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National Jobs for All Network
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P.O. Box 96, Lynbrook, NY 11563 · njfan@njfac.org · www.njfac.org 
News Update, November 2021
October 2021 Jobs Report Analysis
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What Really Changed? And For How Long?
The Jobs Report for October 2021


By FRANK STRICKER

After slow growth in September, the government’s October survey of non-farm organizations showed that job totals increased by 531,000. That is close to the monthly average for the year. The household survey found that unemployment fell again, this time from 4.8% to 4.6%.  That’s close to what some mainstream economists consider virtual full employment. But there are problems with conventional definitions of overall unemployment. And there is plenty of evidence of pain in the Bureau of Labor Statistics’ standard numbers for specific populations. Official unemployment rates for disabled workers were 9.1% and for black teens 16.1%. The white rate, the Asian rate, and the Latino rate were good to fair--at 4%, 4.2%, and 5.9%, but the rate for African Americans was still high at 7.9%

As to the government underestimate of 4.6% for the national unemployment rate, the Full Count by the National Jobs for All Network adds part-timers who want full-time work and people who want jobs but haven’t searched recently. The NJFAN Full Count shows that real unemployment was 10.6%--a far cry from full employment. And job growth may slow if the Federal Reserve trims its stimulus programs and if Biden’s reconciliation bill is not passed soon.

Spoiled Workers?

Maybe we can blame workers for high joblessness. In August (the latest numbers we have) there were 10 million job openings. And average pay, leaving aside inflation and purchasing power, is on the rise. Despite these encouraging conditions, quite a few potential workers have not gone back to work. Many who have jobs are quitting--some to go home, some to find better jobs. There’s a lot of churn in the labor force. And a lot of serious thinking by workers about what they want in a job. This Big Rethink has been discussed in past columns, but it is still going on.

The horrors of the COVID plague and the shock of the pandemic recession caused workers to pause and reflect. For many years there have been subterranean waves of working-class anger and resentment.  And those waves surfaced in the crises of the last year and a half. From on-line complaints and fairly high worker quit-rates, it is clear that millions of people do not want to return to lousy jobs; lousy jobs mean low pay, low-to-no benefits, hard-to-find-child care, arbitrary schedules, COVID threats, and autocratic bosses. (There’s discussion about bad bosses on the r/antiwork forum at Reddit.) Federal subsidies have helped people stay away from work, and the high number of job vacancies--what employers call a “labor shortage”--gives people confidence that they can find a job when they must have one.

But more people are returning to work every month. And in most job sectors. In October, food services and drinking places added 119,000 jobs and retail trade added 35,000. Manufacturing counted 60,000 more jobs and construction, 44,000. There were exceptions, notably in government work. Employment in state and local education programs fell by 65,000. I’d have thought that number would rise as schools got underway. The number of postal service employees fell by 2,400, whether as part of Postmaster General DeJoy’s efforts to cut the department, the service’s inability to find workers, or a glitch in the numbers. (Where I live, near Los Angeles, we have had fewer no-mail days in the last two months.)

Overall, job growth in October was okay, but we are nowhere near real full employment (RFE). We’ve a long way to go--perhaps 7 million more jobs--just to get back to where we would now be if we’d continued the trend line of early 2020. And that would not be RFE as we at NJFAN define it.

Things to Watch For

  • Will more workers return to work at a high rate in the coming months and will job vacancy rates fall?  I think the answer to both questions is affirmative. Clearly, the number of employed Americans is increasing all the time.
  • Will wage increases outpace inflation increases? It is not happening now. If productivity is rising--and it is--employers need not raise prices so much. And if extra-high profit rates, especially for big companies, were limited, prices could moderate. Good luck with that.
  • Will the Big Rethink have lasting impact on the workplace itself? For example, in the future will employees be more likely to quit their jobs than they were before the pandemic, as long as jobs are not really scarce and unemployment is not too high?
  • Will collective activity--strikes, unionization drives, and informal job actions--stay at higher levels than they were before the pandemic?

