Where Have All the Jobs Gone?

You can blame it on the economy. Millions of jobs eliminated. Millions have been fired or have been laid off with no word when they will be reactivated. Everyone is wondering when the economy will rebound and the jobs will return. Okay, the bad news. Those jobs will most likely never return. You see, this is a disaster that has been a long time in coming and your government has not only not prepared for it but has helped exasperated the situation by contributing to it by eliminating government jobs and lying about jobs created in the private sector.

There are two main reasons for jobs disappearing in the new economy. One is with the merging of so many companies and big corporations driving small businesses into bankruptcy the jobs that the competing companies once had are now gone. If company A buys out or merges with company B then they become one single company and any redundant jobs are eliminated. For example lets say that Pepsi was to merge with Coke. Now suddenly both companies are no longer competing. No reason to have two different bottling plants if you can have Pepsi and Coke being bottled in the same plant, so now CokePepsi needs only half of their employees. Guess what happens to the other half. Another thing that is happening is Buck Rogers Syndrome. In science fiction the future was depicted where man no longer had to work because all labor was taken over by robots and computers. As far fetch as that sounds it is actually beginning to happen. Primitive robotic arms have replaced factory workers. The computer began eliminating jobs as far back as the 1940's. The actual word computer originally described a job. If you knew basic math and were good at adding and subtracting then you could be hired as a computer who would sit in a room and do all the math for a given company. In the 1800's companies still needed to balance their books, to add up all their paychecks, expenses and profits. With no such thing as electronic computers the job fell to humans. Typically a company would hire three computers to do the job who when done would compare each other's results to make sure no mistakes were made. The computers job was first threatened by mechanical adding machines in the late 1800s. Since adding machines sometimes jammed you still needed a computer around to do the work if needed. The electronic computer not only never jammed but could do the job of 10,000 human computers in a split second.

Since then the computer has eliminated hundreds of jobs. A more recent example is photoshop making most of the jobs in the art department obsolete at magazines and advertising firms. As smarter computers and better programs learn to recognize shapes through camera lenses, basically learning to see, other jobs will also be eliminated. Already the computer has eliminated the conductor on trains and will soon be able to eliminate the motorman. In the near future you will walk into a subway that is fully automated. You will pay your fare at a vending machine and step onto a train with no human driver nor conductor. It will be a while before technology has advanced enough so that we have mobile robots walking around that can recognize shapes and faces and are as intelligent as humans. When that day comes there will be no more need for any human labor. Robots do not get tired, can work shifts that never end, and do not ask to be paid. But at the moment we are seeing more and more machines and computer programs that are replacing human jobs.

But only a fraction of the jobs have been lost to technology and mergers. The majority are what is called unnecessary loss. This happens when the executives at companies decide they can cut costs by eliminating job positions. It is no secret that many companies are woefully understaffed. Go to your local bank and odds are that only four of the twelve windows have tellers behind them, and those tellers are doing double duty by walking away from the window to do some accounting work, something that decades ago someone else would have done. Today's bank teller is doing the job of at least three people, and despite the long line and empty windows your bank only has enough tellers working a shift to fill less than half those windows. So what happens to the money that the banks have save by cutting down on employees? They have raised their own salaries. The executives at banks are paid so much money that the banks can no longer afford to hire the correct number of employees even if they wanted to. This is much the same at most businesses where workers are expected to double or triple task. Heads of departments will always tell you that they wish they could hire more workers but never get the permission from the higher ups.

Hiring less employees than needed has even turned into a huge scam that the tax payers subsidize. Big companies look for tax breaks whenever they relocate or open up in new locations. They do this by promising that they will create thousands of jobs for the community. And when that company does open in the community those thousands of jobs do exist. The problem is that no one is ever hired to fill them. The company has a human resources department that is constantly taking resumes and occasionally conducting interviews but never seems to hire anyone. This is more obvious at your local box store. Walk in and notice all the empty cashiers. Those positions should have been filled years ago. It is not as if not enough qualified persons are applying for the job. Millions have complained about applying for cashier jobs and never hearing back from the box store. Now take a stroll through the aisles and notice how much merchandise is not in stock. This should not be the case with such a large store. The problem is cause by not having enough stock persons. Shelves should be monitored constantly and any item that runs out immediately replaced. In fact those items should be restocked even before they run out. Since there are not enough stock persons in these stores shelves can remain bare for days, usually not being refilled until a customer asks. Most customers do not ask and simply look for that item in a different store. This throws off how much of that particular item is ordered from the main warehouse and leads to it being out of stock. The stock person, cashiers, and other job positions exist but are not being filled. The employees that are hired end up doing three to five times the work taking over for the missing employees.

Odds are when that box store wanted to move into your neighborhood there was some resistance from local stores and community members who did not want the extra traffic the store would bring in. The store countered this resistance by promising to create hundreds of jobs for the community, this argument giving them the approval to build the store. But community activists complain that very few or no jobs end up going to the local community. Odds are if one box store opens another box store somewhere else nearby has closed. The company simply transfers workers from one box store to another before they even bother to begin hiring new workers. Even then since resumes are sent to a corporate office those in the community are competing against resumes from outside the community. And then what is never factored in is the loss of community jobs that box store creates. A Home Depot opening up in a town may result in several smaller local hardware stores going out of business. A K-Mart could result in a wider variety of local stores going bankrupt. Workers in those stores have lost their jobs. Unfortunately politicians love to say that under their watch they created X amount of jobs. They never bother to factor in lost jobs and they never bother to question if the created jobs are ever filled. It is not in their interest to say that no one has ever been hired for those thousands of created jobs because it would only make them look bad. So they turn a blind eye to the scam. This causes a disproportionate number of jobs reported to exist Vs. the actual number of people hired to work. The government itself is guilty of not hiring enough employees. For the past few decades politicians have been cutting taxes. But to do this they had to eliminate jobs by the tens of thousands. Many of those jobs were essential, everything from the DMV which explains why it takes you hours to renew your licence, to firemen, school teachers and police. Firing government workers sends them into the private sector looking for jobs and competing against non government workers.

