Obama and the bosses’ media are hailing the latest government jobs report as a sign that the economy is improving for the working class, with an alleged increase of 321,000 jobs (see box) and an unemployment rate “holding steady” at 5.8 percent. As Shadowstats.com shows, this figure is “far removed from underlying reality.” It “defines out of existence” millions of unemployed “for political convenience.”
The Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS) 5.8 percent unemployment rate is based on workers who have actively looked for work in the four weeks preceding their survey. This excludes what they define as “short-term discouraged workers” who have not looked for work in the last year. And it further excludes those millions who have been out of a job for over a year, the so-called long-term discouraged workers, and, as the New York Times says (12/6), “few of the workers who gave up the search for work during the lean years are likely to be hired anytime soon.” On top of that, the BLS further excludes nearly seven million part-time workers who want — but cannot find — a full-time job, which, if included, nearly doubles its rate to 11.3 percent.
However, when all these groups are included in the jobless figures, Shadowstats.com estimates the true unemployment rate at 23 percent, approximately four times the BLS “headline” figure of 5.8 percent! So the BLS simply “disappears” these millions from their phony jobless rate to arrive at their 5.8 percent figure. And none of these totals include those youth who, unable to find a job, join the military. It doesn’t include the economic draft. It definitely does not include unemployed undocumented workers, some of who will be recruited into the armed forces via the Dream Act.
Racist Unemployment
Due to the long-term discrimination against Black workers, racism doubles their unemployment rate even in the BLS figures to 11.1 percent. However, if one were to use the true overall Shadowstats jobless rate of 23 percent, Black workers face an unemployment rate of probably well over 40 percent. This is part of what is behind the police terror in Black communities, murdering and threatening Black workers and especially jobless youth into a feeling of hopelessness that the bosses hope will induce many to join the military. However, the rulers face a dilemma here. How many Black youth will want to “defend a country” whose racist police attack and kill them with impunity?
While many point to the recklessness of the big banks as the cause of the Great Recession — which no doubt contributed to the millions of home mortgage foreclosures, homelessness, and mass unemployment for the working class — the fundamental root of this economic collapse is capitalism. The bankers, like all bosses under this system, are driven to seek maximum profits to stay ahead of their rivals or they will go under, as happened to the Lehman investment house, among others, in this recent collapse.
Decade after decade, for centuries, workers have suffered the boom and bust, the recessions and depressions of a system in which bosses strive to produce as much as they think they can sell. Such a planless system inevitably leads to overproduction, causing the closing of those factories and businesses which cannot sell what they thought they could, and the laying off of millions of workers.
Thus, mass unemployment is built into a system based on competition and the merciless exploitation of its working class. The threat to workers’ jobs from the ranks of the unemployed prevent struggles for a living wage and have allowed bosses to continue to lower workers’ income for decades. When world capitalism suffered the economic bust of the Great Depression of the 1930s, the planning of the communist-led Soviet Union wiped out unemployment altogether in that country.
This is why Progressive Labor Party says only communism — a system free of bosses and profits, and the racism, sexism and wars capitalism produces — is the only answer for the working class. Our class produces all value and under communism we will share it collectively according to need.