Thursday, March 31, 2016

AMERICA IN ECONOMIC MELTDOWN: Boeing to slash 4,000-8,000 jobs - STILL THE JOBS GO TO FOREIGNERS!


RICH, CRONY BANKSTERS, AND  
ILLEGALS.... cash in on speech fee bribes for 
services well rendered to the 1%.



New study says entire regions of US will 
remain in slump until the 2020s

New study says entire regions of US will remain in slump until the 2020s

By Jerry White
21 March 2016
A new study by a University of California-Berkeley economist says that at current sluggish levels of job growth, entire regions of the United States, which were hit hardest by the Great Recession will not return to “normal” employment levels until the 2020s. This amounts, to “more than a ‘lost decade’ of depressed employment” for “half of the country,” wrote economist Danny Yagan.

The new study is one of many showing that the fall of the official unemployment rate, touted by the Obama administration and the news media as proof of a robust economic recovery, if not a return to “full employment,” is largely based on the fact that millions of workers fell out of the labor force in the years preceding and following the 2008 financial crash.

The labor-force participation rate fell to a 38-year low of 62.4 percent last fall, and only climbed up to 62.9 percent in February. According to the Economic Policy Institute, February’s official jobless rate of 4.9 percent—the lowest since the pre-recession level of 4.7 percent in November 2007—would really be 6.3 percent if the country’s “missing workers” were included. These include 2.4 million workers who have given up actively looking for work.

Yagan based his findings on a detailed study of some 2 million, similarly paid workers in the retail industry in order to calculate employment patterns across different local areas and to account for occupations that might have been particularly hard hit in one region.

He found that the areas hardest hit by the recession, which began in December 2007 and officially ended in June 2009, continued to have high levels of joblessness in 2014. His map of these distressed areas includes all of Florida and parts of Arizona, Nevada, California, Colorado, New Mexico, the Dakotas, Michigan, Indiana, Ohio, Georgia, Connecticut, New Hampshire and other states.

While different areas of the country are often hit differently by an economic downturn, an article in the Wall Street Journal on Yagan’s study noted, these economically distressed areas generally return to normal levels of employment chiefly because workers move to find work in areas with a higher demand for labor. In the case of the “Great Recession,” however, the mass layoffs resulted in “muted migration,” according to other studies cited by the Journal, and workers simply fell out of the labor market.
“Unlike the aftermath of the 1980s and 1990s recessions,” Yagan wrote, “employment in hard-hit areas remains very depressed relative to the rest of the country.” Living in areas like Phoenix, Arizona, or Las Vegas, Nevada means confronting “enduring joblessness and exacerbated inequality,” Yagan wrote. “If the latest convergence speed continues, employment differences across the United States are estimated to return to normal in the 2020s—more than a decade after the Great Recession.”
The lack of decent job opportunities in large swathes of the country has created a reserve army of unemployed and underemployed workers who are competing for a shrinking number of jobs in areas that are more or less permanently distressed. Last month’s Labor Department employment report noted that the average annual unemployment rate in 36 states, plus Washington, D.C. was higher in 2015 than the average unemployment rate for those states in 2007.

The majority of unemployed people in the US do not receive unemployment insurance benefits, according to the National Employment Law Project, with just over one in four jobless workers (27 percent), a record low, receiving such benefits in 2015.

The details of these studies will come as no surprise for tens of millions of workers across the United States who face unprecedented levels of economic insecurity, ongoing mass layoffs, and more than a decade of stagnating or falling real wages. This has fueled the growth of enormous discontent and the initial stirrings of class struggle by American workers, which the trade unions and both big business parties have sought to channel in the direction of economic nationalism and hostility to workers in China, Mexico and other countries.

In fact, US workers are being subjected to the same attacks as workers around the world. The reports on the employment situation in the US coincide with a continual massacre of jobs in the world’s steel, oil and mining industries, with 1.2 million steel and coal mining jobs targeted for destruction in China alone.

Continual layoffs in the US have been driven by the plunging price of steel, petroleum, coal and other commodities, which has been generated in large measure by the fall in demand from China and other so-called emerging economies. Last week, St. Louis, Missouri-based Peabody Energy, the largest coal mining company in the world, announced it could soon file for Chapter 11 bankruptcy, after its share values fell 46 percent over the last six months.

Peabody has already cut 20 percent of its global workforce since 2012, while spinning off large sections of its operations in order to cheat retirees out of their pensions. The company’s announcement follows bankruptcy filings by both Arch Coal and Alpha Natural Resources and a similar threat from coal mining giant Foresight Energy. In its press release, Peabody pointed to the collapse in the coal market, where the price per ton has fallen to $40 from $200 in 2008.

