Reprinted from Paul Craig Roberts Website
May 8. Today's payroll jobs report is more of the same. The Bureau of Labor Statistics claims that 223,000 new jobs were created in April. Let's accept the claim and see where the jobs are.
Specialty trade contractors are credited with 41,000 jobs equally split between residential and nonresidential. I believe these are home and building repairs and remodeling.
The rest of the jobs, 182,000, are in domestic services.
Despite store closings and weak retail sales, 12,000 people were hired in retail trade.
Despite negative first quarter GDP growth, 62,000 people were hired in professional and business services, 67% of which are in administrative and waste services.
Health care and social assistance accounted for 55,600 jobs of which ambulatory health care services, hospitals, and social assistance accounted for 85% of the jobs.
Waitresses and bartenders account for 26,000 jobs, and government employed 10,000 new workers.
There are no jobs in manufacturing.
Mining, timber, oil and gas extraction lost jobs.
Temporary help services (16,100 jobs) offered 3.7 times more jobs than law, accounting architecture, and engineering combined (4,500 jobs).
As I have pointed out for a number of years, according to the payroll jobs reports, the complexion of the US labor force is that of a Third World country. Most of the jobs created are lowly paid domestic services.
The well-paying high productivity, high value-added jobs have been offshored and given to foreigners who work for less. This fact, more than the reduction in marginal income tax rates, is the reason for the rising inequality in the distribution of income and wealth.
Offshoring middle-class jobs raises corporate profits and, thereby, the incomes of corporate owners (shareholders) and executives. But it reduces the incomes of the majority of the population who are forced into either lowly paid and part-time jobs or unemployment.
The extraordinary decline in the labor force participation rate indicates shrinking opportunities for the American labor force. No economist should ever have accepted the claim that the economy was in recovery while participation in the labor force was declining.
The officially documented decline in the labor force participation rate casts additional doubt on the claimed increases in payroll jobs. If jobs are growing, the labor force participation rate should not be declining.
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