Sunday, October 05, 2003
Jobless Recovery?
Shouldn’t people’s ability to find work be central to any economy? Isn’t the point of an economy all about fulfilling human needs, one of which is meaningful work? Not according to today’s monetarist economists who only three years ago were warning of the dangers of the unemployment rate dropping below four percent. Then the business community and their economists were fearful that lower unemployment rates would increase labour’s bargaining position, which would drive up wages and inflation.
Unfortunately full employment was never reached. Alan Greenspan, with the backing of the other monetarists who dominate today’s economic discourse, increased interest rates to deflate the economy. It worked. Unemployment rates began to climb. Officially it’s now at 6.1% but that number masks the huge number of people who’ve simply given up looking. In August, 93,000 jobs were lost and now there are 2.1 percent fewer workers on payrolls in the U.S. than there were two years ago, which doesn’t even take into account the needed job growth to keep up with population increases. (Business Week September 29)
Yet as GDP rises again, at a rate of 5% this quarter, the economists are talking about a “jobless recovery” — the meaning of which was explained in a recent Financial Post article. “The total net worth of America’s richest people rose by ten percent to U.S $ 995 billion this year from 2002, according to Forbes Magazines annual ranking of the countries 400 wealthiest individuals.” (The four hundred richest U.S. residents wealth is now about the size of Canada’s economy, the eight largest in the world). [...]
Shouldn’t people’s ability to find work be central to any economy? Isn’t the point of an economy all about fulfilling human needs, one of which is meaningful work? Not according to today’s monetarist economists who only three years ago were warning of the dangers of the unemployment rate dropping below four percent. Then the business community and their economists were fearful that lower unemployment rates would increase labour’s bargaining position, which would drive up wages and inflation.
Unfortunately full employment was never reached. Alan Greenspan, with the backing of the other monetarists who dominate today’s economic discourse, increased interest rates to deflate the economy. It worked. Unemployment rates began to climb. Officially it’s now at 6.1% but that number masks the huge number of people who’ve simply given up looking. In August, 93,000 jobs were lost and now there are 2.1 percent fewer workers on payrolls in the U.S. than there were two years ago, which doesn’t even take into account the needed job growth to keep up with population increases. (Business Week September 29)
Yet as GDP rises again, at a rate of 5% this quarter, the economists are talking about a “jobless recovery” — the meaning of which was explained in a recent Financial Post article. “The total net worth of America’s richest people rose by ten percent to U.S $ 995 billion this year from 2002, according to Forbes Magazines annual ranking of the countries 400 wealthiest individuals.” (The four hundred richest U.S. residents wealth is now about the size of Canada’s economy, the eight largest in the world). [...]
themassesareasses© on blogger Sunday, October 05, 2003 
