B00BLPJNWE EBOK (14 page)

Not only the Bush and Obama regimes, with their claims of Iraqi “weapons of mass destruction” and “Iranian nukes,” base their policies on lies, but also corporations lie about “skill shortages.” Not content with moving Americans’ jobs abroad, corporations want to fill the jobs remaining in America with foreigners on work visas. Business organizations allege shortages of engineers, scientists and even nurses. Business organizations have successfully used pubic relations firms and bought-and-paid-for "economic studies" to convince policymakers that American business cannot function without the subsidy provided by H-1B visas. The evidence is conclusive that the visas do not fill a “skills gap.” The visas allow corporations to replace higher paid Americans with lower paid foreigners. Prior to being discharged, the American employees are first required to train their replacements. If the skills were in short supply, Americans would not be discharged when the H-1B visa holders are hired.

Keep in mind this H-1B subsidy to U.S. corporations for employing foreign workers in place of Americans as we examine the US Department of Labor’s job projections over the 2004-2014 decade.

All of the occupations with the largest projected employment growth (in terms of the number of jobs) over the 2004-2014 decade are in nontradable domestic services. The top ten sources of the most jobs in "superpower" America are: retail salespersons, registered nurses, postsecondary teachers, customer service representatives, janitors and cleaners, waiters and waitresses, food preparation (includes fast food), home health aides, nursing aides, orderlies and attendants, general and operations managers. Note than none of this projected employment growth will contribute one nickel toward producing goods and services that could be exported to help close the massive U.S. trade deficit. Note, also, that few of these job classifications require a college education. The knowledge jobs that Americans have been promised for 20 years have not materialized.

Among the ten fastest growing occupations (in terms of rate of growth), seven of the ten are in health care and social assistance. The three remaining fields are: network systems and data analysis with 126,000 jobs projected or 12,600 per year; computer software engineering applications with 222,000 jobs projected or 22,200 per year, and computer software engineering systems software with 146,000 jobs projected or 14,600 per year.

Assuming these projections are realized, how many of the computer engineering and network systems jobs will go to Americans? Not many, considering the 65,000 H-1B visas each year (bills have been introduced in Congress to raise the number). The high speed Internet makes it easy for US corporations to offshore these jobs at a fraction of US salaries.

Judging from its ten-year jobs projections for the years 2004-2014, the US Department of Labor does not expect to see any significant high-tech job growth in the US. The knowledge jobs are being outsourced even more rapidly than the manufacturing jobs. The so-called "new economy" was just another hoax perpetrated on the American people.

What has been the US economy’s job performance since January, 2006, and what are the latest ten-year job projections from the Department of Labor? From January 2006 to January 2011, US manufacturing lost another 2,593,000 jobs, 18% of the 2006 manufacturing work force.

For the five-year period from January 2006 through January 2011, US employment in computer and electronic products fell by 190,400 from 1,305,600 to 1,115,200, a decline of 16%. For the ten-year period from January 2001 through January 2011, US employment in computer and electronic products declined by 40%.

Employment losses show up everywhere. In the production of machinery, employment declined by 30% between January 2001 and January 2011. Employment in the manufacture of semiconductors and electronic components literally collapsed falling over the ten-year period from 714,000 to 377,500, a decline of 47%.

It is easy to bore readers with numbers, but it needs to be made clear that employment in First World jobs in the US has collapsed across the board. Employment in the manufacture of electrical equipment and appliances during the first decade of the 21st century declined by 37%. US employment in the manufacture of motor vehicles and parts declined by 44%. Employment in textile mills fell by 66%. Employment in the manufacture of clothing fell by 65%. Employment in the chemical industry fell by 21%.

Employment even fell by 1% in financial activities, supposedly the backbone of the “new economy.”

In what areas did US employment grow during the first decade of the 21st century? In January 2011 there were 1,132,300 more waitresses and bartenders than in January 2001, a gain of 14%. Employment in health care and social assistance increased by 3,686,300, a gain of 29%. Ambulatory health care services accounted for 1,666,300 of these jobs, or 45%. Government employment grew by 1,391,000. As of January 2011 total government employment in the US was 22,226,000, almost twice the number of Americans (11,618,000) employed in manufacturing.

The evidence is conclusive, “globalism” or jobs offshoring has given US employment a Third World complexion with jobs available only in government and nontradable domestic services.

The US Bureau of Labor Statistics’ projections for US job growth between 2008 and 2018 reinforces this conclusion. The BLS projects a 3.5% decline in employment in production occupations such as manufacturing over the coming years. Job growth is projected only for services: nurses, nursing aides, health aides, orderlies, attendants, customer service representatives, food preparation and serving, retail salespersons, office clerks, managers of office and administrative support workers, security guards, waiters and waitresses, truck drivers. The few occupations projected to add jobs that require university education are accountants, teachers, computer software engineers, network systems and data communications, and management analysts.
http://www.bls.gov/news.release/ecopro.t06.htm
Again, because of jobs offshoring and H-1B visas there is no guarantee that software engineering and IT jobs will go to Americans.

The BLS projects that of the thirty occupations with the largest employment growth only seven require university degrees. The BLS projects jobs for university graduates to total 1,434,000 over the decade of 2008-2018. This figure is only 60% of the number of university graduates projected by the National Center for Education Statistics
for the academic year 2011-2012 alone
.
http://nces.ed.gov/programs/digest/d04/tables/dt04_247.asp

In other words, over the 2008-2018 decade, there will be many times more US university graduates than there will be new jobs.

