When the IMF and the World Bank had meetings to basically plan the f***-over of poor countries (Bolivia, et al) at the behest of the rich ones, Reuters was present to put out the propaganda cover story. Read about it in "Best Money Democracy Can Buy." Not to say it's an inaccurate story, but along with the AP, Reuters helps get out the disinformation. So there might be some truth and some untruth. What to believe any more?
Also, many of those jobs were shipped overseas and they aint coming back. Lookup medical records or tax preparation - the big companies are outsourcing this to folks in India. Instead of Here Come the Jobs, this should have been titled "Mission Accomplished, part 2." http://www.latimes.com/news/opinion...,868508.story?coll=la-news-comment-editorials EDITORIAL Don't Cheer Quite Yet "We've seen a real turnaround this year," Treasury Secretary John W. Snow said this week, "and the recovery is clearly solidifying." Not so fast, please. Just as the administration was embarrassed in Iraq by prematurely stating "mission accomplished," so it may regret declaring economic triumph. Yes, consumers are still buying pretty vigorously and productivity is zooming. Low interest rates play a big role, and some credit may well be due to hundreds of billions of dollars in tax cuts directed mainly to the wealthy. The nation enjoyed a modest rise of 57,000 new jobs in September. But there's still a "but" in the good news. Almost 2.6 million jobs have disappeared since President Bush entered office. The Congressional Budget Office estimates that the unemployment rate will remain above 6% next year, not including the 2.1 million long-term jobless who've given up looking for work. The normal, historical rate for creation of new jobs in an expansion is 250,000 to 300,000 a month — a number out of reach in this "recovery." Federal Reserve Chairman Alan Greenspan was cautiously optimistic Thursday at the annual meeting of the Securities Industry Assn. But he emphasized that as baby boomers retired and drew on Social Security and Medicare, the budget deficit, which is projected to hit $400 billion in 2004, could have long-term "notable, destabilizing effects on the economy." The Social Security and Medicare programs are likely to run a deficit of almost $100 billion in the next decade. Add tax cuts that kick in over the next few years and fiscal meltdown is a risk. The higher the deficit, the more the Federal Reserve has to raise interest rates to attract foreign investment to pay for it. The higher interest rates go, the less business will borrow money for investment that helps create jobs. One reason the economy boomed under President Clinton was that low deficits allowed Greenspan to keep down interest rates without fear of triggering inflation. In an election year, Congress is not going to reverse its tax cuts, but one immediate step it should take is to renew temporary federal unemployment benefits beyond the current Dec. 31 deadline. In California alone, more than 450,000 workers have exhausted their state benefits. Millions of unemployed workers nationwide are in danger of being left without financial assistance. Benefits are a fast and effective way of pumping money into the economy since unemployed families spend the funds immediately on necessities rather than socking them away. Congress shouldn't wait until after Christmas to extend benefits, as it did last year. Providing unemployed workers with funds to feed their families and look for new jobs could help turn a fragile economic revival into something more robust.
