A good article by Sandra Livingston in the Cleveland Plain Dealer a few years ago was titled "Getting a job one day
at a time" regarding temporary help and one has to wonder how the unemployment rate can be so low. Only about 38% of all workers
now qualify for unemployment insurance in America. Temporary, casual labor, day labor, part-time, lease and independent jobs
grow and grow. In the 1970s, the employment rate was primarily based on full-time jobs with benefits including most
workers qualifying for unemployment insurance. Today this is not the case. There is no unemployment data covering these
workers. Millions are "missing in action" from any kind of reporting.
In the high-tech area, a top industry magazine reported that workers were
ready for a UPS type strike in Silicon Valley, where at the time, 40 percent of all high tech workers reside. It never happened
because so many were competing for the same jobs. In the Slicon Valley, many jobs are now temporary contract jobs with
many more inviting because they last longer than the regular jobs. The temp jobs carry few benefits if any at all. The media
and government keeps reporting a scarcity of high tech workers. In the Clinton years, millions in the high tech industries
lost their jobs. In 1997 and 1998 alone, close to 500,000 lost their jobs in high tech.
Surrounding these years, during the most massive dislocation of jobs in U.S.
history, more than a 100 computer manufacturers in the U.S. closed down. With others, the only thing that remains in the USA
was their brand name with most of all operations outside the USA.
We need to ask and keep asking how the low unemployment rate is counted. It
is obvious it does not match up with what is happening on the streets. Hurrican Katrina in New Orleans exposed a vast underclass
which contradicted most unemployment data.
In our city, there are more than 250 temporary help offices in the yellow pages.
We had only a few back in the 1970s when the population of the city was double in size. We went to a world series
baseball game in the late 1990s and celebrated a victory but our emotions were change rapidly after seeing a sea of black
faces waiting to clean up our mess at the stadium. There was no sign of celebration in their faces. The celebration
of statistical prosperity is limited to only a few. On top of this, we have the greatest number of children living in
poverty among all the developed countries in the world . At the same time, the stock market thrives on workers getting
fired instead of hired while letters to the editor complain about beggars on our main downtown streets.
This commentary was first written around the time Warren Beatty made a political
satire movie. He said a 100 million or so were worst off than ever in their lives. A church bulletin in
our city stated - "Success was getting to Social Security age before having to declare bankruptcy". This is America in our
times. Paraphrasing Senator Everett Dirksen, Beatty says 100 million here and a 100 million there starts adding
up to alot of people. It makes one wonder how many of us are living in a silent depression as the food lines grow in our cities
and rural areas.
* Note: The Bureau of Labor Statistics unemployment data is based on a monthly
interviewing of 50,000 households with occupants over the age of 16. These occupants are asked if they were looking
for a job in a certain week in the previous month. If they say no, they are considered employed even if they do not have a
jobs.
