Subj:   PT/TP 11-03 The Jobless Recovery: There is a way out
Date:   11/11/03 11:56:01 PM Eastern Standard Time
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        People's Tribune/Tribuno del Pueblo (Online Edition)
                  Vol. 30 No. 15/ November, 2003

                 P.O. Box 3524, Chicago, IL  60654
                       http://www.lrna.org

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 THE JOBLESS RECOVERY: THERE IS A WAY OUT

Well, here we are again -- another "recession" another "jobless
recovery." Only this one looks like it will be worse than the last
one.  The good news is, there is a way out of this mess. But let's
talk about the real situation first.

To have a jobless recovery means that profits are up, at least for
some businesses, but the unemployed are not going back to work.
Millions of jobs have been eliminated.  Advanced technology is
allowing businesses to boost production back to pre-recession
levels without hiring more workers.

News reports say payrolls increased in September for the first
time in eight months, but unemployment failed to decline, and the
number of long-term unemployed reached the highest level in more
than 10 years. More than two million manufacturing jobs have
disappeared for good in the last several years, either replaced by
technology or shipped to lower-wage areas overseas.

Even many who are working are struggling.  Just ask Myrna
Fernandez, who lives in suburban Chicago with her husband, two
children and a sister.  Her story was told in the Chicago Tribune.
Her family brings in $1,500 a month from four part-time jobs, and
faces the prospect of losing the relatively cheap apartment they
have.  With housing costs having risen 75 percent in Chicago's
northern suburbs since 1994, they have no place to go.

Meanwhile, poverty and unemployment are spreading even into the
ranks of middle-class workers.  The latest U.S. Bureau of the
Census report shows that poverty rose and middle-class incomes
fell in 2002 for the second year running.  Some 1.7 million people
were added to the ranks of the officially poor last year.  Median
household income has dropped 3.3 percent over the past two years.
All this despite the fact that the economy grew during 2002.

And this is not the first recovery during which household and
family income fell, according to the Economic Policy Institute
(EPI).  "The last recovery, which began in 1991, was also weak in
terms of labor market recovery, and therefore income growth, with
real family income falling in the first three years of the
recovery (1991-93)," the EPI says.

The economic forecasts for 2004 suggest the jobless recovery is
expected to persist.  In fact, we can be sure of it, because work
can be done cheaper with technology than with human labor, and
modern information technology allows many jobs to be done anywhere
in the world; the result is that humanity is competing for limited
jobs on a global scale.  This is how it is in an economy that is
privately owned by a few wealthy people.

There is a way out.  In fact, for the mass of humanity there is
ultimately only one way out, and that is to build a new society
where the wealth produced by our collective labor is used to
guarantee that no one is poor, that everyone has whatever they
need -- food, housing, education, health care -- to lead a full
life. Yes, we should continue the struggle for jobs and the other
reforms we seek.  But we should do so with the understanding that
in the end, we cannot reform a dying system, and our real struggle
is to build a new society that we, the people, own and control.



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This article originated in the PEOPLE'S TRIBUNE/TRIBUNO DEL PUEBLO
(Online Edition), Vol. 30 No. 15/ November, 2003; P.O. Box 3524,
Chicago, IL 60654; Email: [log in to unmask]; http://www.lrna.org
Feel free to reproduce and use unless marked as copyrighted. The
PEOPLE'S TRIBUNE/TRIBUNO DEL PUEBLO depends on donations from its
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