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author: PAUL CRAIG ROBERTS, CounterPunch, July 15, 2005 - The June payroll jobs report did not receive much attention due to the July 4 holiday, but the depressing 21st century job performance of the US economy continues unabated.

The June payroll jobs report did not receive much attention due to the July 4 holiday, but the depressing 21st century job performance of the US economy continues unabated.

o Only 144,000 private sector jobs were created, each one of which was in domestic services.

o 56,000 jobs were created in professional and business services, about half of which are in administrative and waste services.

o 38,000 jobs were created in education and health services, almost all of which are in health care and social assistance.

o 19,000 jobs were created in leisure and hospitality, almost all of which are waitresses and bartenders.

o Membership associations and organizations created 10,000 jobs and repair and maintenance created 4,000 jobs.

o Financial activities created 16,000 jobs.

This most certainly is not the labor market profile of a first world country, much less a superpower.

Where are the jobs for this year's crop of engineering and science graduates?

US manufacturing lost another 24,000 jobs in June.

A country that doesn't manufacture doesn't need many engineers. And the few engineering jobs available go to foreigners.

Readers have sent me employment listings from US software development firms. The listings are discriminatory against American citizens. One ad from a company in New Jersey that is a developer for many companies, including Oracle, specifies that the applicant must have a TN visa.

A TN or Trade Nafta visa is what is given to Mexicans and Canadians, who are willing to work in the US at below prevailing wages.

Another ad from a software consulting company based in Omaha, Nebraska, specifies it wants software engineers who are H-1B transferees. What this means is that the firm is advertising for foreigners already in the US who have H-1B work visas.

The reason the US firms specify that they have employment opportunities only for foreigners who hold work visas is because the foreigners will work for less than the prevailing US salary.

Gentle reader, when you read allegations that there is a shortage of engineers in America, necessitating the importation of foreigners to do the work, you are reading a bald faced lie. If there were a shortage of American engineers, employers would not word their job listings to read that no American need apply and that they are offering jobs only to foreigners holding work visas.

What kind of country gives preference to foreigners over its own engineering graduates?

What kind of country destroys the job market for its own citizens?

How much longer will parents shell out $100,000 for a college education for a son or daughter who end up employed as a bartender, waitress, or temp?

Paul Craig Roberts has held a number of academic appointments and has contributed to numerous scholarly publications. He served as Assistant Secretary of the Treasury in the Reagan administration. His graduate economics education was at the University of Virginia, the University of California at Berkeley, and Oxford University. He is coauthor of The Tyranny of Good Intentions. He can be reached at: paulcraigroberts@yahoo.com

homepage: http://www.counterpunch.org/roberts07162005.html

Tech is not Organized

by johnk Tuesday, Jul. 19, 2005 at 9:10 PM

The main problem experienced by tech workers is that they don't think of themselves as workers. They don't unionize too often, and they often have Libertarian ideological leanings that subvert efforts to organize. In other words, the engineer has been hoist with his own ideological petard. Or vice versa: the ideology may have simply developed from a condition of alienation.

This isn't that much of a surprise, given that, for a long time, until the PC became dominant, the bulk of technical work was government funded war machine projects. People always mold their thinking to match the conditions they must endure to survive and/or prosper, regardless of the moral contradictions.

According to the laws, the H1B program is supposed to stop when there's no shortage. Well, there's no shortage of workers at this moment. There's a shortage of politicized workers willing to write letters and raise a little hell.

As far as outsourcing goes, it's difficult to police the transfer of intellectual property. Instead, one avenue is to attack the business model. Attach tarriffs to outsourcing contractor companies. Force them to open their books, on websites, in xml.

technical workers

by Hex Tuesday, Jul. 19, 2005 at 10:41 PM

The bottem dropped out of the repair business years ago - big business directly killed it by producing desposible products not designed to be repaired

other than descramblers and blue boxes repair was my main income. Thats why I work factory jobs.

Electronics is no longer a viable way to make a living

unless

I was to go the way of designing weapon systems, I.P. products and other methods to kill and enslave people

which I absolutely won't do

So I use my knowledge to reverse engineer and other activities that help people like me without the thought of money

This effectively circumvents the entire problem while also putting my skills to use - a person can likewise use thier tech skills to help rather than hurt

you helping out IMC is just such an activity

I concentrate on minimizing the impact of up's & downs of the tech field by removing it as an expected source of income as experience has taught me over the years it's not reliable unless you do work that's harmful to other people (defence and I.P. businesses)

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