we've experience what i'd term huge layoffs over the past several years, for example, entire plant closings. whether or not they occurred during the period you refer to as "this recession" i have no idea because i don't know when this recession started. to me, we haven't gotten out of a depression. sure, statistics say we have, as the corp business press gleefully reported; but i don't buy it. a lot of people are out of work with little hope of finding jobs, and there was little or no rehiring.
there are many more people out of work than is reported, as well as many more people with a much lower standard of living than they had before; people are suffering. the current depression started long before 2000. as did outsourcing. the economy looks a lot prettier in the abstract than it does in real life. the increasing gap between rich and poor, and the gradual extinction of the so-called middle class, is not the result of a recession but of a depression.
please don't feel you need to say for the 102nd time outsourcing was not a major culprit since 2000. i got the message the first time you said it, and i believe you. there isn't a single "culprit." it's a blend of greed, technology, and several other factors including outsourcing.
R
----- Original Message ----- From: "Doug Henwood" <dhenwood at panix.com> To: <lbo-talk at lbo-talk.org> Sent: Tuesday, June 08, 2004 7:51 AM Subject: Re: [lbo-talk] jobs
R wrote:
>the fact huge layoffs and outsourcing are followed by small gains in jobs
There weren't "huge layoffs" in this recession. Job loss was smaller than the average post-WWII downturn - appx 1.6% vs. an average of 2.2%. What was unusual was the slowness to recover. And outsourcing, as I'm now saying for the 101st time, was only a small culprit; the CWA/WashTech count <http://www.techsunite.org/offshore/> is 228,679 over four years - or the equivalent of one month's normal job growth over the last 50 years.
Doug ___________________________________ http://mailman.lbo-talk.org/mailman/listinfo/lbo-talk