Another huge problem is the allowed erosion of the minimum wage job. It is suppose to be illegal to make anyone work below the legal minimum wage. If not for that minimum wage law then for those competing for jobs the employer would take the one willing to work for the lowest wage. Those desperate for work would take an unrealistically low wage, as would teenagers who live at home, do not have expenses like rent to worry about, and are only looking to make a few extra bucks. However, companies are allowed to pay below minimum wage if they are claiming to be training that employee. The problem here is that many companies abuse this right. They hire employees, put them through a couple of weeks of training where they are underpaid, then tell them they were not working out and hire another employee to work the two weeks while essentially training for the job. Authorities never seem to question why a local grocery store has gone through 5,000 employees over the past decade and none of them made it past training. But this abuse of the system pales when compared to the Intern programs offered by colleges. Here students are sent over to companies to work for free. The student is rewarded for this effort with college credit. The problem is that the whole point of an intern program was originally so that the student could learn a job that he could eventually be hired for. An intern position was suppose to be a job position a company wanted to fill. By agreeing to take on an intern the company is suppose to be training that person for the position and the only excuse not to hire that person once the training ends is if he or she did not do their intern job well. Today companies freely admit that they are not going to hire their interns once the training period has ended. And since they are not hiring then it turns out to be pointless to train for a job that will never exist. And quite often the intern winds up not even training for the position. An intern working for a radio station could end up making coffee, faxing documents, and doing other mundane tasks that are common to any office without ever being trained to do anything unique to working in a radio station. And once they have graduated from college it will turn out impossible to get a job at a radio station because the stations are only taking on interns. Worst of all the intern is paying a high tuition to his college. During his internship that college is not actually teaching him anything but is still making him pay tens of thousands of dollars. A student winds up paying thousands for the privilege of doing office work for free.

And then there is Workfare. Workfare is what replaced Welfare. Remember a couple of decades ago when politicians convinced you that we needed to do away with Welfare because it encouraged people to sit home and not work, instead collecting millions of your tax dollars so they could be lazy? The truth was that only a fraction of those on Welfare could truly be called lazy. The rest were those more than wiling to work but for various reason were unable to find employment. Workfare forces those collecting a check to spend their entire day looking for work. The problem is that by forcing millions to look for work those people went after the jobs that the working class had. This has only hurt those who were willing to work and already had jobs. The more people looking for your job the less your boss has to pay you, simple as that. It also puts your job at risk as you can now be replaced in a heartbeat by someone willing to work at minimum wage and without a proper health plan. In fact since Workfare recipients also get Medicare they do not need a medical benefits package from your company, so now there is incentive for you to be fired and replaced with a Workfare worker even if you are only making minimum wage. And if someone on Workfare is unable to get himself hired he is given what is called a WEP assignment. Basically this is forcing them to work for the city or state for 30¢ an hour. And guess what. If the city or state can get workers for 30¢ then there is incentive for them to fire legitimate government employees and replace them with WEP workers. Those fired employees usually end up in Workfare creating more WEP workers who in turn eliminate more government jobs. The Welfare reform the politicians have convinced you that you wanted has only resulted in your job being at risk and lower wages.

But what has gotten the most attention for losing jobs is outsourcing. This is when a company fires it's workers and moves the company overseas to take advantage of cheaper labor. Quite often that labor is cheaper because the country in question, such as China, is communist. In a communist country housing health and utilities are paid for by the government. This cuts down on expenses each citizen has and therefore makes it possible for them to work for lower wages. The irony here is that capitalism is thriving by subsidizing communism. meanwhile the very citizens of this country who fought on the side of capitalism during the cold war are the ones losing their jobs to communist or socialist countries under the very system they fought to preserve.

With so many jobs gone oversees, to technology, or eliminated altogether it is very unlikely they will ever be replaced. Back in the 80's saw the rise of the McJob named after the unfortunate person who can only find work flipping hamburgers at McDonalds. Much like the burger flipper any McJob at any company offers nothing but low wages and little to no job advancement, whether that job is at Walmart or anywhere else. Now even the McJobs are dwindling along with the legitimate career jobs. Politicians keep ignoring the problem, but in fact it has it's own effect on the economy. People without jobs can not buy products. Products do not sell and the factories close. The factories close and Businesses are no longer able to make money, etc. The economy needs everyone to have spending money for it to work. The economy stops working then everyone suffers. Even the rich who's money is devalued. If there is no economy then money is no longer worth the paper it is printed on. The Romans found this out the hard way when their Empire collapsed beginning the Dark Ages. While nothing that drastic will happen a ruined economy would still result in the rich losing their fortune aside from their property. It is in the best interest for everyone to make sure the poor are well paid. But the mechanism to do this does not exist. Politicians hope to solve the problem by creating new jobs, particularly green jobs which translates to inventing new technology that will need new workers trained in that technology. But as we begin to make the transition into the futuristic world of Buck Rogers we face the day when there will no longer be a need for a working class. The only way to prop up the economy after that point would be through the very system that American politicians have resisted, communism. There will have to be a system of distributing the wealth back to the lower and middle classes so that they may continue to keep the economy growing. Up til now the only way to do this was through jobs, but as those jobs disappear so is that way of transferring wealth. If this problem is not solved then we could end up living in a futuristic world where everyone but the robots are poor.