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Outrage: Immigrants Account For ALL Job Gains Since 2000, While Native-Born Americans’ Employment Has Fallen

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Photo Credit: APImmigrants — both legal and illegal — have accounted for all of the job gains in the U.S. labor market since 2000, according to a report that highlights the stiff competition for jobs in a tight economy as Congress debates adding more workers to the mix.

The Center for Immigration Studies report, which is being released Wednesday, says 22.4 million immigrants of working age held jobs at the beginning of this year, up 5.3 million over the total in 2000. But native-born workers with jobs dropped 1.3 million over that same period, from 114.8 million to 113.5 million.

Meanwhile, the number of Americans who aren’t in the labor force at all has jumped by almost 13 million to reach 48.6 million — a finding the report’s authors say signals profound changes in the American job market and challenges conventional wisdom that immigration is good for the economy.

“The last 13 years, or even the last five years, make clear that large-scale immigration can go hand-in-hand with weak job growth and declining rates of work among the native-born,” the authors, Steven A. Camarota and Karen Zeigler, say in their report. “Given the employment situation in the country, the dramatic increases in legal immigration contemplated by the Gang of Eight immigration bill seem out of touch with the realities of the U.S. labor market.”

Whether immigrants compete for jobs is a heated topic — though the Senate all but ignored it during the chamber’s debate on its bill to legalize most illegal immigrants and create opportunities for new immigrants and temporary workers to enter the U.S.

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NC Becomes 1st State To Drop Federal Jobless Funds

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Photo Credit: CESAR MANSO/AFP/Getty Images

Photo Credit: CESAR MANSO/AFP/Getty Images

With changes to its unemployment law taking effect this weekend, North Carolina not only is cutting benefits for those who file new claims, it will become the first state disqualified from a federal compensation program for the long-term jobless.

State officials adopted the package of benefit cuts and increased taxes for businesses in February, a plan designed to accelerate repayment of a $2.5 billion federal debt. Like many states, North Carolina had racked up the debt by borrowing from Washington after its unemployment fund was drained by jobless benefits during the Great Recession.

The changes go into effect Sunday for North Carolina, which has the country’s fifth-worst jobless rate. The cuts on those who make unemployment claims on or after that day will disqualify the state from receiving federally funded Emergency Unemployment Compensation. That money kicks in after the state’s period of unemployment compensation — now shortened from up to six months to no more than five — runs out. The EUC program is available to long-term jobless in all states. But keeping the money flowing includes a requirement that states can’t cut average weekly benefits.

Because North Carolina leaders cut average weekly benefits for new claims, about 170,000 workers whose state benefits expire this year will lose more than $700 million in EUC payments, the U.S. Labor Department said.

Lee Creighton, 45, of Cary, said he’s been unemployed since October, and this is the last week for which he’ll get nearly $500 in unemployment aid. He said he was laid off from a position managing statisticians and writers amid the recession’s worst days in 2009 and has landed and lost a series of government and teaching jobs since then — work that paid less half as much. His parents help him buy groceries to get by.

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The Hidden Jobless Disaster

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The market tanked Wednesday on bad preliminary job news. And so, when Friday’s jobs report is released, the unemployment rate and the number of new jobs will come in for close scrutiny. Then again, they always attract the most attention. Even the Federal Reserve focuses on the unemployment rate, announcing on a number of occasions that a rate of 6.5% will indicate when it is time to start raising interest rates and winding down the Fed’s easy-money policies.

Yet the unemployment rate is not the best guide to the strength of the labor market, particularly during this recession and recovery. Instead, the Fed and the rest of us should be watching the employment rate. There are two reasons.

First, the better measure of a strong labor market is the proportion of the population that is working, not the proportion that isn’t. In 2006, 63.4% of the working-age population was employed. That percentage declined to a low of 58.2% in July 2011 and now stands at 58.6%. By this measure, the labor market’s health has barely changed over the past three years.

Photo Credit: Bureau of Labor Statistics

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In Time of Sequesters, Federal Government Posts 27,000 Job Openings

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Photo Credit: Charles DharapakThe budget cuts known as sequestration were supposed to wreak havoc, forcing the shrinking of critical workforces including airport security officers and food inspectors. But since sequestration kicked in March 4, the government has posted openings for 4,300 federal job titles to hire some 10,300 people. The median position has a salary topping out at $76,000, and one-fourth of positions pay $113,000 or more, according to an analysis by The Washington Times of federal job listings.

Altogether, the jobs will pay up to $792 million per year. Including job postings that have been open since before sequestration, the government is in the market for 27,000 employees who will make up to $1.8 billion a year.

The jobs posted since sequestration include 2,800 positions at the Department of Veterans Affairs, 519 at the Indian Health Service and 50 at the Smithsonian Institution.

They also include service jobs seemingly designed to ensure that existing government employees live well.

The Defense Department is recruiting 71 bartenders and 123 waiters. If they worked full-time, these employees would earn more than $3.4 million a year. Nearly half of these positions were first posted after sequestration kicked in.


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Economy Slips, Percentage of Working Americans Lowest Since 1979

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Photo Credit: Tax Credits

The nation’s economy added 88,000 jobs in March, a figure far below expectations that is likely to trigger new doubts about the strength of the economy.

While the unemployment rate fell to 7.6 percent, that reflected 496,000 workers leaving the workforce, not a strengthening labor market. The 63.3 percent labor participation rate is the lowest since 1979.

Analysts had expected job gains near 200,000 in March. The report released Friday by the Bureau of Labor Statistics is likely to renew a debate in Washington about the direction of the economy. Republicans seized on the numbers to criticize President Obama, with House Majority Leader Eric Cantor (Va.) quoting a former Obama economic adviser to describe the figures as a “punch to the gut.”

