A third of million new jobs were created in January according to the Bureau of Labor Statistic’s household survey. This exceeds the quarter million job gain shown by the employer survey. Historically, these two surveys confirm one another except when unusual growth is seen. The household survey had been diverging from the employer survey by larger and larger numbers over the past year.
This divergence probably indicates exceptional growth in small business activity and among new entrepreneurs not adequately represented in the employer survey. This could be tied to the sharp growth in manufacturing jobs with 50,000 new workers added last month as reported by employers.
Manufacturing is what is known as a “cluster economy” in which the “finished product job” tends to support numerous other jobs that are somewhat off the grid. These can be everything from the small machine shop that does tool and die work, or a specialized factory with a few employees that makes small parts that don’t justify a major factory operation, and all manner of service and support jobs.
It can’t be stressed enough how important this kind of up tick in jobs in mid-winter really is. An economy has momentum, like a ship rising to meet the crashing waves or the wreck being driven to the bottom by them. Currently, the ship of the economy is rising despite all efforts from the Republicans to drill holes in its hull. Red State Republicans eliminated 14,000 teachers, firefighters, police and highway maintenance workers just last month, crippling the recovery of their own states, and putting a drag on the national economy.
That’s the good news. The bad news is that real wages were down 2% last year as major corporations deliberately assaulted the wages of employees to tighten their grip on the economy and society in general. The six million long term unemployed have no chance of ever being employed by any major corporation as the universal corporate policy is to never hire them. The excuse is that their skills “are stale”, but really it is to make them an example for all who might resist.
Of course, a large scale recovery would throw this policy out the window.. Obama made a point of chiding Republicans not to get in the way of the recovery saying, “Don’t muck it up.” (according to the right, Obama can read the tele-prompter, but he seems to confuse his m’s and f’s)
That’s not to say we don’t have huge problems with insane trade policies, a lack of enforcement of anti-trust laws, and a long laundry list of laws and policies that have been gutted, ignored or decriminalized over the past 30 plus years. It speaks to the potential of Americans that it has taken the 0.1 percent this long to steal and corrupt enough of the economy to reverse the New Deal, and still they haven’t quite done it.
We can have it back again. All those thing our liberal grandparents gave sweat, tears and blood to accomplish can be ours again. All the things our liberal ancestors fought died for in order to wrest this continent from the British East India Company can be ours again. It’s our turn to sweat, cry and bleed to have these things again, or they will be gone forever.
Follow Bruce Enberg at prairie2.com
