Thursday, May 28, 2020

AMERICA - 40 MILLION JOBLESS AND TRUMP BOATLOADS FOREIGNERS IN TO TAKE OUR JOBS

Job losses continue to mount in US despite reopenings

People suspected of being infected with the new coronavirus wait to receive tests at a coronavirus screening station in Bucheon, South Korea, Thursday, May 28, 2020. South Korea on Thursday reported its biggest jump in coronavirus cases in more than 50 days, a setback that could erase some of its …
Roughly 2.1 million Americans applied for unemployment benefits last week despite the gradual reopening of businesses around the country, bringing the running total since the coronavirus shutdowns took hold in mid-March to about 41 million and increasing concerns that the scourge is doing deep and potentially long-last damage to the economy
WASHINGTON (AP) — The coronavirus crisis threw at least 2.1 million Americans out of work last week despite the gradual reopening of businesses around the country, stoking fears Thursday that the scourge is doing deep and potentially long-lasting damage to the U.S. economy.
Amid a few glimmers of hope, most of the latest economic news from around the globe was likewise grim, as some of the world’s most populous countries continued to report rising infections and deaths. The confirmed U.S. death toll topped 100,000, the highest in the world, on Wednesday.
The latest job-loss figures from the U.S. Labor Department bring to 41 million the running total of Americans who have filed for unemployment benefits since the coronavirus shutdowns took hold in mid-March.
There were some encouraging signs: The overall number of Americans currently drawing jobless benefits dropped for the first time since the crisis began, from 25 million to 21 million. And first-time applications for unemployment have fallen for eight straight weeks, as states gradually let stores, restaurants and other businesses reopen and the auto industry starts up factories again.
But the number of U.S. workers filing for unemployment is still extraordinarily high by historical standards, and that suggests businesses are failing or permanently downsizing, not just laying off people until the crisis can pass, economists warn.
“That is the kind of economic destruction you cannot quickly put back in the bottle,” said Adam Ozimek, chief economist at Upwork.
The U.S. unemployment rate was 14.7% in April, a level not seen since the Depression, and many economists expect it will be near 20% in May.
The figures come amid an intensifying debate in Congress over whether to extend $600 in extra weekly federal unemployment benefits, provided under rescue legislation passed in March but set to expire July 31.
Democrats have proposed extending the payments, while Republicans have argued that the extra money could discourage laid-off workers from returning to jobs that pay less than they are getting on unemployment.
Kelly Kelso, a 30-year-old roadie from Nashville for the rock group Foreigner, got her first unemployment check last week after more than eight weeks of waiting. She said she is still receiving far less in benefits than the $1,250 per week or more that she made on tour.
Though she is reluctant to leave the music industry, she said, “I have a cosmetology license. If all else fails, I could go back to doing hair.”
Another looming storm cloud: Economists say the sharp loss of tax revenue for state and local governments is likely to compound the damage from the shutdowns by forcing additional public-sector layoffs in the coming weeks.
Those layoffs have just recently started showing up in the weekly jobless claims report. Washington state, for example, reported layoffs of government employees.
Job cuts are also appearing far beyond the initially hit industries such as restaurants and stores, a sign that the damage is spreading even as businesses reopen. Washington state said it saw layoffs in insurance, and New York state reported job cuts by information technology companies.
Economists say many of the jobs lost are never coming back, and double-digit unemployment could persist through 2021.
And as discouraging as the numbers are, the real picture may be worse. The government counts people as unemployed only if they’re actually looking for a job, and many Americans probably see no point in trying when so many businesses are shut down.
Airlines and aircraft manufacturers are struggling after air travel plummeted early in the outbreak. Boeing is cutting more than 12,000 U.S. jobs through layoffs and buyouts, many expected to be in the Seattle area. European budget airline Easyjet said it will cut up to a third of its 15,000 employees. American Airlines plans to eliminate about 5,100 jobs.
Amtrak likewise announced it will lay off about 20% of its 18,000 workers amid a collapse in train ridership.
A number of European countries have strong safety-net programs that are underwriting the wages of millions of workers and keeping them on the payroll instead of adding them to the ranks of the unemployed. But the economic damage is mounting there, too.
Nissan is rolling back production in Spain in a move the government said could lead to 3,000 direct job cuts and thousands more losses at the automaker’s suppliers. And French unemployment claims jumped 22% in April, with 843,000 more people seeking work.
Elsewhere around the world, India saw another record daily jump in coronavirus cases. Russia reported a steady increase in its caseload, even as the city of Moscow and provinces across the vast country moved to ease restrictions in sync with the Kremlin’s political agenda.
And South Korea reported its biggest jump in infections in more than 50 days, a setback that could erase some of the hard-won gains that have made it a model for the rest of the world.
Worldwide, the virus has infected more than 5.7 million people and killed over 355,000, with the U.S. having the most confirmed cases and deaths, according to a tally by Johns Hopkins University. Europe has recorded about 170,000 deaths.
The true dimensions of the disaster are widely believed to be significantly greater, with experts saying many victims died without ever being tested.
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Sewell reported from Cincinnati. Associated Press reporters from around the world contributed to this report.
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Government Agencies Still Hiring H-1B Visa Employees for American Jobs

