chairmen of the cross party group on balanced migration say that David Cameron must do more to tackle “the elephant in the room” by restricting European immigration

In an article for The Telegraph, the joint chairmen of the cross party group on balanced migration, Frank Field, a former Labour minister, and Nicholas Soames, a former Conservative minister, say that David Cameron must do more to tackle “the elephant in the room” by restricting European immigration.

The MPs, two of the most influential politicians in the immigration debate, suggest that draconian action should now be considered “during periods of high unemployment” — such as now — to protect low-skilled British workers struggling to compete with foreigners for jobs.

One in five young British workers is currently unemployed, with about one million people aged 18 to 24 out of work.

The MPs say that Britain is still facing an influx of people at an “unsustainable level” despite Coalition action to reduce immigration.

They add that the expected wave of immigration from Bulgaria and Romania — which could lead to 50,000 people a year moving to this country from next year — means that the need to tackle the issue “could not be more stark.”

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Posted in Economy and Debt, Employment, Europe, Immigration, Law & Courts

March 28, 2013

California’s $68B rail project will hire the ‘disadvantaged’ — like felons and dropouts

Posted on March 28, 2013 by ifnm| Leave a comment

“There’s another chapter in the high-speed fail saga, and I almost can’t do this one with a straight face,” Assemblyman Brian Jones, R-Santee, said in a recent video series in which he shares political frustrations. “What a social engineering disaster this is going to be, and add to California’s laughingstock reputation.”

What do high school dropouts, convicted felons and union apprentices have in common?

They’re all “disadvantaged” workers who — alongside veterans, former foster children and single parents — must account for at least 10 percent of the labor force behind California’s $68 billion high-speed rail project. By 2029, the state’s High-Speed Rail Authority hopes to send commuters hurtling at 200 mph between San Francisco and Los Angeles. The 800-mile system with up to 24 stations will eventually extend to Sacramento and San Diego, but some critics — and even former proponents of the megaproject — are now questioning its viability.

Randal O’Toole, a senior fellow at Cato Institute, a Washington-based think tank, said his biggest concern is not the unconventional workforce demand, but that the electrically-powered train system is really a “political project” aimed at fattening the wallets of well-connected unions, contractors, engineers and associated firms.

“There’s a lot of money to be made out of building this and the whole goal of high-speed rail is to make that money, to transfer money from taxpayers into the pockets of selected supporters of the Obama administration,” O’Toole told FoxNews.com. “It always comes back to politics.”

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Posted in Affirmative Action, California Story, Employment, Government