Skip to content

Jobs

Workers’ Wages Rebound From Pandemics But Not For Blacks

While wages for many Americans have rebounded to pre-pandemic levels, earnings for Black workers declined in the first quarter of 2021, growing the wage gap to its highest level since before the pandemic, according to a new analysis. In a report of earnings data by the Ludwig Institute for Shared Economic Prosperity (LISEP) real median earnings have increased by 1 percent for the first quarter of 2021, driven in large part by a 1.6 percent increase in real earnings by Hispanic workers, while real earnings for white workers remained virtually unchanged. Wages for white earners have fully recovered to pre-pandemic levels and are currently 0.3 percent higher in real terms than in December 2019.

The End Of Development

When I was in high school, my economics class read The End of Poverty by Jeffrey Sachs. The book is a passionate appeal to help those living in the worst poverty in the world. Sachs writes that we should not worry too much about the people in second-to-last place, such as the poorly paid workers in labor-intensive industries who were then the focus of considerable debate and activism on U.S. college campuses. Sweatshop workers, Sachs conceded, were on the bottom rung of the ladder. But subsistence farmers were not on the ladder at all. Once we helped them get a foothold, they could begin ascending from textiles all the way up to high tech. I internalized Sachs’s argument, sensing it would help me feel better about the world we live in.

Building Or Unbuilding America?

During the Trump years, the phrase “Infrastructure Week” rang out as a sort of Groundhog Day-style punchline. What began in June 2017 as a failed effort by The Donald’s White House and a Republican Senate to focus on the desperately needed rebuilding of American infrastructure morphed into a meme and a running joke in Washington. Despite the focus in recent years on President Trump’s failure to do anything for the country’s crumbling infrastructure, here’s a sad reality: considered over a longer period of time, Washington’s political failure to fund the repairing, modernizing, or in some cases simply the building of that national infrastructure has proven a remarkably bipartisan “effort.”

The Actual Effects Of Enhanced Unemployment Benefits

No matter how hard they search, unemployed workers can’t find jobs that don’t exist. The major cause of today’s high unemployment is the lack of jobs, not workers who have stopped searching for work and have left jobs unfilled. By the end of July, there were still 11.1 million fewer jobs in the U.S. economy than there had been prior to the pandemic in January 2020. Renewing the FPUC supplemental unemployment benefits would boost spending and create jobs. Economist Mark Zandi from Moody’s Analytics estimates that $1 of renewed unemployment benefits would increase economic output by $1.64...

New Jobs Report Consistent With Weak Economy

Weaker-than-expected job growth in September sent a signal that the sharp economic recovery off the coronavirus shutdown may be hitting a wall. The Labor Department reported Friday that nonfarm payrolls increased by 661,000 in September, held back by declines in government employment and an exodus of workers from the labor force. In normal times, that type of hiring pace would be considered a sign of a robust job market. The total, in fact, would have been the best month the U.S. had seen since 1983 – if these were normal times and not amid the Covid-19 era that has changed the benchmarks by which economic data is measured.

Consequences Of Inadequate Action By Congress

Without federal aid to state and local governments, millions of jobs in the public sector will be lost by the end of 2021, severely impacting Black workers, women, and veterans, who are disproportionately employed in these jobs. Additional jobs will be lost—in both the private and public sectors—if Congress fails to reinstate the $600 weekly unemployment benefit that expired last week. EPI experts weigh in on what could happen if Congress fails to act to prevent further economic shock. (1) The coronavirus shock was historically large—and the bounceback has already likely stalled. (2) UI claims and GDP growth are historically bad, (3) State and local governments have lost 1.5 million jobs since February, and (4) The Senate’s failure to act on federal aid to state and local governments jeopardizes veterans’ jobs.

There Can Be No Equality Without Employment Opportunity For All

The employment opportunity that privileged the white male was much more than a job. By the 1960s, growing numbers of white men had employment that gave them steadily rising real earnings, often with decades of tenure at one organization. The “career-with-one-company” (CWOC) that had become the employment norm by the beginning of the 1960s included health insurance and a defined-benefit pension, both funded by the employee’s business corporation or government agency. This white-man’s world constituted the foundation for the “vast ocean of material prosperity” to which Dr. King referred.

‘Misclassification Error’ Is Making Unemployment Rate Look Lower Than It Really Is

Buried at the bottom of the Bureau of Labor Statistics' May jobs report—which President Donald Trump and Republican lawmakers touted Friday as evidence that the U.S. economy is rebounding from the Covid-19 crisis at an extraordinary clip—is a note conceding that a "misclassification error" during the agency's data-collection process made the unemployment rate look significantly lower than it really is. BLS, a Labor Department agency staffed with more than 2,000 career officials, admitted at the end of its report that "a large number of workers... were classified as employed but absent from work." Those workers, the agency explained, should have been classified as "unemployed on temporary layoff" by household survey interviewers but were not.