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Frank Stricker is on the board of the National Jobs for All Network (NJFAN) and is emeritus history professor, California State University, Dominguez Hills. His new book is American Unemployment: Past, Present, and Future (2020).

To comment on this article, visit NJFAN.org

In case you missed it:  Frank Stricker’s analysis of the September Jobs report

September 2021 Official Unemployment Rate by County from GeoFRED


The Full Count: October 2021
Unemployment Data

Officially unemployed: 7.4 MILLION (4.6%)

Hidden unemployment: 10.4 million

(Includes 4.4 million people working part-time

because they can't find a full-time job;
and 6.0 million people who want jobs,

but are not actively looking)

Total: 17.8 MILLION (10.6% of the labor force)

There are 1.7 job-wanters for each available job!

For more information and analysis, visit: www.njfac.org

Source: U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics

Employment Statistics


Since its founding in 1994, the National Jobs for All Network (previously Coalition) has been “telling the whole story” about unemployment.*

Our founders recognized that the official unemployment rate reported monthly by the Labor Department leaves out more jobless and job short workers than it includes. To be counted as unemployed, one must work less than one hour a week in paid employment and be actively seeking employment. As the above figures show, more than half the unemployed or underemployed are left out of the official count. Consider the political consequences of this undercount—of a problem perceived by the public as less than half as widespread as it really is.

*See “Unemployment Statistics: Let’s Tell the Whole Story” by NJFAC founders Helen Lachs Ginsburg, Bill Ayres, and June Zaccone, Employment Statistics: Let's Tell the Whole Story - NJFAC
 

Get Involved!


Join! Donate! Subscribe!

The National Jobs for All Network is dedicated to the proposition that meaningful employment is a precondition for a fulfilling life and that every person capable of working should have the right to a job. As part of our mission, the NJFAN promotes discussion, encourages networking, and disseminates information concerning the problem of unemployment, the struggle for workers’ rights, and the goal of guaranteeing decent work for everyone who wants it.

NJFAN relies on your support. If you find our material useful, please make a tax-deductible donation. We are all volunteers, except for a part-time coordinator and a part-time administrator.

We are publishing this newsletter to provide a public forum where the multiple groups and countless individuals interested in promoting this goal can learn what others are doing to promote the jobs guarantee idea, build public support for it, and pursue legislative initiatives to implement it.

We invite our readers to:
  • Help us establish a Jobs for All Action clearinghouse by informing us of publications, actions, and events that promote a jobs guarantee and related economic justice goals to share the information with other readers
  • Comment on the contents of this issue of the Jobs for All Newsletter
  • Submit ideas for articles in coming issues of the Jobs for All Newsletter
  • Provide names and email addresses of individuals to whom we may send subsequent issues of the Jobs for All Newsletter.
Please send your updates and contact suggestions to njfan@njfac.org. Thanks so much in advance for your help in building this important social movement.

The views expressed in the articles published in the Jobs for All newsletter (including those authored by editors and writers of the newsletter and board members of the NJFAN) are not necessarily those of the NJFAN as an organization. We hope that the newsletter will become a forum of discussion and debate among jobs-for-all/full-employment/right-to-work/job-guarantee advocates. With that goal in mind, we plan to add a letter to the editor section to the newsletter and also encourage readers to email us at http://newsletter@njfan.com to suggest articles they would like to contribute to the newsletter. We promise a quick response.

Newsletter Committee
Chuck Bell and Charlotte Wilhelm (production managers); Trudy Goldberg; Frank Stricker; Philip Harvey; Stephen Monroe Tomczak (Movement News); Logan Martinez; June Zaccone (Full Count and NJFAN website) and Noreen Connell.

National Jobs for All Network
P.O. Box 96
Lynbrook, NY 11563
203-856-3877
Web: www.njfac.org
Email: njfan@njfac.org 
 
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