Here come the jobs - to India. http://sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2003/11/07/MNG4Q2SEAM1.DTL -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- LAZARUS AT LARGE Credit agencies sending our files abroad David Lazarus Friday, November 7, 2003 -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Two of the three major credit-reporting agencies, each holding detailed files on about 220 million U.S. consumers, are in the process of outsourcing sensitive operations abroad, and a third may follow suit shortly, industry officials acknowledge for the first time. Privacy advocates say the outsourcing of files that include Social Security numbers and complete credit histories could lead to a surge in identity theft because U.S. laws cannot be enforced overseas. For their part, the credit agencies say the trend is a necessary cost- cutting move in light of new legislation that would allow all consumers to obtain free copies of their credit reports. The top credit agencies -- Equifax, Experian and Trans Union -- have refused in the past to comment on their outsourcing plans. No longer. "A hundred percent of our mail regarding customer disputes is going to go to India at some point," said David Emery, executive vice president and chief financial officer of TransUnion in Chicago. "We are now testing the system and negotiating a contract with an outside vendor. We expect to sign that contract by the end of the year." Emery said in an interview that the decision to have an Indian firm handle thousands of written requests for changes to credit files each year was necessitated in part by the amended Fair Credit Reporting Act, which was approved by the U.S. Senate on Wednesday. The act would require credit agencies to provide copies of personal credit files to anyone who asks -- an expense that TransUnion, for one, estimates could cost the company as much as $350 million a year. A credit file serves as a snapshot of one's legal identity and financial status. It contains a person's name, address, date of birth, Social Security number and details of relationships with all credit-card issuers and other lenders. Emery also said the decision to "offshore'' a key customer service was necessitated by "the competition placed on us by Equifax and Experian." Equifax, he said, was the first major credit agency to move operations abroad, establishing a facility in the Caribbean. Experian, meanwhile, is "actively testing" work with an overseas affiliate, Emery said. "We had to get into this process for defensive reasons," he said. An Equifax spokesman's first response when asked about the Atlanta company's outsourcing was to insist that all customer service was handled at North American facilities. Confronted with TransUnion's remarks, though, a senior Equifax official later offered a different answer. "We have a vendor in Jamaica," said Rob Hogan, senior vice president of customer services. "The Jamaican workers handle data entry at the very beginning of the reinvestigation process (for disputed credit reports)." He said the overseas workers had "limited access" to consumers' credit files but were "closely supervised by our Atlanta office." Hogan acknowledged that Equifax had had "problems from time to time" with consumers' privacy being compromised. But he said each problem had led to improvements in security. He also said there had been no known security breaches in the four years that Equifax has outsourced to Jamaica. "We take great care of our data," Hogan stressed. "It's our livelihood." An Experian spokesman, Addrian Brooks, denied Trans Union's assertion that the Costa Mesa company is now "actively testing" an overseas operation. "We are confident that Trans Union doesn't know what our plans are because we don't know what their plans are," he said. However, Brooks repeatedly emphasized that Experian could outsource work abroad at any time. "We definitely are evaluating every option on the table, and offshoring is one of them," he said. "I don't want to be quoted as saying we'll never do it." Privacy advocates say the outsourcing of credit agencies' work abroad -- and hence access to U.S. consumers' credit files -- dramatically increases the chance that confidential information will get into the wrong hands. "Consumers should be worried," said Beth Givens, director of the Privacy Rights Clearing House in San Diego. "The infrastructure to protect information just isn't there in a lot of these places." Credit industry officials bristle at such talk. "Are we saying that Hindus are more criminal?" asked Stuart Pratt, president of the Consumer Data Industry Association, a trade group for credit- reporting agencies. "Are we saying that workers in India are less safe? That strikes me as xenophobic, and I don't want to go there." But privacy advocates say that this isn't a question of people's being more or less trustworthy in one place or another. It's a question of enforcement of strict U.S. laws. "The problem is not that they're in India," said Chris Hoofnagle, associate director of the Electronic Privacy Information Center in Washington. "The problem is that American laws are not going to be enforced in India." In fact, the Indian government, largely at the urging of privacy- conscious European officials, is working on new legislation aimed at better controlling the country's rapidly growing data-processing industry. But privacy advocates note that India passed a similar cyber-crime law several years ago making it illegal to steal information from computers. Since then, only 11 people have been charged with violating the law and, of that number, only two cases are being prosecuted. "If you're an international crime ring, and you want Social Security numbers for identity theft, you're going to look at the weakest link," said Givens at the Privacy Rights Clearinghouse. "And that's quite possibly these overseas companies." The credit-rating agencies say that privacy and security are their most important considerations and that they hold overseas affiliates to the same high standards that they hold their domestic offices. However, California's two Democratic senators expressed alarm that the agencies are outsourcing work. "The application of American law in a foreign country is difficult, if not impossible," said Sen. Dianne Feinstein. "Therefore, the more companies move overseas, the less American law can control the uses for which personal data is put. And this can only represent an increasing threat to the privacy of our citizens." Sen. Barbara Boxer said she would ensure that the matter was raised as senators and House members completed changes to the Fair Credit Reporting Act. "This information is very significant, and I intend to make sure that the conferees who are finalizing the bill are aware of The Chronicle's investigation in hopes that they will protect Americans from such outrageous invasions of privacy," Boxer said.
