Working Life

This is just a repeated point–repeated because it’s just so obvious, though it seems to escape the grey cells of transcribers of press releases (formerly known as “journalists”) and other analysts.

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More about this later…many discussions about jobs at the UN but the question that always comes up in my mind: what do those jobs pay? There is a company right there in Bentonville that is happy to create lots of jobs even if people remain in poverty working for Wal-Mart wages.

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Putting aside the noise that rumbles from the Boehner-McConnell-Fill-In-The-Blank Republican divorced-from-reality view of the economy, who rail about job-killing taxes/regulation/voodoo, the far bigger threat to jobs right now hails from the halls of the Federal Reserve Board. It could, within weeks or months, guarantee that hundreds of thousands of people won’t have a job, and reawaken the deficit-mongering crowd’s call for cuts in government that will hurt millions more.

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So, you really have to work hard at lying or fibbing or misstating the facts to get the traditional media elites to come down hard on you when it comes to so-called “Free trade”. Those elites have been cheerleaders for the rancid NAFTA-style trade deals going back three decades. But, the president has earned it when it comes to his claims about job benefits in the Trans Pacific Partnership: Four Pinocchios, considered “whoppers”, from The Washington Post

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For many months, I’ve been very skeptical about the regular jobs reports that are fairly upbeat in the way they describe the economy. I still feel that way, though the direction is certainly better than say right during the post-financial crisis months.

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This was almost predictable: the traditional media, and too many bloggers who regurgitate what they read in the traditional media, are buying into the “rebound” in the economy because of today’s Labor Department report; the stock market goes up; and, I’m certain, pretty soon, the White House will be taking credit for all this and, subtly or not so subtly, arguing that, see, aren’t we great, vote for us. It’s nonsense.

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Certain things I get no pleasure being right about. Like the lack of jobs. But, hey, I said back in July no one should be celebrating short-term hype on the economy. Sure enough…

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Let’s be cautious about the jobs report. And what lies ahead.

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I’ve always avoided those self-checkout machines because those machines basically cost people their jobs — and it always distresses me that those people who still have jobs in those retail stores encourage people to use the self-checkout lines without perhaps realizing what might happen to their job as a result. And now comes the other job killer: phone apps.

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Job growth is allegedly “steady” but unemployment increases — so said the statistics. But, here’s the thing — these stats still miss an important point.

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