Trump Evan Vucci Associated Press
Evan Vucci/Associated Press
13:48

Government agencies around the country are hiring thousands of foreign H-1B workers to fill well-paid government jobs needed by U.S. graduates.
The governments’ hidden workforces of roughly 18,000 H-1B employees are an easy target for President Donald Trump as he searches for ways to open up good jobs for the many American graduates who have been forced out of jobs by the coronavirus crash.
Trump also needs to do something because he has yet to begin to deliver any part of his dramatic 2016 campaign trail promise: “I will end the use of the H-1B as a cheap labor program forever, and institute an absolute requirement to hire American workers first for every visa and immigration program. No exceptions.”
The H-1Bs are being imported and hired at all levels of government throughout the United States.
A small share of the H-1Bs is hired directly by government offices, via a deliberately complex and lengthy process managed by the Departments of Labor, State, and Homeland Security (DHS), plus a small army of immigration lawyers.
For example, roughly 130 foreign H-1B employees are being hired by organizations with “department” in their names. They include the California Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation, the New York Police Department, and the Arkansas Department of Public Safety, according to the Labor Department data.
Many more H-1Bs are imported by U.S. or Indian staffing companies and are then leased by government agencies. So the federal data from October to late March shows that roughly 3,000 H-1Bs have been requested or leased by government departments from various staffing firms.
The departments include transportation, agriculture, labor, health and human services, and interior. Roughly 85 H-1Bs are being sought for the federal and state Labor Departments, including the Labor Departments in Vermont, Idaho, Georgia, and Pennsylvania.
Many of the imported H-1B employees are being hired to maintain and operate computer systems, at promised salaries above $90,000, even as those tasks can be done by many American graduates.
The state-level departments who want H-1Bs from staffing companies include the Georgia Department of Transportation, Washington’s Department of Corrections, the Ohio Department of Job & Family Services, and Maryland’s Department of Human Services.
Roughly 100 foreigners are being requested for rental to taxpayer-backed commissions, including the Palm Beach County Board of County Commissioners the Washington Suburban Sanitary Commission, and the Texas Health and Human Services Commission.
More H-1Bs are requested by counties and boards, including the Pennsylvania Liquor Control Board, the election boards in New York and in North Carolina, the Palm Beach County Governmental Center, and the Superior Court of Orange County.
An additional 400-plus H-1Bs are being rented by government “offices.” These include the Colorado Governor’s Office of Information Technology, the U.S. Government Publishing Office, and the NYC Financial Information Services Agency and Office of Payroll Administration.
This set of almost 3,000 leases and hires is just the six-month tip of an iceberg.
Each H-1B lasts three years. So if 3,000 H-1Bs are being hired or extended during a period of six months, then another 15,000 H-1Bs were likely hired or rented during the prior two-and-half years of the three years.
The data only reveals the H-1Bs who were imported for scheduled work in government offices. It does not show or count the many H-1Bs who were imported by staffing companies for a different job and were subsequently reassigned to a staffing job in a government center. That reassigned H-1B population may be larger than the 15,000 shown in the data. A large population of reassigned H-1Bs would help explain the many anecdotal reports that Indian visa workers are a majority in many federal computer centers.
The iceberg goes much deeper, however, because many contractors also import H-1Bs and other visa workers to help build software for government agencies. For example, four states hired a Minneapolis-based software company that includes many H-1B workers to build websites where state residents could file for unemployment benefits. Amid the coronavirus crash, the H-1B software provided by Sagitec Solutions proved inadequate.