The War Industry Threatens Humanity

I’m adding Christian Sorensen’s new book, Understanding the War Industry, to the list of books I think will convince you to help abolish war and militaries. See the list below. Wars are driven by many factors. They do not include protection, defense, benevolence, or public service. They do include inertia, political calculation, lust for power, and sadism — facilitated by xenophobia and racism. But the top driving force behind wars is the war industry, the all-consuming greed for the all-mighty dollar. It drives government budgets, war rehearsals, arms races, weapons shows, and fly-overs by military jets supposedly honoring people who are working to preserve life. If it could maximize profits without any actual wars, the war industry wouldn’t care.

Low-Balling The Unemployed In The 2020 Economic Collapse

This past Friday, May 8, the US Labor Dept. released its latest jobless figures. The official report was 20 million more unemployed and an unemployment rate of 14.7%. Both mainstream and progressive media reported the numbers: 20 million more jobless and 14.7%. But those numbers, as horrendous as they are, represent a gross under-estimation of the jobless situation in America! One might understand why the mainstream media consistently under-reports the jobless. But it is perplexing why so many progressives continue to simply parrot the official figures. Especially when other Labor Dept. data admits the true unemployment rate is 22.4% and the officially total unemployed is 23.1 million. Here’s why the 20 million and 14.7% is a gross under-representation of the magnitude of jobless today:

How Accurate Are The US Jobs Numbers?

While the Current Establishment Survey (CES) Report (covering large businesses) shows 263,000 jobs created last month, the Current Population Survey (CPS) second Labor Dept. report (that covers smaller businesses) shows 155,000 of these jobs were involuntary part time. This high proportion (155,000 of 263,000) suggests the job creation number is likely second and third jobs being created. Nor does it reflect actual new workers being newly employed. The number is for new jobs, not newly employed workers. Moreover, it’s mostly part time and temp or low paid jobs, likely workers taking on second and third jobs.

Growing Despair Amidst Insecure Economic Recovery

It’s now almost a decade since the last fiscal crisis, launching what was dubbed the “Great Recession.”  It wreaked havoc on the U.S. banking system and the housing market, leaving millions of Americans is desperate free-fall.  While many conventional economic indicators suggest that the economy has rebounded, a significant portion of the American public feel stuck, their futures looking bleak. On August 6th, Pres. Trump tweeted, “Great financial numbers being announced on an almost daily basis. Economy has never been better, jobs at best point in history.”

Real US Wages Are Essentially Back At 1974 Levels, Pew Reports

On the face of it, these should be heady times for American workers. U.S. unemployment is as low as it’s been in nearly two decades (3.9% as of July) and the nation’s private-sector employers have been adding jobs for 101 straight months – 19.5 million since the Great Recession-related cuts finally abated in early 2010, and 1.5 million just since the beginning of the year. But despite the strong labor market, wage growth has lagged economists’ expectations. In fact, despite some ups and downs over the past several decades, today’s real average wage (that is, the wage after accounting for inflation) has about the same purchasing power it did 40 years ago.

Imagining A World With No Bullshit Jobs

In this interview about his latest book, David Graeber discusses the role of unions, the challenges posed by automation and “the revolt of the caring classes.” Is your job pointless? Do you feel that your position could be eliminated and everything would continue on just fine? Maybe, you think, society would even be a little better off if your job never existed? If your answer to these questions is “yes,” then take solace. You are not alone. As much as half the work that the working population engages in every day could be considered pointless, says David Graeber, Professor of Anthropology at the London School of Economics and author of Bullshit Jobs: A Theory.

Immigrants Create Jobs for US Workers, Boost the U.S. Employment Rate

When immigrants bring their skills to the U.S. labor market, everyone—immigrants and native-born workers alike—benefit from their company. Research has repeatedly shown that native-born workers are advantaged by the presence of immigrant workers in the labor market. A new report from the National Foundation for American Policy (NFAP) adds to this growing body of research. Specifically, the report finds that immigrants have no negative effect on the unemployment rate or labor force participation rate of native-born Americans. The presence of more immigrants in the labor force is associated with a small but undeniable increase in the labor force participation rate of natives, NFAP concludes. Likewise, more immigrant workers correspond with a small decline in the unemployment rate of the native-born.
assetto corsa mods

Urgent End Of Year Fundraising Campaign

Online donations are back! Keep independent media alive. 

Due to the attacks on our fiscal sponsor, we were unable to raise funds online for nearly two years.  As the bills pile up, your help is needed now to cover the monthly costs of operating Popular Resistance.

Urgent End Of Year Fundraising Campaign

Online donations are back! 

Keep independent media alive. 

Due to the attacks on our fiscal sponsor, we were unable to raise funds online for nearly two years.  As the bills pile up, your help is needed now to cover the monthly costs of operating Popular Resistance.

Sign Up To Our Daily Digest

Independent media outlets are being suppressed and dropped by corporations like Google, Facebook and Twitter. Sign up for our daily email digest before it’s too late so you don’t miss the latest movement news.