As the President delivers his State of the Union address tonight, Americans will reflect on the state of their own personal situations. Despite diligent attempts by federal agencies to paint a rosy picture, the reality is average citizens are enduring difficult times. Employment and wages are faring poorly.
Let’s start with wages. Marketwatch reports that wages have recently declined. “Average wages fell a penny to $25.24 an hour.” Normally, after the end of a recession, wages are expected to rise, leading to further belief that our economy, rather than recovering, is heading in the wrong direction.
Those workers with declining pay may still consider themselves fortunate, however, since they, at least actually have jobs. Despite the fact that the White Houses claims that unemployment has been reduced, a closer look reveals a far more troubling picture.
According to the Bureau of Labor Statistics,
“Total nonfarm payroll employment rose by 292,000 in December, and the unemployment rate was unchanged at 5.0 percent…Employment gains occurred in several industries, led by professional and business services, construction, health care, and food services and drinking places. Mining employment continued to decline. The number of unemployed persons, at 7.9 million, was essentially unchanged in December, and the unemployment rate was 5.0 percent for the third month in a row…Among the major worker groups, the unemployment rate for blacks declined to 8.3 percent in December, while the rates for adult men (4.7 percent), adult women (4.4 percent),teenagers (16.1 percent), whites (4.5 percent), Asians (4.0 percent), and Hispanics(6.3 percent) showed little or no change…The number of long-term unemployed (those jobless for 27 weeks or more) was essentially unchanged at 2.1 million in December and accounted for 26.3 percent of the unemployed.The number of long-term unemployed has shown little movement since June…”
Digging deeper reveals troubling specifics. As the New York Post noted,
To be more specific that high fructose corn syrup tends to down regulate our cells’ insulin receptors. 100mg viagra for sale There is of course a bit exaggerated, at least for most of us mere mortals, but the fact is that Tadacip (cialis 10 mg ), which many regarded as second-generation male enhancement has an effect that lasts up to 36 hours following dosing. Stress reduces the secretion get cialis overnight of testosterone. Modulation: Every time each of three grams of boiling water, three times a month. tadalafil in canada look at this pharmacy store
“… those numbers don’t reflect what is happening on the Main Streets of American. There, life is a lot tougher. For example, the broader measure of unemployment, called U-6, which measures Americans working in part-time jobs because they can’t find a 40-hour-a-week job, finds 6 million people, or 9.9 percent of the workforce, not able to find a full-time job…Plus, if you add in all the discouraged workers who want a job but have given up looking, the number of unemployed could reach 20 percent of the population. There were some other strange things in Friday’s glowing employment report. For instance, why did construction jobs increase by 45,000 last month? Labor says it had nothing to do with the unusually warm weather in most of the nation, but how could that not have had an impact? There were also 39,000 new health-care jobs, which was about average for every month in 2015. But most of these jobs are probably related to the continued rollout of ObamaCare. A change in the law like that has nothing to do with economic vitality. ..Another noticeable oddity in Friday’s report is this: “Food service and drinking places added 37,000 jobs in December,” Labor said. For 2015 there were 357,000 new jobs in this category. Really? How many new bars were added to your town?”
Dr. Paul C. Roberts, writing in Global Research,, is also harshly critical of the optimistic jobs picture. He notes that “the alleged job growth always takes place in non-tradable domestic services, that is, in areas that do not produce exports and have no competition from imports. This is the job profile of a Third World country…the US labor force participation rate has been declining. In December, 2015, there are 1,185,000 fewer Americans in the labor force than in December 2014; yet, the working age population is higher today than a year ago. The reported unemployment rate does not include “discouraged workers,” that is, workers who unable to find jobs have ceased looking for work. The reported unemployment rate of 5% only counts non-discouraged workers who are still expecting to find a job. The actual unemployment rate, that is, the rate that includes Americans who have given up hope of finding employment, is 23%… let’s look at the make believe jobs that the BLS claims. Almost all of them are in lowly paid domestic services, such as waitresses, bartenders, couriers and messengers, employment services, social services and health care (primarily ambulatory health care services).”
The New York Times provides this analysis: the strongest employment growth during the sluggish recovery has been in low-wage work, at places like strip malls and fast-food restaurants. In essence, the poor economy has replaced good jobs with bad ones. That is the conclusion of a new report from the National Employment Law Project, a research and advocacy group, analyzing employment trends four years into the recovery… Higher-wage industries — like accounting and legal work — shed 3.6 million positions during the recession and have added only 2.6 million positions during the recovery. But lower-wage industries lost two million jobs, then added 3.8 million… With joblessness high and job gains concentrated in low-wage industries, hundreds of thousands of Americans have accepted positions that pay less than they used to make, in some cases, sliding out of the middle class and into the ranks of the working poor.
The Washington Times outlines another key employment issue: “Two-thirds of those who have found employment under President Obama are immigrants, both legal and illegal.”
The Obama Administration’s high corporate taxes, lax immigration policies, poor international trade policies, excessive regulations, environmental extremism and disincentives on hiring from programs such as the Affordable Care Act have devastated the middle income job market.