Similarly, the underperforming and overbudget Obamacare website was a political disaster for President Barack Obama. Klick.com reported:
There is some evidence that this project was, at least in part, off-shored and that H-1B (temporary foreign worker) visas were used extensively. This seems to have led to decisions such as the code supporting the obscure Indian Gujarati language and comments being written in a style consistent with offshore programmers.
But this huge iceberg of visa workers is a huge profit center for the layers of staffing companies. The staffing companies take large commissions from each H-1B hire, both legally and — according to accounts provided by Indian H-1Bs — not so legally.
For example, Company A may win a contract to deliver 100 H-1Bs to a government agency. Company A then rents the 100 H-1Bs from subcontractors B, C, and D. But those subcontractors can rent H-1Bs from each other before renting them to Company A. This hidden back-scratching process would allow the companies’ executives to take three bites from each workers’ $100,000 salary — and also to hire lobbyists to protect the lucrative H-1B process.
Many H-1Bs also have to pay kickbacks to their managers to ensure they are not sent home, usually to India. The managers “get a back cut,” said Vikram from Texas, a former H-1B worker who is now a citizen. “It happens all the time,” he said.
The H-1B numbers in this article are drawn from Labor Department data.
The Labor Department’s data includes the names of the hiring company, promised wage levels, job location, and job title. Crucially, the data also includes the “secondary entity business name,” which displays at least one expected workplace for each H-1B imported by staffing companies.
The data includes requests for new hires, as well as requests for three-year extensions of current workers’ initial three-year visa. The numbers in this article include new hires and visa extensions.
Few hiring requests by agencies are denied — even when the jobs are in critical infrastructure, or allow foreign access to private information, such as tax receipts and health data.
Federal law says non-profit groups — including government agencies — are exempt from the supposed annual cap of 85,000 H-1B new workers. Nationwide, roughly 90,000 “Cap Exempt” H-1Bs are employed by non-profit groups, including agency, research laboratories, universities, and hospitals.
DHS officials do deny many requests by staffing companies for H-1Bs. But the denials have little impact because the staffing companies make sure to ask for many extra H-1Bs, usually after collecting letters from companies that say the extra H-1Bs are needed.
Companies game this approval process to ensure they have extra H-1Bs on hand to win new contracts in bidding competitions against firms that only hire Americans, including legal immigrants.