On the surface, this sounds bad. And I must say that it has had me worried a bit. As painful as it may be for the individuals involved, our economy has always responded with resiliency. The problem ... what other solution is there? Our economy is acting as designed. Skilled resources are cheaper elsewhere, and to stay competitive, our companies must go there. In the past, our economy has responded with waves of innovation from start-ups. There is atill a lot of technology that needs to be developed. With improvement in development tools, you no longer always need a 7-figure software solution from one of the large firms (who happen to hire these overseas programmers). Further, as more get hired overseas, they create more of a market and have more hard currency for our products and services. Just rambling, but it's not always as bad as it appears. As for crowding-out, it can be averted. We're a ways away from a crowding-out effect.
Are you a protectionist? Do you think Bush should end free trade? And do you believe that will actually HELP?
Cohen, right. Where does this go if we're cutting out the low end ( going to illegals ), and the middle ( manufacturing and white collar) going overseas. The end product of this is we become a nation of elites and very poor, and those who are working for defense contractors. It all works out for a global corporation but the logical extension of all we've seen is lower wages all round for most Americans and a lower standard of living. I really don't know what would make things better, but a.) I would not want any private data of mine to be shipped overseas as prosecution in any third world country for misuse would be much less than it is here, and b.) it's way too easy to hire illegals for cut rate prices in this country, we've essentially used the federal government to subsidize a culture of illegal aliens working cheaply first on the farm and working their way up the ladder ( one example. slaughterhouse work used to be a middleclass job, now it's a job that is only paid enough to attract illegals) c.) free trade is a misnomer if the folks you are trading with are able to cut corners on the rights and safety of the workers or freely ravage the countryside with pollution. In an ironic twist many of the Mexican factory jobs created in the Maquiladora or border US towns have gone to even cheaper workers in China. There is no such thing as free trade, someone is always hedging there bets. China wants to export as much as possible here but it's like pulling teeth when we want into one of their markets. It's a 500 year old Westerners' dream, breaking into the Chinese market. I'm not sure what we got from Mexico out of NAFTA - cheaper goods, less jobs, more pollution for Texans?
Strangely, I don't think that salaries have weakened like they often do during high-unemployement, have they? Maybe a benefit from coninuing increases in productivity. Ragrdless, I think what you're proposing is highly speculative, no?
BTW, British Columbia saw a jump in new jobs. http://www.canada.com/vancouver/story.asp?id=568C2175-EBE9-4B35-884F-F3CDF8E16394
I live in Silicon Valley and we're not doing so hot, we lost jobs unlike the national trend, but we've been losing jobs since 2000. Defense and biotech are doing allright but the biotech pays much less than high tech which is slumping slightly. I think unemployment around here is about eight percent last time I checked. It was worse last year in that there were few jobs and much bigger pool of applicants - lots of folks left the Bay Area. I placed a want ad and 75% of the applicants ignored the requirements and 5% of the respondents were offshore Indian companies who wanted to outsource the work. This is probably all balanced out by the heavy defense concentration in southern California. Absolutely, no one can predict that far ahead - I'm just agreeing with Neil Stephenson's future in "Snow Crash".