The steel industry continues to wipe out jobs, with 12,000 steelworkers already laid off or facing imminent job cuts. The largest US steelmaker, US Steel, has slashed thousands of jobs in Texas, Illinois, Ohio, Indiana and Pennsylvania. The aluminum giant Alcoa is just weeks away from closing its smelter in Warrick County, Indiana, wiping out another 600 jobs. Meanwhile, the United Steelworkers (USW) union is pushing for protectionist measures against China, Brazil, Russia and other countries, even as it pushes through concession-laden contracts at US Steel, Allegheny Technologies and now ArcelorMittal.

Early last year, the USW betrayed the strike by thousands of oil refinery workers, blocking any struggle against the brutal restructuring of the industry that is now underway. The plunging of oil prices triggered more than 258,000 layoffs in the global energy industry in 2015—with the number of active oil and gas rigs in the US falling 61 percent. Analysts anticipate a new round of job cuts and bankruptcies in early 2016.

Texas has lost 60,000 energy-related jobs alone, or one-fifth of the workforce in that sector in the state, with North Dakota and Pennsylvania also being hard hit. The current US unemployment rate for the oil, gas and mining sector is 8.5 percent, but could top 10 percent by February, double the national jobless rate.

Last month, the air conditioner maker Carrier announced it was eliminating 1,400 jobs at its Indianapolis plant and a nearby facility, and shipping production to Monterrey, Mexico where wages are approximately $6 an hour. A video shot by a worker, capturing the explosive anger at a meeting of plant workers when a manager makes the announcement, has been viewed millions of times.
Far from organizing any resistance to the closure of the factory and destruction of jobs, however, the USW is collaborating with United Technologies Carrier management to carry out an orderly shutdown and the retraining of displaced workers for lower-paying jobs.

The USW is hostile to any fight to unite American workers with their brothers and sisters in Mexico, who have been engaging in growing resistance to the exploitation by the transnational corporations. USW officials are telling workers to rely on the Democratic Party to implement protectionist trade measures to “save jobs” and “take our country back.” Local and regional union officials have had nothing but kind words about Donald Trump’s efforts to swindle workers with economic nationalist appeals.

The unions have long used economic nationalism to undermine the class-consciousness of workers and to promote the corporatist outlook of “labor-management partnership.” In the name of making the corporations “competitive,” the USW and other unions have suppressed every struggle against plant closings, job cuts and the destruction of wages and benefits.

This has coincided with the political subordination of workers to the Democratic Party, which under the Obama administration has spearheaded the attack on workers’ jobs and wages and the historic transfer of wealth from the bottom to the top.

USW Local 1999, which claims to represent Carrier workers, is urging them to support Democrat John Gregg for Indiana governor. A former land agent for Peabody Coal and lobbyist for Amax Coal Company, Gregg served as the honorary chair of Hillary Clinton’s 2008 campaign in Indiana, and was a proponent of austerity and corporate tax cuts while Speaker of the state Legislature.






Boeing to slash 4,000-8,000 jobs

BOEING LOOTS WASHINGTON STATE!

THE DEMOCRAT PARTY, LIKE THEIR CORPORATE PARTNERS, THE GOP, ARE GOOD AT HANDING WELFARE TO THEIR WALL STREET PAYMASTERS!


"In late 2013, the state government, headed by Democratic Governor Jay Inslee, approved an $8.7 billion tax break for the airplane manufacturer, the largest corporate tax abatement in US history. The legislation imposed no requirement on Boeing to maintain its current level of employment in the state."

Boeing to slash 4,000-8,000 jobs

By Barry Grey
31 March 2016
Citing an internal company document, the Seattle Times reported Wednesday that Boeing, the giant commercial and military airplane manufacturer, plans to slash 4,000 jobs at its Washington state-based commercial division by June, with an additional 4,000 job cuts likely to come by the end of 2016.

Boeing responded to the news report by acknowledging that it planned to slash about 4,000 jobs in its commercial airlines division by mid-year, and an additional 550 jobs in a unit that conducts flight and lab testing. However, it refused to confirm press reports that these cuts were only part of a planned 10 percent reduction at the division by year-end, which would bring the job reduction to 8,000 positions.
“There is no employment reduction target,” company spokesman Doug Alder said. “The more we can control costs as a whole, the less impact there will be to employment,” he added. The latter statement is intended to put pressure on workers to accept new concessions in the name of “saving jobs,” and provide the International Association of Machinists union (IAM) with ammunition to press its members for further give-backs.