The Labor Department data cited in this article is presented on a site operated by Virgil Bierschwale, a Texas-based software expert who says he cannot find a job amid the flood of Indian and Chinese visa workers. Many Americans have been sidelined because employers are eager to use the growing number of college graduate illegals, many of whom have overstayed their visas, he said.
“Some of us can’t work anymore because there are so many state and federal agencies using H-1Bs. … Government agencies using our tax revenues to basically displace us,” Bierschwale said.
The flood of foreign workers allows companies to discriminate against older Americans, and to exclude young American graduates, he said. “You used to be used to be to climb the ladder and work your way up — there is no climbing the ladder anymore because the [visa workers] are getting all jobs,” he said.
“It’s very difficult” to get jobs in a crashed labor market that was already flooded with imported workers, said an Indian-born citizen who formerly worked as an H-1B worker. “I don’t see a chance — I might need to leave my IT career and work at Walmart or something,” he said May 27.
Companies have imported roughly 750,000 H-1Bs for a very wide variety of jobs needed by American graduates. In addition, at least 700,000 other foreign graduates hold jobs via the uncapped L-1, OPT, CPT, H4EAD, and TN visa programs while roughly 800,000 Americans will graduate from four-year colleges with skilled degrees in 2020.
Many former H-1B and other visa workers overstay expired visas and create an extra pool of illegal college graduate labor. Also, companies allegedly use the little-monitored B-1 visa to sneak white-collar illegals into U.S. workplaces, further reducing salaries and opportunities for U.S. graduates.
Most of the H-1Bs are working software jobs in exchange for pay and the chance of citizenship. But no U.S. graduates are exempt from the H-1B competition. The list of targeted jobs include doctors, psychologists, marketing analysts, architects, fashion designers, editors, designers, creative writers, managers, engineers, and much else.
“Young kids have no clue that it could happen to them,” said Bierschwale. “When I was 40 years old, I had the best skills out there, but two years later, the manager said, ‘If I can get ten people for the price of you, it does not matter what skills you have.’”
For example, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) has asked to hire or extend 19 H-1Bs in fiscal 2020. The CDC’s 19 H-1Bs include two biologists, five epidemiologists, and three statisticians. The CDC also wants to hire or extend three H-1Bs from staffing companies, including Leidos Inc. and IShift Corp.
In 2019, CDC hired 18 foreign employees at an average salary of $82,195, according to the H1BData.info website, which also relies on government data. That pre-coronavirus 2019 inflow of foreign workers included 12 epidemiologists and six economists.
An email to the CDC was not returned.
According to a database held by DHS’s U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services agency, the CDC has applied for five foreign H-1B workers and to extend work visas for four other foreign employees. Since 2018, the agency has filed for at least 51 foreign employees, the DHS site says.
Many U.S. executives also prefer H-1Bs because the H-1Bs  know they will get sent home if they argue with their managers, unlike U.S. professionals, said Bierschwale. “If somebody like me sees something wrong, I’ll tell them it is wrong, and they don’t want that. [U.S. executives] want Indians and Chinese who stay quiet.”
Bierschwale’s website shows that two government-backed businesses use a large share of federal H-1Bs.
The Federal National Mortgage Association, dubbed Fannie Mae, wants to hire or extended 575 H-1Bs, including H-1Bs imported by Accenture, Cognizant, Ernst & Young, HCL Global, Hexaware Technologies, and Mastech Digital, many at $120,000-per-person costs.
The Federal Home Loan Mortgage Corporation, or Freddie Mac, wants to hire or extend 141 from staffing companies, at salaries around $100,000.
This data matches data from nine months of 2019, presented in October 2019 by Bloomberg:
Data indicate Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, which are directed by the Federal Housing Finance Agency under a conservatorship, are the most popular destinations among federal agencies for H-1B workers placed by third-party companies. Together, the two account for at least 1,340 H-1B workers sponsored by more than 460 different third-party companies.
Also high on the list is the Health and Human Services Department (at least 290 H-1B workers), Amtrak (at least 60 H-1B workers), the Commerce Department (at least 60 H-1B workers), and the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (at least 40 H-1B workers).
The Pentagon and the armed forces do not hire visa workers directly, according to the data.

Follow Neil Munro on Twitter @NeilMunroDC, or email the author at NMunro@Breitbart.com.


Weekly Jobless Claims Fall to 2.1 Million

ROCKTON, ILLINOIS - MARCH 24: A normally busy Main Street is deserted as the small businesses that line the business district remain closed after the governor instituted a shelter-in-place order in an attempt to curtail the spread of the coronavirus (COVID-19) on March 24, 2020 in Rockton, Illinois. Rockton is …
Photo by Scott Olson/Getty Images
2:21
New claims for unemployment benefits fell to 2.123 million last week, data from the Department of Labor showed Thursday.
That brings new unemployment claims, a proxy for layoffs, since the coronavirus pandemic began to claim jobs ten weeks ago to nearly 40 million.
Economists had been expecting around 2.1 million for weekly claims. The prior week was revised up by 8,000 to 2,438,000.
Claims hit a record 6.87 million for the week of March 27. Each subsequent week has seen claims decline.
Continuing claims, those made after an initial application, fell for the week ended May 16 to just over 21 million, down from nearly 25 million. Those are reported with a one-week lag. The decline suggests that some who lost their jobs have been rehired or found new work.
The largest increases in initial claims for the week ending May 16 were in California, Washington, and New York. The largest decrease in claims was in Georgia, New Jersey, Kentucky, Louisiana, and Pennsylvania.
The federal government has been shipping in an extra $600 a week to state unemployment benefits, making the program much more generous. Many workers can now earn more on unemployment than they did when they had a job. These super-sized benefits, however, are set to run out in July.
The government said the U.S. unemployment rate soared to 14.7 percent in April, the highest since the Great Depression. That figure is likely to rise when May’s data is reported next week.
In addition to claims for regular unemployment benefits, the government now offers Pandeemic Unemployment Assistance to business owners, self-employed, gig-workers, and independent contractors who would not ordinarily qualify for unemployment benefits. The government said that an additional  7,793,066 workers received these benefits in the week ended May 9. The total number of workers receiving any form of jobless benefits, including federal workers and newly discharged members of the military, was 30.957 million for the week ended May 9.

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