“Today’s jobs report is disappointing,” Cantor said in a statement. “Our economy is not creating enough jobs, and too many working men and women are still in the unemployment line.

“For months, we’ve heard plenty of excuses from the White House and Congressional Democrats for why unemployment remains high. It’s time to stop making excuses and start working together on common sense solutions to address our lingering unemployment problem, and the stagnant economy,” Cantor said.

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Law Schools Sued for Misleading Applicants About Job Prospects

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Photo Credit: Reuters

Numerous lawsuits have been filed against law schools across the nation by former graduates who allege that the law schools deceived them about the success rates of their former students.

Five of the nearly 20 lawsuits have been filed against California schools, four of which are Southwestern, Golden Gate University, the University of San Francisco and San Diego’s Thomas Jefferson and California Western schools of law, all of which charge roughly $40,000 per year in tuition.

Some graduates have taken low-paying jobs such as working in hourly jobs in department stores and restaurants, or finding work in temporary or part-time legal positions. Southwestern Law School, for example, once asserted that 97% of its graduates found jobs within nine months of graduation.

Some of the reasons for the dearth of job prospects for newly-graduated lawyers are:

The advent of computer availability for legal work, including as substitution for law libraries, so that much work can stay in-house at firms which once farmed the work out, Internet companies that offer litigants legal documents and help, The simple staggering number of lawyers in the market. Joseph Dunn, chief executive of the State Bar of California, said, “I don’t think any of them rival the situation we are seeing today. The legal community in all 50 states is being dramatically impacted.”

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Video: McDonald's Cashier Requires Bachelor's Degree, Two Years Experience

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Photo Credit: Washington Examiner

With colleges producing more graduates, and youth unemployment at a sky-high 11.5 percent, even landing a job selling Big Macs is getting competitive.

Consider: A job opening at a Massachusetts McDonald’s restaurant for a full-time cashier requires one to two years experience and a bachelor’s degree.

“Get a weekly paycheck with a side order of food, folks and fun,” offered McDonalds.

It is not clear if the fast-food restaurant really wants that kind of experience or is fishing for the highest-qualified applicants…

Watch video here:

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Will Your Job Be ‘Reshored’ To A Federal Prisoner?

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Photo Credit: x1klima

Twelve million Americans are currently unemployed, according to the most recent Department of Labor statistics. Forty percent of the unemployed have been so for at least six months, and the average job seeker spends 36.9 weeks out of work.

The good news for the jobless? US industry is now in the throes of a “reshoring” trend: “Next year we’re going to bring some production to the US,” Apple (NASDAQ:AAPL) CEO Tim Cook told Bloomberg Businessweek in December. “This doesn’t mean that Apple will do it ourselves, but we’ll be working with people and we’ll be investing our money.”

The bad news? The Bureau of Prisons is angling to have as many reshored jobs as possible filled by federal prisoners.

Between 2000 and 2011, wages in Asia have nearly doubled, according to the International Labour Organization. The Chinese government is planning to increase the minimum wage by 13% annually until 2015. Labor unrest, formerly unheard of in Asia, has become more frequent, with companies routinely raising workers’ pay after strikes. At the same time, wages paid to federal inmates working in prison factories across the United States have remained flat, ranging from $0.23 to $1.15 an hour.

Federal Prison Industries — also known by the trade name UNICOR — is a self-sustaining, self-funding company within the US Bureau of Prisons. It is owned wholly by the US government and was created by an act of Congress in 1934 to function as a rehabilitative tool to teach real-world work skills to federal inmates. These inmates were historically limited to producing goods for government use, such as furniture, uniforms, even, believe it or not, components for Patriot missiles.

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Video: ‘Let America Get Back To Work!’ – Santelli Explodes During Panel Discussion On The Fed’s Easy-Money Policies

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Not one to shy away from voicing his opinion, CNBC’s Rick Santelli on Friday clashed with his colleagues over topics that included Quantitative Easing, unemployment, and Fed’s supposed plan to revive the U.S. economy.

Photo Credit: NPR“Five years into this crisis, I think it’s all disappointing,” Santelli said, referring to recovery’s slow pace. “It would take five years at the present job rate to get to where we were before the crisis.”

Indeed, as noted earlier on TheBlaze, although today’s unemployment numbers are heartening, there’s still a lot a work that needs to be done before we can get back to pre-recession employment levels.

“There is no crisis!” Santelli continued, taking issue with the Federal Reserve’s open-ended commitment to monthly purchases of $85 billion dollars worth of bonds. “Why they’re still in crisis mode is beyond belief and I think it’s wrong.”

“Rick,” CNBC senior economics reporter Steve Liesman interjected, “Some 7.7 percent of the population is unemployed. The U6 is 14.3 percent and that’s part of the problem there, Rick. There is a crisis! There’s a crisis of unemployment in this country.”

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New Bills Would Halt Health Law’s Employer Mandate

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photo credit: 401(k)2013House and Senate bills introduced Thursday would kill a key provision of President Obama’s healthcare law — the mandate that most employers must offer health benefits to workers.

The legislation was introduced by prominent Republicans, who called the requirement a “job killer.”

“The employer mandate is a drag on our economy, forcing too many of our nation’s job creators to stop hiring and grow their businesses in order to comply with this onerous provision in president’s health law,” Sen. Orrin Hatch (Utah) said in a statement.

“Instead of letting the federal government dictate how employers should allocate resources, let’s repeal this job-killing mandate and let businesses get back in the business of hiring,” Hatch said.

The employer mandate requires that companies of 50 or more workers provide health insurance or pay fines if more than 30 employees receive government assistance to buy coverage. The health offerings must be affordable, and they must include a variety of “essential health benefits.”

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