The report sent shockwaves throughout the state, and particularly the Seattle region, where the bulk of the company’s commercial aircraft production is located. More than 9,000 Boeing jobs have been eliminated since 2012, after the IAM agreed to an extension of a sellout contract it imposed following a seven-week strike in 2008.

Boeing announced last month that it would begin trimming its work force, starting with executives and managers. Even so, the scale of the cuts announced Wednesday appeared to come as a surprise to the media, not to mention the public.

The job cuts at Boeing will impact hundreds of supplier firms and ripple through the economy of the state and the rest of the country. In Wichita, Kansas, one Boeing supply firm, Spirit AeroSystems, laid off 42 workers earlier this month after 265 IAM workers accepted voluntary retirement packages.
At the end of 2013 and beginning of 2014, the IAM responded to threats by Boeing to move production of its 777X commercial plane to a low-wage state unless it received sweeping labor concessions and huge tax cuts from the state government by ramming through an additional, eight-year contract extension. That agreement eliminated pensions for current employees, imposed higher health care costs, and slashed wage increases. It also extended a no-strike provision to 2022.
The extension was initially rejected by IAM District 751 members by a 2-to-1 margin. It was only narrowly passed in a revote ordered by the International union leadership and conducted over the Christmas vacation period.

In late 2013, the state government, headed by Democratic Governor Jay Inslee, approved an $8.7 billion tax break for the airplane manufacturer, the largest corporate tax abatement in US history. The legislation imposed no requirement on Boeing to maintain its current level of employment in the state.

Boeing is in the midst of its biggest peacetime boom in its 100-year history. In 2015, the company set records for both commercial deliveries, 762, and revenues, $96.1 billion. With the assistance of the IAM, it has dramatically increased the ratio of planes produced to the number of workers employed in their production.

It is now insisting, however, that new and even more sweeping cost-cutting measures are required to make it competitive with its main rival, European-based Airbus. The Seattle Times said it had obtained the transcript of an internal webcast from February in which Boeing Commercial Airlines CEO Ray Conner first informed workers that job cuts were coming.

Conner said the cuts were needed to “win the market, fund our growth and operate as a healthy business.” He focused on the struggle with Airbus for commercial airplane orders, arguing that labor costs had to be slashed in order to lower Boeing’s prices. “We’re being pushed to the wall,” he declared.

The company had said the cost-saving push “involves taking out billions of dollars in cost by the end of 2016.”

Boeing spokesman Adler said the 4,000 job cuts by June will include some 1,600 “voluntary layoffs” and 2,400 job losses through attrition. However, Boeing has broadly hinted that further job cuts this year would include involuntary layoffs.

The IAM has played a critical role in helping the company pit Boeing workers against their fellow workers at Airbus. The logic of its economic nationalist and corporatist policies is a race to the bottom, in which one section of workers competes with another for a dwindling pool of jobs by working harder and longer for lower wages and benefits.

Both the IAM and the Society of Professional Engineering Employees in Aerospace (SPEEA), the union for Boeing engineers and technical workers, reacted to the announcement of the job cuts with impotent appeals to the state legislature to bar the company from slashing jobs as part of its tax windfall.

IAM District 751 posted a statement on its Facebook page from the district president, Jon Holden, which merely said: “We have not been notified of these types of workforce reduction numbers. We continue to have concerns about work that has been moved outside of Washington state, which is why we focused so much energy on trying to get job number guarantees for the $8.7 billion in aerospace tax incentives that our citizens are paying.”

A spokesperson at the district office told the World Socialist Web Site that the union did not have any information about the job cuts, including whether they would impact its members. “We would hope that the company would inform us sooner rather than later,” she said.

The job cut announcement by Boeing is one of several major layoffs and closures that have been reported in recent days. The Boston Globe reported Tuesday that the Boston-based financial firm State Street Corp. plans to shrink its workforce by up to 7,000 workers by 2020. And Alcoa permanently closed a 56-year-old aluminum smelter in Warrick, Indiana on March 24, eliminating 325 jobs.

Layoffs are also taking place in the steel industry, and since January of last year, over 25,000 jobs in oil, gas and supporting industries have been wiped out as a result of the collapse in oil and commodity prices.


"More evidence that illegal immigrants are both taking jobs away from legal Americans and undercutting their wage bargaining power."



March 26, 2016

Study: Employment rate of illegal immigrant men far higher than for legal immigrants and natives

A new study by George Borjas from the John F. Kennedy School of Government at Harvard University reveals what many have long been concerned about when it comes to illegal immigration into the United States.
According to Borjas' paper, the "employment rate of undocumented men is 86.6%, as compared to 73.9% for natives and 77.8% for legal immigrants," and this gap has been widening since the mid-1990s.


