Greetings,
Please excuse the cross-postings. I feel that this information is
of interest to many people.
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On Fri, 31 Oct 1997, Laurence Shute wrote:
> I may be living in some alternate universe, but I've long thought that the
> actual US unemployment rate was much higher (say, twice as high) as the
> published figures. Because of under counting of undocumented residents,
> discouraged workers, and plain old missing of large groups of poor.
>
> This morning I seem to have some sort of window of open-mindedness, however
> brief it may be, and wonder if anyone has thoughts on this today? btw,
> this is one reason I have never thought we had a real inflationary danger
> in the past several years.
>
> Larry Shute
>
The main feature of the October 1997 issue of Phi Delta Kappan, a
professional bourgeois education journal with a relatively large
circulation, is "Where Are the Jobs for World-Class Grads?" by Clinton E.
Boutwell. Notwithstanding its bourgeois limitations (e.g., failure to see
an alternative to capitalism, hankering for (more) benevolent corporations
and proposing changes in policy, as opposed to changes in social
conditions), Boutwell's article accurately portrays the numerous
extremely negative trends inherent to society (the U.S.) based on the
capitalist economic system. For example, he says:
In 1994 two-thirds of all new jobs created in the
U.S. were low-wage jobs that carried no benefits....
Many of the new jobs being 'created' are actually
temporary jobs. In fact, at least a quarter of
those employed today are temporary, part-time,
or contract workers. The number of Americans working
part-time grew by 2.2 million between 1973 and 1996,
reaching a total of 6.2 million.... The total
*number* of high-tech, highly-skilled jobs is
shrinking as America builds its 'new economy'....
Those downsized workers who manage to find a new
job also find themselves making at least 10% less
than in their old jobs.... The *official* unemployment
rate in the U.S. has averaged below 6% since 1994.
Almost two million workers were hired in 1994, mostly
in low-wage jobs. The only group that *increased*
its unemployment rate was black teenagers...However,
these official figures convey an incomplete statistical
view of employment in the U.S.... If the U.S. counted
its unemployed as the other industrial countries do,
we would have 4.5 million more people unemployed,
and our unemployment rate would be equal to or higher
than the 11% rate in Europe (pp. 107, 109, 110).
Boutwell shows that there is a massive mismatch between the number of
people graduating and the number of (good) jobs available, that is,
capitalism does not work for tens of millions. As far as the
actual unemployment rate being much higher than what the various
governments of the rich say it is, this much is true. It is a
well-established truism that *official* statistics routinely and
typically portray a rosier picture than what actually exists. However, as
Boutwell's contention that the *actual* unemployment rate may be 11%
or a little higher, may be off the mark. In all likelihood it is well
above 11%.
Shawgi Tell
Graduate School of Education
University at Buffalo
[EMAIL PROTECTED]
