Vol. 79/No. 42      November 23, 2015

 

Gov’t says ‘recovery’ as layoffs high, wages low

 
 
Both Wall Street and Washington are crowing over government reports of new hiring, nearly “normal” official unemployment and a small uptick in wages, while workers in the U.S. continue to suffer from the twin ravages of a new contraction in manufacturing within ongoing grinding depression conditions. “U.S. Hiring Surges,” wrote the Wall Street Journal after the Labor Department released October employment data reporting nonfarm payrolls rose by a seasonally adjusted 271,000 jobs.

Average hourly wages of private-sector workers increased by nine cents, a 2.5 percent rise, the Labor Department said, up from the 2 percent average of the last six years.

The reality of life for working people, however, is in sharp contrast to the government’s doctored statistics. In 1994 then-President William Clinton simply erased millions of jobless workers by adjusting unemployment figures to discount “discouraged” workers having the hardest time finding a job.

“The collapse in oil prices has so far claimed more than 200,000 jobs worldwide,” reported Forbes Oct. 22. Some 5,000 coal miners have lost their jobs in the last four years in West Virginia and Kentucky. Kraft Heinz announced Nov. 4 it would close seven factories and lay off some 2,600 workers. The same day container shipping giant Maersk said it would cut 4,000 of its 23,000 land-based staff. New orders for U.S. factories fell for the second straight month in September.

Conditions are worse for workers who are Black, Latino, Asian and female. Women workers are paid less for equal work in all industries and at every level, according to a Nov. 5 report released by PayScale Inc. The unemployment rate for workers who are Black is almost double that of workers who are Caucasian. In Ohio and Illinois — central industrial states — it’s 3.3 times higher.

The labor force participation rate — the portion of the working-age population that is employed — remained at 62.4 percent, a 38-year low. “This disappearance of several million workers — as labor force dropouts they are not factored into the jobless rate — has meant continued labor market weakness,” wrote New York Times reporter Steven Greenhouse in an Oct. 31 article titled “The Mystery of the Vanishing Pay Raise.”

In the 2008 financial crash and sharp contraction of capitalist production and trade that ensued, a portion of the working class was pushed out of employment and hasn’t found jobs in the “recovery” that followed.

The capitalist crisis is tightening worldwide. From a slowdown in China to economic implosion in Brazil and other so-called emerging markets to steep declines in steel, coal, oil and other basic industries in the U.S.

“Amid the global economic turmoil and seesawing markets, millions of Americans have one overriding question: When will my pay increase arrive?” wrote Greenhouse. “The nation’s unemployment rate has fallen substantially since the end of the Great Recession … but wages haven’t accelerated upward, as many had expected.”

Most bosses have stymied wage increases, cut jobs and pushed more work on the backs of fewer workers, gutting safety on the job.

Another part of the picture, Greenhouse said, is the increasing replacement of full-time jobs with “temps, subcontractors, part-timers and on-call workers.”

“Labor unions have lost considerable muscle,” he noted, but among lowest-paid workers something new is happening. “Notwithstanding the overall decline in worker leverage, labor efforts like the Fight for 15 and Our Walmart have succeeded in pushing employers to lift some wages,” Greenhouse wrote.  
 
 
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