The study shows that about 10% of all persons in their early 30s are undocumented. In addition, 23% of illegal immigrants live in California, 7% reside in New York, and 15% live in Texas.
Borjas reached the following conclusions:
Even after the regression exhaustively controls for... skill differences -- and adjusts for the possibility that economic conditions varied dramatically over time for each of the narrowly defined skill groups, as well as for the possibility that economic conditions varied dramatically among the different geographic regions where the three groups tend to settle -- it is still the case that the employment rate of immigrants, and particularly that of undocumented immigrant men, increased dramatically relative to that of native-born persons.
More evidence that illegal immigrants are both taking jobs away from legal Americans and undercutting their wage bargaining power.

Read more: http://www.americanthinker.com/blog/2016/03/study_employment_rate_of_illegal_immigrant_men_far_higher_than_for_legal_immigrants_and_natives.html#ixzz442MOR82B
Follow us: @AmericanThinker on Twitter | AmericanThinker on Facebook


US employment report: Payrolls rise, wages fall

By Barry Grey
5 March 2016
President Barack Obama seized on the February employment report, released Friday morning by the Labor Department, to tout the supposed “success” of his economic policies and paint a picture of a thriving US economy. The report, which showed a larger-than-predicted growth in private nonfarm payrolls of 242,000 jobs, confirmed that the US economy was “the envy of the world,” Obama told reporters at a White House appearance.

“The fact of the matter is that the plans that we have put in place to grow the economy have worked,” he boasted.” He derided “an alternative reality out there from some of the political folks that America is down in the dumps.” He countered, “America is pretty darn great right now.”

He did not attempt to explain why the “alternative reality,” which his labor secretary, Thomas Perez, attributed to “fear-mongers and fact-deniers,” is believed by tens of millions of Americans, whose anger over economic injustice is dramatically reflected in the current election campaign.

One does not have to look too closely at the Labor Department’s report, however, to get an idea of what is fueling the social indignation of working people in the eighth and final year of the Obama administration. Behind the top-line number for new jobs and the quasi-fictional official unemployment rate of only 4.9 percent, ongoing trends with disastrous consequences for the working class are evident. They account for two other important indices in the report: a decline in average earnings from the previous month of 3 cents, or 0.1 percent, to $25.35, bringing the increase for the year down to just 2.2 percent, and a fall in the average private-sector workweek of 0.2 hours to 34.4 hours, a two-year low.

These two figures arise from the fact that the vast bulk of new jobs created in February were low-wage and a huge percentage were part-time. The low-paying service sector—retail, bars and restaurants, health care—accounted for 245,000 jobs. The reality of recession in basic production was reflected in a 16,000 decline in manufacturing and the loss of another 19,000 mining jobs, bringing to 171,000 the total decline in mining since September 2014. The only better-paying industrial sector that saw an increase was construction, which recorded a gain of 19,000.

Another figure highlights the hollow and socially regressive character of Obama’s so-called “recovery.” The financial cable network CNBC pointed out that according to the Labor Department’s household survey, which is the basis for the unemployment rate figure (the figure on payroll growth is derived from a separate survey of business establishments), full-time jobs increased in February by only 65,000, while part-time positions increased by 489,000. This means that a mere 11.7 percent of new jobs in February were full-time!

These statistics point to the fact that the American ruling class, through its instrument, the Obama administration, has utilized the financial crash of 2008, for which it was responsible, to fundamentally reorganize the US economy, transforming it into a low-wage system. The millions of decent-paying jobs that were destroyed have been largely replaced by poverty-wage, part-time and temporary jobs.

The median household income has fallen sharply. Pensions and health benefits have been gutted, schools closed by the thousands, teachers and other public workers laid off by the millions. At the other end, the Federal Reserve and the US Treasury have pumped trillions of dollars into the financial markets, driving up the stock market and bringing the concentration of wealth at the very top to unprecedented levels. This is what Obama lauds as “success.”

Meanwhile, millions of Americans remain mired in long-term unemployment. The number of long-term unemployed, defined as without work for 27 weeks or more, was essentially unchanged at 2.2 million in February. This number has not shifted significantly since last June. The long-term jobless accounted last month for 27.7 percent of the unemployed, a far higher percentage than in any previous period categorized as an economic recovery.

A broader measure of unemployment that includes people working part-time but wanting full-time work and those too discouraged to seek employment registered 9.7 percent last month, nearly double the official jobless rate. There are, in addition, millions of people who have dropped out of the labor market and are not even counted in government employment reports.