The National Center for Education Statistics projects that the academic year 2011-2012 will produce 1,570,000 bachelor degrees, 671,000 master’s degrees, 98,500 professional degrees (medical doctors, dentists, lawyers), and 52,700 Ph.D. degrees, for a total of 2,392,200. If the 731,000 two-year Associate Degrees (for example, the qualification for a registered nurse) are included, US colleges and universities are projected to graduate 3,123,200 people from the 2011-2012 academic year.

Where are these graduates going to find employment? To see the extent of the problem, consider the projection by the National Center for Education Statistics that from the academic year 2007-2008 through the academic year 2013-2014, a seven-year period, there will be a total of 16,309,000 university graduates with bachelor, master, Ph.D. and professional degrees. If we include the approximately 5,000,000 associate degrees, we have a 7-year graduate total of more than 21,000,000 for which the BLS projects employment prospects of 143,400 per year for university graduates and 58,200 per year for registered nurses with Associate Degrees.

Many graduates of US universities are foreigners. I have been unable to find numbers for foreign graduates of US universities by year and am unable to learn what percentage of these graduates return to their home countries. I will make an estimate based on my having attended recent graduation ceremonies at Stanford University, Georgia Tech, and the University of Missouri. I would estimate that one-third of the graduates were not US citizens. Let’s raise that estimate to one-half, and let’s assume that all foreign graduates return to their home countries. That leaves 8 million American US university graduates over a 7-year period chasing 1,434,000 jobs over a 10-year period.

Retirements also provide job opportunities for new graduates. To compute the extent of the surplus of university graduates, we would have to have the retirement rate and to know how many retirees are replaced by new hires. Nevertheless, considering the large number of graduates compared to the small number of new jobs that require a university education, it is difficult to see a future for education in America.

According to experts, the US economy must create between 130,000 and 150,000 new jobs each month just to stay even with population growth. To reduce the high rate of unemployment requires higher job growth. If we use the lower figure of 130,000, 1,560,000 new jobs are needed per year to keep unemployment from rising. Over a ten year period 15,600,000 jobs would be required. The US economy has not come close to generating the number of jobs required by population growth. The Bureau of Labor Statistics reports that over the ten-year period January 2001 to January 2011, the US economy lost 2,141,000 jobs. That leaves a deficit of 17,741,000 jobs.
http://data.bls.gov/pdq/SurveyOutputServlet

The “new economy’s” knowledge jobs are nowhere to be found. Merely three occupations which only require short or medium term on-the-job-training--home health aides, customer service representatives, and food preparation--are projected to add almost as many jobs as the occupations that require a university education. Of the top ten occupational classifications with the largest projected job growth, only accountants and auditors (number 8) and postsecondary teachers (number 10) require university degrees.

This is the “new economy” bequeathed by globalism that takes the place of the old manufacturing/industrial economy. The promised “knowledge jobs” are nowhere in the picture. America has become a “superpower” with a Third World work force employed in lowly paid domestic services.

While jobs offshoring destroyed US employment and consumer income growth, government, corporations and their shills among economists and in the media produced a constant flow of assurances that “globalism” was good for America. During the George W. Bush regime, the US Department of Commerce spent $335,000 to study the impact of the offshoring of US high-tech jobs, but refused to release the study. Republican political appointees reduced the 200-page report to 12 pages of public relations hype and refused to allow the Technology Administration experts who wrote the report to testify before Congress.

Democrats on the House Science Committee were unable to pry the study out of the hands of Commerce Secretary Carlos Gutierrez. On March 29, 2006, Republicans on the House Science Committee voted down a resolution (H.Res. 717) designed to force the Commerce Department to release the study to Congress. Obviously, the facts did not fit the Bush regime’s globalization hype.

The BLS payroll data that we have examined tracks employment by industry classification. This is not the same thing as occupational classification. For example, companies in almost every industry and area of business employ people in computer-related occupations. A study (2004) from the Association for Computing Machinery claims: "Despite all the publicity in the United States about jobs being lost to India and China, the size of the IT employment market in the United States today is higher than it was at the height of the dot.com boom. Information technology appears as though it will be a growth area at least for the
coming decade."

We can check this claim by turning to the November 2004 BLS Occupational Employment Statistics.. We will look at “computer and mathematical employment"
and
“
architecture and engineering employment.
"

Computer and mathematical employment includes such fields as "software engineers applications," "software engineers systems
software," "computer programmers," "network systems and data
communications," and "mathematicians." Has this occupation been a source of job growth?

In November of 2000 this occupation employed
2,932,810 people
. In November of 2004, this occupation employed 2,932,790, or 20 people fewer. Stagnant employment is not “high growth.”
http://www.bls.gov/oes/2004/november/oes_15Co.htm

Architecture and engineering employment includes all the architecture and engineering fields except software engineering. The total employment of architects and engineers in the U.S. declined by 120,700 between November 1999 and November 2004. Whatever the year used as the base employment declined. For example, employment declined by 189,940 between November 2000 and November 2004, and by 103,390 between November 2001 and November 2004.

Clearly, engineering and computer-related employment in the US did not grow during the period as claimed by the Association of Computing Machinery. Moreover, with a half million foreigners in the U.S. on work visas, the overall employment numbers do not represent employment of Americans.

American employees have been abandoned by American corporations and by their representatives in Congress. America remains a land of opportunity--but for foreigners--not for the native born. A country whose work force is concentrated in domestic nontradable services has no need for scientists and engineers and no need for universities. Even the projected jobs in nursing and school teachers can be filled by foreigners on H-1B visas.