http://www.latimes.com/business/la-fi-jobs13nov13,1,4553003.story?coll=la-home-headlines For Many Firms, Jobless Recovery Is a Good Thing U.S. employers are in no hurry to resume hiring as increased productivity cuts their need for workers. By David Streitfeld, Times Staff Writer The economy roared last quarter, and so did Falcon Plastics Inc. A family-owned firm in the eastern South Dakota city of Brookings, Falcon posted record sales in September. Yet there's no impulse to celebrate, no rush to hire. The bad times are still too vivid. "We want to make sure that when we add someone, we won't have to turn around in three months and let them go," Falcon President Jay Bender said. Multiply Falcon's situation by tens of thousands of other companies, and a picture begins to develop of an economy climbing a wall of worry. On Friday, the Labor Department announced that employers added a net 126,000 payroll jobs in October. In all, the economy has added 286,000 positions over the last three months — the best showing since early 2001. But 2.4 million more jobs would be needed to regain all the ground lost since March 2001, when the last recession began. When, or even if, those positions will come back is far from clear. Here's the problem: Many companies like the notion of a jobless recovery. The leaner they can keep their U.S. payrolls — by using overtime, automating the production process and outsourcing jobs overseas — the higher their profits. The murky hiring picture affects not only the 8.8 million unemployed but the 1.6 million who want a job but aren't actively looking for work. It affects millions more who want a full-time job but must get by with part-time work. And it weighs on the more than 130 million employed. "The greatest single concern people appear to have about the economy is jobs," investment house Fred Alger Management Inc. said in its November market review. "We have companies and an economy that can shift gears quickly, but not the kind of job creation and job security that people understandably seek." For Falcon, as for many companies, the 2001 downturn was swift and harsh. Annual sales tumbled from $20 million to $14 million. The 305 employees shrank to 175. "Sometimes," Bender said, "you have to cut off your arm to save your life." The emergency surgery was a success. For the fiscal year that ends in April, Falcon expects again to hit sales of $20 million. But the payroll is back to only 200 workers. Any further growth, Bender said, "will be incremental. We're still very cautious." So, too, are consumers. Although the economy expanded during the third quarter at its fastest rate in 19 years, people's confidence in the future remains "middling," noted Richard Curtin, who directs the University of Michigan's monthly consumer survey. The tenuous job situation is a big reason. "It used to be understood that when business weakened, layoffs went up. When it improved, people were called back to do the same jobs at the same employers," Curtin said. "Now, if people lose their jobs, they have to find new skills and a new job at a new employer. It's a more daunting challenge." It's one that many stand to face, even as the economy picks up steam. The job placement firm of Challenger, Gray & Christmas reported that planned layoffs at U.S. firms were 171,874 in October, more than double September's total and the highest in a year. Duke Energy Co. said it would eliminate 8% of its global workforce, or 2,000 jobs. Sony Corp. will cut several thousand U.S. jobs as part of a major restructuring. Tyco International Ltd. said it would do away with 7,200 jobs, or 3% of its labor force. In some cases, the cuts were accompanied by solid earnings reports. Boise Cascade Corp. said sales increased 9% in the third quarter and profit nearly quadrupled. But the wood products firm is continuing layoffs, which have reduced the number of employees by 460 this year and will lop off an additional 90 during the fourth quarter. Electronic Data Systems Corp. fulfilled Wall Street's expectations for the third quarter, but the computer services company nonetheless announced it would cut an additional 2,500 jobs in its third layoff in a year. One major company going against the trend is IBM Corp., whose chairman, Samuel J. Palmisano, says he foresees the need in 2004 "for approximately 10,000 new positions in key skill areas." IBM has 315,000 employees, roughly the same number it had when the boom peaked in 2000. However, fewer than half its workers are in the U.S., and Palmisano didn't specify where the hiring would take place. Alliance@IBM, a union representing workers at the technology company, said the announcement was a "smokescreen" for the fact that many IBM jobs were being transferred overseas, where they would be filled by Indian or Chinese software engineers. For its part, the Bush administration suggests that the employment picture is bound to improve next year as the economy continues to strengthen. And there are some promising signs. First-time unemployment claims unexpectedly dropped last week to their lowest level since early 2001. Although initial claims often are revised upward, economists were heartened by the report, saying it could be further evidence that the drought in jobs was coming to an end. Analysts say 150,000 jobs must be created