While the employment-to-population ratio edged up to 59.8 percent and the labor force participation rate rose slightly to 62.9 percent, both measures remain extraordinarily low by historical standards.
The impact of soaring social inequality and falling living standards for broad sections of the population is reflected in a growing crisis in the retail sector. This week, sporting goods chain The Sports Authority filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection and announced it was closing at least 140 of its 463 stores and laying off 3,400 of its 13,000 employees. This follows recent announcements by Walmart, Sears/Kmart and Macy’s of hundreds of store closures and thousands of layoffs.

Hillary Clinton repeatedly claims that she is the champion of the little guy.  It has always been a risible claim, but if any of her supporters (including at the Post) are actually paying attention to the scoundrel, this latest gambit ought to disabuse them of the notion.  


California Democrats, unions announce deal on $15 minimum wage

OBAMA-CLINTONOMICS: TRANSFERRING THE ECONOMY TO THE RICHEST, KEEPING THE BORDERS WIDE OPEN TO FOR ENDLESS FLOODS OF ILLEGALS TO KEEP WAGES DEPRESSED AND ENDLESS CORPORATE WELFARE AND BAILOUT FOR THEIR CRONIES ON WALL STREET. 



"Under the Obama administration, the Democrats have spearheaded the attack on wages and benefits for higher paid workers as  part of an overall transfer of wealth to the financial elite."

California Democrats, unions announce deal on $15 minimum wage

By Marc Wells


30 March 2016
On Monday, California Governor Jerry Brown praised a tentative agreement reached two days earlier between state legislators and trade union leaders that, if finalized by the state assembly, would gradually increase California’s minimum wage to $15 by 2022.

The deal, which has many loopholes and conditions, is aimed at containing deep opposition to poverty-level wages. Its basic political purpose is to bolster support for the Democratic Party in the run-up to November’s elections. Under the Obama administration, the Democrats have spearheaded the attack on wages and benefits for higher paid workers as  part of an overall transfer of wealth to the financial elite.

The agreement in California would raise the state-wide minimum wage from its current level of $10 an hour to $10.50 in 2017, $11 in 2018, and one dollar more per year through 2022. Businesses with fewer than 25 employees would have an additional year to comply.


Stressing the conditional character of the proposed measure, Brown said on Monday, “This plan raises the minimum wage in a careful and responsible way and provides some flexibility if economic and budgetary conditions change.” The governor can suspend any wage increase in the
event of a recession, an increase in the state budget deficit or higher official unemployment.


In other words, the measure would be subordinated to “the vagaries of the capitalist economy,” as Brown put it. This includes no guarantee that workers currently making minimum wage will not be fired by the companies they work for.


If adopted, the deal would likely be followed by the suspension of two ballot initiatives sponsored by different sections of the union apparatus, particularly the Service Employees International Union
(SEIU), for the November elections. These measures would have increased the minimum wage to $15 an hour by 2021 or 2022. By removing the issue from the ballot, legislators can ensure that the details can becarefully crafted behind closed doors in consultation with businesses.

BLOG: CA HANDS ILLEGALS $30 BILLION IN SOCIAL SERVICES ON THE STATE LEVEL ALONE. COUNTIES PAY OUT EVEN MORE.

HALF THE POPULATION OF CA IS MEXICAN AND LA RAZA NOW CONTROLS BOTH HOUSES OF THE STATE LEGISLATURE.

Poverty-level wages are pervasive throughout California and nationally, and the current minimum wage is grossly inadequate to meet basic necessities.


According to Rainmaker Insights, average monthly housing costs in San Francisco are $3,770, and in Los Angeles $2,094. That is, average housing costs in these two cities are the equivalent of a full-time job paying $21.75 and $12.08 an hour, respectively, before taxes.


California’s cost of living is 151 percent of the national average, making it the fifth most expensive state. More than 40 percent of the state’s population lives either in poverty (earning less than about
$24,000 per year for a family of four) or near poverty, according to Census data released in 2013. Children are worse off: nearly 50 percent were poor or near poor in 2013.


Under these conditions, the trade unions—closely allied with the Democratic Party and supported by various organizations that operate in its orbit—have advanced campaigns like “Fight for $15” and “Raise the Wage” to keep opposition within a framework acceptable to the ruling class.


In the presidential elections, Democratic Party candidate Bernie Sanders has backed a $15 nationwide minimum wage, while Clinton has supported raising the national rate to $12 an hour. Sanders’ role in
particular has been to appeal to sections of youth and poorer workers in an effort to bolster the Democratic Party, after more than seven years of the Obama administration presiding over continuing austerity for the working class.


