Yes, Millennials Really Are That Screwed
They were right. Photo: Spencer Platt/Getty Images
Ah, homeownership! I pass many a wistful hour on Zillow trying to imagine the possibilities. Alas, I can more easily picture myself leading a left-wing militia into battle than I can see myself buying a house — and data suggests this isn’t just because I made a series of questionable life choices. Millennials, as a generation, are lavishly screwed. More screwed than Gen X, more screwed than the boomers, more screwed than the Silent Generation, God rest ’em. But don’t take my word for it! Read the Washington Post. Adjust for the pandemic, and millennials, a new analysis concludes, have “experienced slower economic growth since entering the workforce than any other generation in U.S. history.”
The U.S. has survived other serious economic downturns. But millennials are on track to endure two, both within the first two decades of adulthood. That means lower rates of homeownership, higher debt burdens, delayed families, and overall despair. Older millennials, who became adults in the early 2000s, may experience a particularly acute case of déjà vu. “One brutal month of the coronavirus set the labor market back to the turn of the millennium,” the Post continued. “The last time there were about 131 million jobs was January 2000.”
The pandemic’s job losses also hit millennials at a disproportionately high rate. Though you wouldn’t necessarily know it from all the headlines about feckless young snowflakes, the oldest millennials are nearly 40 years old, and the Post says that, as of 2019, the cohort had become “the largest generation in the U.S. full-time workforce, surpassing Gen X.” But reality bites. Post-coronavirus, our generational older siblings may soon be back on top, possibly occupying the largest share of the U.S. workforce in the absence of millennial workers.
Millennials may never catch up with older cohorts. This is something lawmakers could change if they wanted. The same way today’s mass unemployment is a policy decision, not a natural consequence of the pandemic, so too is millennial suffering. But both major parties seem to lag behind the needs of the time. On the right, Republicans champion ethnonationalism in tandem with welfare cuts. On the left — or, more accurately, the center — Democrats suffer from an unfocused identity and unclear priorities. A wide gap separates the party’s most left-wing members from the moderates who occupy leadership, and as the pandemic drags on, that translates to slow or nonexistent progress on progressive issues, like the cancellation of student-loan debt. That’s not a recipe for high youth enthusiasm.
So far, neither is the presidential candidacy of Joe Biden. Young voters don’t like him. In March, voters under 45 still backed Bernie Sanders by a comfortable margin, NBC News reported, and in April, a CNN analysis of five major polls found that Biden ran, on average, about ten points behind Hillary Clinton’s 2016 numbers with voters under 34. The antipathy appeared mutual. “The younger generation now tells me how tough things are. Give me a break. No, no. I have no empathy for it. Give me a break,” he said in 2018. “Because here’s the deal, guys: We decided we were gonna change the world. And we did. We did. We finished the civil-rights movement in the first stage. The women’s movement came to be.” Two years later, his youth outreach is both lackluster and, well, odd. On May 26, the candidate announced a new youth coalition, which appears vaguely baseball themed:
But even in 2018, when Biden was still just a prospective candidate and not the presumptive nominee, millennials needed more than sturdy bootstraps. The insufficiency of such rhetoric is even more obvious now. The radically redistributive vision that younger Democrats tend to prefer might look foolish to Biden, who says he won’t move on issues like Medicare for All. But consider the preferences of young Democrats against the circumstances the young occupy at large, and their progressive dreams look markedly pragmatic. Young voters are living through an unprecedented catastrophe. The consequences will be felt for decades — and demand policy solutions that match them for scale.
Barring that, there’s always my militia.
Job
losses continue to mount in US despite reopenings
Government
Agencies Still Hiring H-1B Visa Employees for American Jobs
Evan
Vucci/Associated Press
| ||||||
|
Email
Job
losses continue to mount in US despite reopenings
28 May 20204
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.
___
Sewell reported from Cincinnati. Associated Press reporters from
around the world contributed to this report.
___
Follow
AP pandemic coverage at http://apnews.com/VirusOutbreak and https://apnews.com/UnderstandingtheOutbreak
Government
Agencies Still Hiring H-1B Visa Employees for American Jobs
27 May 2020151
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.
Business
insists that India's H-1B visa workers are vital to the Fortune 500 economy.
But evidence shows little innovation & much chaos, largely b/c the H-1Bs work under oppressive cultural, legal & corp. pressures.
IOW, professionalism is better.#H1Bhttps://t.co/URX7rB6nof
But evidence shows little innovation & much chaos, largely b/c the H-1Bs work under oppressive cultural, legal & corp. pressures.
IOW, professionalism is better.#H1Bhttps://t.co/URX7rB6nof
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.
Fortune
500 lobbyists warn Trump that any pro-American reform of the visa-worker
programs may lead to discrimination.
As if the current system does not incentivize and deliver discrimination against millions of Americans.#H1Bhttps://t.co/9GVu0THsli
As if the current system does not incentivize and deliver discrimination against millions of Americans.#H1Bhttps://t.co/9GVu0THsli
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.
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.
The inflow of India's visa-workers creates
a huge 'bonded la
No comments:
Post a Comment