More about the Labor Department report

Not only did the December report show an anemic gain in jobs (1,000), it also revised downward the previous month's job growth, from 57,000 to 43,000. (Bear in mind that Bush told us in April 2003 that his tax cuts would cause the creation of 306,000 new jobs per month!).

So over the last two months of "recovery" we've gained a total of 44,000 jobs, far below the number of new entrants into the labor force by reason of our population growth. We are therefore suffering a steep net loss in the ratio of jobs to workers, not gaining at all. And yet the unemployment rate declined to 5.7%, showing how inaccurate that measurement truly is. The sites I linked to below show this, as does the exlanation that the Whisky Bar provides here.

To add insult to insult, the jobs that are being created aren't in the lucrative fields of high-tech and manufactuing, which are showing net losses each month, but in the service sectors (food delivery and such) and in temporary jobs, both of which are notoriously low paying and insecure.

As a result of this report, the analysts predict that the Fed will leave interest rates at their present record low level, to continue to spur the economy. But of course that will cause a further weakening of the dollar, which will inevitably drive up the price we have to pay for imports, such as Japanese cars and TV sets, so that US consumers will face higher prices with less money. But business will benefit because the weak dollar will open the export market to them since their dollar-priced products will be cheaper abroad. And now Bush, with his "immigration reform" notion, wants to re-institute the Bracero program, the evil system that Congress finally discontinued after years of allegations of enslavement of Latin Americans in back-breaking, physical toil.

If this isn't greed-driven exploitation of the masses in favor of corporate wealth, I don't know what is.