Economic Backward System: Better News for Employment if you work in the Financial Sector and U.S. Dollar Means Bad News for Wall Street. Financial Sector adds 86,000 workers while Manufacturing Slashes another 41,000.

The drop in the unemployment rate I’m sure is taken as good news by any American.  No one wants to see their neighbors, family members, or fellow citizens lose their jobs.  Yet seeing that the unemployment rate dropped to 10 percent and the U-6 rate came down to 17.3 percent, it is important to see what really occurred.  By the way, employers still cut -11,000 jobs in the month so the question of hiring is still a factor.  What the report shows is a stabilization rather than an actual recovery.  Yet if we dig into the report, we find that the corporatocracy that is Wall Street is protecting its own.  Massive job losses did occur last month.

Take a look at the actual sectors that added jobs:

The number one sector for growth is “professional and business services” which means all those poor bankers and financiers are now hiring more people to count their ill gotten profits by gambling on Wall Street.  Service producing jobs grew.  Government, health, and education also expanded and this is directly in line with stimulus funds.  Yet the big gain in professional and business services is disturbing.  This a sector that needs to contract and fall back but here it is adding 86,000 people in November.  Why the need for more workers if lending is contracting, the government is the main mortgage lender, and banks are gouging every good paying customer?

But what sectors lost jobs?  Manufacturing once again got slammed by losing 41,000 jobs.  Construction also was hit hard with 27,000 job cuts.  Retail trade dropped by 15,000 because Americans are cutting back on their spending.  What we can gather from the report is the corporatocracy has done a good job protecting its self while other sectors are still floundering.

To put the current recession in context, let us first look at the 23 consecutive months of job losses:

I averaged the monthly data out.  In 2008 we lost an average of 256,000 jobs per month.  This year, even with the drop in the rate (doesn’t mean people weren’t fired since employers cut 11,000) we have lost an average of 370,000 workers per month.  It is hard to comprehend how deep these cuts really go into the system.  For that, we need to average current employment losses with previous recessions:

Source:  Chart of the Day

The above chart does an excellent job showing how deep this current recession really is.  This by far is the worst recession since the Great Depression.  In fact, for us to get back to “December 2007” we would need to add an average of 150,000 jobs per month for four years straight!  The likelihood of that occurring is virtually impossible.

Now you would think that better than expected employment data would be good.  The U.S. dollar certainly thought so.  And once that information got out the stock markets started giving all their gains back.  Why?  Wall Street is a co-opted casino by the corproatocracy and they were making bets on a weaker dollar since their man Ben Bernanke has been liquefying our currency into the ground.  Clearly adding jobs is good news.  I’ll admit that much.  But are we adding jobs in the right sectors?  Do we really need more bankers and Wall Street charlatans?  Let us look at the manufacturing sector followed by the financial sector to see who took the real hit in this recession:

Manufacturing since the 1970s has never really recovered.  The cuts accelerated in the late 1990s when everyone decided to push paper and flip homes as part of the new economy.  Since the late 1990s manufacturing has contracted by 34 percent, only continuing job cuts with this recession.  We now have as many people working in manufacturing as we did over half a century ago.  Astounding.  But let us take a look at that financial sector that caused this economic mess in the first place:

The financial sector, the nucleus and cause of this economic mess has only contracted by 7 percent and with the BLS report, we already see that it is growing once again.  Let us plot these two together and the obvious goal of the corporatocracy is being met:

What you should be gathering from this so-called recovery is that bail outs were merely tools to get things back to what they were.  Massive house speculation, banks acting like hedge funds, and destroying our manufacturing base.  The chart above should show you the four decade long power growth of the corporatocracy if the actual bail out of the banks wasn’t speaking loud enough for you.

It is amazing to see this kind of destruction of our real economy.  We have to admit that the bailouts have worked; they have worked for the financial industry like a charm and really that is who they were aimed at.  Now, we have to hire more people to kick people out of their homes, a growth in bankruptcy attorneys, and more people to work at employment development departments at local government agencies to help the unemployed.  Is this really the economy we want?  The money should have gone to the sectors that actually produce things.  But states like Michigan, Ohio, and Indiana for example that have little clout in D.C. get slammed in this mess.  The true power centers are in New York and D.C.  Everyone else can find their own way out with the tiny remaining scraps.

Until we see other sectors grow and a more broad base recovery that doesn’t involve Wall Street casinos, much of the recovery will feel muted to the American public.

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