Tuesday, August 20, 2013

New Jobs? 97 percent are Part Time

This is how it goes.  New jobs are created and the public remains happy and live in a delusion.  The thing that no one really thinks about is what "type" of jobs are created.  Are they the union high paying manufacturing jobs?  No.  Are they lawyer jobs or accounting jobs or nursing and teaching jobs?  The answer is plain no, no, (shaking the head) NO!

They are the run of the mill retail, restaurants, staffing agencies, and home health care type of jobs.  Yep!  Going to college does not pay off any longer.  In my area, the HR departments are telling me that for every job they post there are around 450 applicants applying.  The problem with the wonderful "new jobs" is that they are the low paying wage jobs and the part time jobs.  You know, the ones that no one can really live on.  The ones where the workers will need food stamps, medical assistance, housing subsidies, and other welfare services.

Of course the major companies would rather hire 40 part time workers than 20 full time workers and need to pay benefits when the government will pick up the bill instead!  That makes the CEO's really happy.  Please search for my previous articles and research on the great WalMart and their corporate model.

A recent study reveals that 97 percent of these "new jobs" in the past 6 months are part time, low wage jobs.  That is not good news and that is not growth.  It only makes our country poorer than it already is.  (Please read a recent post on "Drastic Growth In Extreme Poverty in the U.S.")  Currently there are 8.2 million workers who are part time.  Not because they want to work part time, but because they cannot find full time work. US employers added 162,000 nonfarm jobs in July according to the government's Establishment Data Survey.   "Over the last six months, of the net job creation, 97 percent of that is part-time work," said Keith Hall, a senior researcher at George Mason University's Mercatus Center quoted by McClatchy Washington Bureau.  Hall was head of the US Bureau of Labor Statistics from 2008 to 2012.

61% of the jobs created this year are from the low paying industries. For those who cannot find full time sustainable work and are basically forced into part time work suffer higher depression, increased health problems due to the depression and lack of a balanced and healthy diet.  Many of the workers must dip into their retirement plans, sell their homes or their cars just to survive.

These folks are out there and nothing has changed or gotten any better.

The only difference is that our wonderful media does not make a sound about the realities of the state of our country.  Maybe it is because of the fear from all the arrests made on "whistleblowers" who dare to tell the truth.  Maybe they will get fired from their journalism jobs is they inform the public like they should.


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