The Obama administration and the Democrats, no less than the Republicans, have supported the overall assault on wages for the working class as a whole. Tellingly, in California the median wage earner saw a decline of 6.2 percent in their annual income between 2006 and 2011, triple the national average. This included the years of Obama’s so-called economic recovery.


Nationally, the White House sounded the signal for a nationwide attack on wages through the restructuring of the auto industry in 2009, crafting a deal that halved wages for new hires and relieved companies of their health care obligations to retirees. This has been combined with the provisions of the Affordable Care Act, which have encouraged companies to eliminate health care plans and force workers to purchase insurance from private companies.


Increasingly, $15 is seen by the ruling class not so much as a minimum but as a maximum. What were formerly higher paying jobs, including in manufacturing, are now paying rates equivalent to low-wage service work.


In the aftermath of the 2008 economic crisis, moreover, low-wage employment has been replacing jobs that once paid a decent salary. In an earlier period, minimum wage jobs were mostly reserved for those initially entering the workforce. Recent data from the Center for Economic and Policy Research, however, shows that now only 12 percent of minimum wage workers are teenagers.


From the standpoint of the unions, a major aim is not only to promote the Democratic Party but also to ensure their own position as junior partners benefiting from the exploitation of the working class. In the last few years, the unions have negotiated agreements with companies that contain “escape clauses” relating to the minimum wage. Through these contractual or legal mechanisms, the unions have been able to bypass minimum wage requirements, thus leaving unionized workers earning
less than the minimum wage.


The process is so effective that even the US Chamber of Commerce admitted its advantages for employers. In a recent report, it noted that the escape clause “is often designed to encourage unionization by making a labor union the potential ‘low-cost’ alternative to new wage mandates, and it raises serious questions about whom these minimum wage laws are actually intended to benefit.”


Lastly, an increase in wages to above poverty levels is seen as beneficial by sections of the ruling class insofar as it will force reduce eligibility for social programs such as Medi-Cal, the medical program for the poor, whose threshold is set to 138 percent of the federal poverty level. Workers not qualifying for Medi-Cal would then be subject to the requirements of Obama’s Affordable Care Act that they purchase insurance from private companies on state-run exchanges.


Michigan Kids Count report shows drastic rise in child poverty over last decade


PEW: MEXICO BREEDS AN ANCHOR BABIES FOR WELFARE OCCUPATION OF AMERICA

more here:

In late 2015, the Pew Research Center came out with a population projection that "non-Hispanic whites are projected to become less than half of the US population by 2055." Similarly, during 2014, researchers working with U.S. Census Bure...

"More evidence that illegal immigrants are both taking jobs away from legal Americans and undercutting their wage bargaining power."



March 26, 2016

Study: Employment rate of illegal immigrant men far higher than for legal immigrants and natives

A new study by George Borjas from the John F. Kennedy School of Government at Harvard University reveals what many have long been concerned about when it comes to illegal immigration into the United States.
According to Borjas' paper, the "employment rate of undocumented men is 86.6%, as compared to 73.9% for natives and 77.8% for legal immigrants," and this gap has been widening since the mid-1990s.


The study shows that about 10% of all persons in their early 30s are undocumented. In addition, 23% of illegal immigrants live in California, 7% reside in New York, and 15% live in Texas.
Borjas reached the following conclusions:
Even after the regression exhaustively controls for... skill differences -- and adjusts for the possibility that economic conditions varied dramatically over time for each of the narrowly defined skill groups, as well as for the possibility that economic conditions varied dramatically among the different geographic regions where the three groups tend to settle -- it is still the case that the employment rate of immigrants, and particularly that of undocumented immigrant men, increased dramatically relative to that of native-born persons.
More evidence that illegal immigrants are both taking jobs away from legal Americans and undercutting their wage bargaining power.

Read more: http://www.americanthinker.com/blog/2016/03/study_employment_rate_of_illegal_immigrant_men_far_higher_than_for_legal_immigrants_and_natives.html#ixzz442MOR82B
Follow us: @AmericanThinker on Twitter | AmericanThinker on Facebook


US employment report: Payrolls rise, wages fall

By Barry Grey
5 March 2016
President Barack Obama seized on the February employment report, released Friday morning by the Labor Department, to tout the supposed “success” of his economic policies and paint a picture of a thriving US economy. The report, which showed a larger-than-predicted growth in private nonfarm payrolls of 242,000 jobs, confirmed that the US economy was “the envy of the world,” Obama told reporters at a White House appearance.

