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APRIL 2004
WHERE ARE THE JOBS?
by Rick S. Bender, President of the Washington State Labor Council, AFL-CIO

Our unemployment rate has been dropping for the last couple of months.  Normally, we’d rejoice at that statistical report because it would signal that unemployed people were going back to work. But the statistics hide some ominous news.

What’s really happening is that thousands of workers are dropping out of the labor force. In February, nearly 400,000 people left the civilian work force.  Indeed our labor-force participation has fallen to a 15-year low. People are giving up hope of finding a decent job.

For the last two years, economists have been telling us we’re enjoying an economic recovery. But it’s a jobless, joyless recovery. The Bush administration advises us to be patient promising the recovery will eventually create new jobs. Economists take a longer view than folks who live from paycheck to paycheck. But as that renowned economist John Maynard Keynes once said, “In the long run, we’re all dead.”

Overall, we’ve lost 2.9 million private-sector jobs since President Bush took office. Not since Herbert Hoover and the Great Depression has a U.S. president ended a four-year term with a net loss of jobs. In February, the economy created an anemic 21,000 jobs in the entire country. Economists say a healthy economy would produce 200,000 new jobs.

Compounding the problem: The few jobs that are being created are lower quality jobs, with fewer benefits and lower wages. Indeed a recent report by the Economic Policy Institute documents a nationwide shift from high-paying manufacturing and high-tech jobs to low-paying service sector jobs in retail sales and tourism. On average, each new job paid 21 percent less than each lost job. This is a most troublesome trend.

Competing with countries that pay computer programmers, radiologists and engineers one tenth what we pay here in the USA is creating a race to the bottom. That’s a losing game. Lower wages mean a lower standard of living for Americans. If two-thirds of our economy is based on consumer spending, just who in the hell is going to be able to afford to buy a new car, a new refrigerator or even a college education?

Ever since the North American Free Trade Agreement was adopted, job retraining has been the conventional answer to the problem of job dislocation and unemployment for American workers.  Retraining has helped thousands of workers return to productive work lives. But I suggest it is time to reassess the fundamental shift going on in our economy.

Highly skilled, highly trained high tech workers are seeing their jobs outsourced to India and China.  If medical X-rays and MRIs can be read by a radiologist in India or China, why re-train workers to become highly skilled medical technicians here? As the chair of the Bush Administration’s Council of Economic Advisors says, “Outsourcing is just a new way of doing international trade.”  That kind of attitude is why we have a such a stagnant job picture.

The Bush Administration just doesn’t seem to care about creating good, stable family-wage jobs for Americans. Indeed the Bush Administration has opposed restoring federal emergency unemployment insurance, even though the percentage of jobless workers who have endured long-term unemployment is at its highest rate in a decade. They keep saying the job picture will turn around soon. They’ve said that for more than a year.

I’ve lost patience with this stubborn refusal to face reality.  We need good jobs for American workers -- NOW!

Rick Bender is President of the Washington State Labor Council, AFL-CIO,
the largest labor organization in the state.

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Copyright © 2004  Washington State Labor Council, AFL-CIO