“The fact of the matter is that the plans that we have put in place to grow the economy have worked,” he boasted.” He derided “an alternative reality out there from some of the political folks that America is down in the dumps.” He countered, “America is pretty darn great right now.”

He did not attempt to explain why the “alternative reality,” which his labor secretary, Thomas Perez, attributed to “fear-mongers and fact-deniers,” is believed by tens of millions of Americans, whose anger over economic injustice is dramatically reflected in the current election campaign.

One does not have to look too closely at the Labor Department’s report, however, to get an idea of what is fueling the social indignation of working people in the eighth and final year of the Obama administration. Behind the top-line number for new jobs and the quasi-fictional official unemployment rate of only 4.9 percent, ongoing trends with disastrous consequences for the working class are evident. They account for two other important indices in the report: a decline in average earnings from the previous month of 3 cents, or 0.1 percent, to $25.35, bringing the increase for the year down to just 2.2 percent, and a fall in the average private-sector workweek of 0.2 hours to 34.4 hours, a two-year low.

These two figures arise from the fact that the vast bulk of new jobs created in February were low-wage and a huge percentage were part-time. The low-paying service sector—retail, bars and restaurants, health care—accounted for 245,000 jobs. The reality of recession in basic production was reflected in a 16,000 decline in manufacturing and the loss of another 19,000 mining jobs, bringing to 171,000 the total decline in mining since September 2014. The only better-paying industrial sector that saw an increase was construction, which recorded a gain of 19,000.

Another figure highlights the hollow and socially regressive character of Obama’s so-called “recovery.” The financial cable network CNBC pointed out that according to the Labor Department’s household survey, which is the basis for the unemployment rate figure (the figure on payroll growth is derived from a separate survey of business establishments), full-time jobs increased in February by only 65,000, while part-time positions increased by 489,000. This means that a mere 11.7 percent of new jobs in February were full-time!

These statistics point to the fact that the American ruling class, through its instrument, the Obama administration, has utilized the financial crash of 2008, for which it was responsible, to fundamentally reorganize the US economy, transforming it into a low-wage system. The millions of decent-paying jobs that were destroyed have been largely replaced by poverty-wage, part-time and temporary jobs.

The median household income has fallen sharply. Pensions and health benefits have been gutted, schools closed by the thousands, teachers and other public workers laid off by the millions. At the other end, the Federal Reserve and the US Treasury have pumped trillions of dollars into the financial markets, driving up the stock market and bringing the concentration of wealth at the very top to unprecedented levels. This is what Obama lauds as “success.”

Meanwhile, millions of Americans remain mired in long-term unemployment. The number of long-term unemployed, defined as without work for 27 weeks or more, was essentially unchanged at 2.2 million in February. This number has not shifted significantly since last June. The long-term jobless accounted last month for 27.7 percent of the unemployed, a far higher percentage than in any previous period categorized as an economic recovery.

A broader measure of unemployment that includes people working part-time but wanting full-time work and those too discouraged to seek employment registered 9.7 percent last month, nearly double the official jobless rate. There are, in addition, millions of people who have dropped out of the labor market and are not even counted in government employment reports.

While the employment-to-population ratio edged up to 59.8 percent and the labor force participation rate rose slightly to 62.9 percent, both measures remain extraordinarily low by historical standards.
The impact of soaring social inequality and falling living standards for broad sections of the population is reflected in a growing crisis in the retail sector. This week, sporting goods chain The Sports Authority filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection and announced it was closing at least 140 of its 463 stores and laying off 3,400 of its 13,000 employees. This follows recent announcements by Walmart, Sears/Kmart and Macy’s of hundreds of store closures and thousands of layoffs.

Hillary Clinton repeatedly claims that she is the champion of the little guy.  It has always been a risible claim, but if any of her supporters (including at the Post) are actually paying attention to the scoundrel, this latest gambit ought to disabuse them of the notion.  



Nearly one-third of US food stamp recipients rely on food pantries

Nearly one-third of US food stamp recipients rely on food pantries

By Kate Randall
9 March 2016
Nearly one-third of US households on the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP) rely on food pantries to supplement their food budget, according to data highlighted this week by the US Department of Agriculture (USDA), which administers SNAP.

The USDA reports that in 2014, 23 million American households received SNAP benefits, formerly known as food stamps. Of those households receiving SNAP benefits, 32 percent report they had visited a food pantry in the previous 30 days.

Households receiving other government food assistance also visited food pantries in significant numbers. Twenty-three percent of households using the Women, Infants and Children (WIC) program visited a pantry, as did 23 percent of households where children are receiving free or reduced-price school lunches.

The average SNAP benefit per person is about $125 per person a month, according to the Kaiser Family Foundation. The USDA data shows that these paltry benefits are not enough to sustain many household food budgets, leading families to seek assistance from food pantries.

Despite these statistics, more than one million people across the US could lose their SNAP benefits in 2016 due to the return in many areas of a three-month limit on benefits for unemployed adults ages 18-49 who are not disabled or raising minor children. The cutoffs began March 1 in 21 states, prompting food pantries and soup kitchens to gear up for an influx of people seeking support.
Following the financial crisis in 2008, virtually all US states qualified for a waiver from the three-month limit for those classified as “Able-Bodied Adults Without Dependents” (ABAWDs), imposed in 1996 under the welfare reform bill signed into law by President Clinton. The harsh “work for food” requirements are now being restored in the face of US Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS) data that shows that more than a quarter of the 7.9 million US unemployed have been jobless for more than six months.

According to the USDA, about 4.7 million SNAP recipients are deemed ABAWDs, and only one in four of these has any income from a job. USDA data shows these individuals have gross income averages of 17 percent of the official poverty line, or only about $2,000 per year for a household of one in 2015. If these individuals fail to demonstrate that they work, volunteer, or attend job-training courses at least 80 hours a month, they will be cut off SNAP.

The assault on SNAP benefits is a bipartisan attack on the health and wellbeing of workers at a time when the government’s own figures show hunger growing across America. In 2014, President Obama signed a bill that included $8.6 billion in cuts to SNAP. The temporary 14 percent increase in benefits passed by Congress in 2009 ended completely in November 2013.

Under these crisis conditions, Obama’s fiscal year 2016 budget proposal included only $83.692 billion for SNAP, which presently serves an average caseload of 45.7 million Americans, almost 15 percent of the population. This compares to the more than $600 billion a year officially expended on the military. If all military-related expenses are added—including from the CIA, Homeland Security, Energy, State departments, the Veterans Administration and debt payments for previous wars—the real figure is closer to $1.3 trillion a year.

A USDA study showed that 14 percent of households (17.4 million households) were food insecure in 2014, meaning they did not have consistent, dependable access to enough food for an active, healthy life. In 2014, 5.6 percent of US households (6.9 million households) had very low food security, meaning that the food intake of some household members was reduced, and normal eating patterns disrupted, due to limited resources at times during the year.

A 2013 study of 3,300 SNAP households by the USDA’s Food and Nutrition Service found that “SNAP households experience … financial strain that is eased but not alleviated by participation in the SNAP program.” The study found that about 45 percent of SNAP clients limited food consumption, usually by skipping meals, to make it through the month.
NPR reports on other research that shows that hospital admissions for hypoglycemia—low blood sugar, which can be treated with a healthful diet—spike by 27 percent for low-income households during the last week of the month, when many government benefits run out. High-income households showed no similar trend.
A new review of 25 studies published between 2003 and 2014 that looked at the food spending and quality of diets of SNAP recipients showed that they ate on average about the same number of calories as those not receiving benefits, but consumed fewer fruits and vegetables and whole grains and more added sugars.

Tatiana Andreyeva, the study’s lead author and researcher at the Rudd Center for Food Policy and Obesity at the University of Connecticut, said average food stamp recipients scored even worse than the average American on the Healthy Eating Index, a measure of how well diets meet the federal dietary guidelines.

While the average American received a failing grade, scoring just 58 out of 100 on the index, the average SNAP recipient scored just 47 out of 100 in one study, and 51 out of 100 in another. The study also found that both adults and children on SNAP were less likely to eat three meals a day than higher-income people not receiving benefits.



Immigration cuts salaries of Americans $2,470 a year: The nation's unending appetite for new and low-wage immigrant workers, now about about 1 million a year, is slashing the incomes of native-born Americans by $2,470 while boosting corporate profits, according to a new report on the cost of legal and illegal immigration. The U.S. is literally importing poverty, said the new report from the group Negative Population Growth Inc. Critics of immigration and the administration's expansion of the green card worker program have long charged that native American workers have had to accept lower wages just to compete with cheap imported labor and the new report from Ed Rubenstein, president of ESR Research, bolsters those charges.


"There are the billions of taxpayer dollars used to subsidize illegal immigrants' health care and education. There's the revenue we lose out on when illegal immigrants don't pay income taxes. And there's a less recognized pot of billions — the billions of dollars of earnings that illegal immigrants wire out of the United States with no tax or penalty."

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