every month just to keep pace with population growth. Only if more than that number are created would the unemployment rate, currently 6%, continue to fall. "There can't be a jobless recovery," Treasury Secretary John W. Snow recently told the Economic Club of Washington. "The nature of a recovery is to recover. You don't recover if lots of people are looking for work and can't find work." Yet that's just what's happening in some places. A survey of 74 companies by Pacific Staffing, which supplies temporary workers to hundreds of local businesses in the Sacramento area, found that most weren't planning to add employees. "We haven't seen a big spike the way you would have in previous recoveries," said Pacific Staffing President Jay Jurschak. If investments aren't being made in new people, money definitely is being put down for new equipment. Business spending on equipment and software rose 15.4% in the third quarter, the biggest jump since the first quarter of 2000. Pine Hall Brick Co. in Winston-Salem, N.C., just built its fourth factory and retooled part of an older plant. Both are now heavily automated. As a result, Pine Hall's brick-making capacity is up about 25% — but its employee count has risen only 10%. "It's better for us now, and for our employees," said Pine Hall President Fletcher Steele. "We took the guys who used to move bricks by hand and trained them to operate machines. The employees who remain are more highly skilled." Falcon Plastics, which makes custom injection moldings, restructured during the recession out of necessity. It also gambled on a better future, increasing the size of one plant from 30,000 square feet to 50,000. By this point, the Falcon factories are fairly humming. Employees are working 48 hours a week — "some voluntary, some mandatory," Bender, the president, said. Despite the fact that they're getting time-and-a-half for those extra hours, Bender said it's no more expensive than giving benefits to new workers. All of this helps explain why the unemployment rate in Falcon's home state, where two of its three factories are located, isn't dropping faster. South Dakota's jobless rate nearly doubled from 1.9% in March 2000 to a recessionary peak of 3.7% in December 2001. The most recent rate, in September, was only marginally improved at 3.4%. Doing more with fewer workers cuts across the economy. Intel Corp., the Silicon Valley chip maker, reported third-quarter sales rose 20% and net income more than doubled compared with the same period last year. The reason: increased productivity. Over the last four years, Intel has been building wafer fabrication plants in New Mexico, Arizona, Oregon and Ireland. "They're a huge capital investment, but the payoff is tremendous," spokesman Chuck Mulloy said. "We can make more than twice the number of units with the same staff." For the fourth quarter, Intel projects sales as high as $8.7 billion. That would equal its record achieved in the fourth quarter of 2000, when the company had 86,000 employees. Current employment is 79,000. There are no plans to add more in the U.S. until the economy "improves significantly," Mulloy said. Productivity is up just about everywhere. In the third quarter, nonfarm productivity rose 8.1%, a rate exceeded only twice in the last decade. "If you survived the last few years, you've done it by being really mean and lean," said Scott Montrey, a spokesman for the National Assn. of Manufacturers. "And once you get lean and mean, you don't go back to being fat and lazy." The trouble, economist Nick Perna said, is that "if every company was lean and mean, the economy would be in serious recession." Perna — who is credited with coining the term "jobless recovery" more than a decade ago — is hopeful that, as confidence builds and the economy expands, hiring will follow. After all, the jobless recovery of the early '90s eventually gave way to a lengthy, job-packed expansion. "In the best of all worlds, we'll get rapid productivity growth and, when people are displaced, they're able to find work in other sectors," Perna said. John Challenger, chief executive of Challenger, Gray & Christmas, the placement firm, is more bleak. "My sense is that hiring and job creation will be meager," he said. "There are huge transformative forces at work, with technology and globalization forcing us in different directions. I think we're in uncharted territory."
Woofer - excellent read and a very disturbing trend as Corporate America isnt what it used to be. I have witnessed this first hand my own employer, The Union Pacific Railroad, has had steller profits over the past 3 years and still continues to downsize and outsource. I will be one of the "unemployed" effective 12/31/03 as my department is being outsourced to cut overhead and raise profitability. Dont get me wrong, it`s a good thing for the "Company" but it`s a terrible way to do business if your the one getting cut.
Silicon Valley, jobs there are long forgotten, look away, look away, Dixieland. http://www.bayarea.com/mld/mercurynews/7264732.htm Posted on Fri, Nov. 14, 2003 South Bay tech job forecast cloudy LOCAL JOB CUTS CONTINUE, UNEMPLOYMENT FIGURES REMAIN FLAT Mercury News Wire Services Despite upbeat national employment figures which show the nation's job market starting to improve, the numbers don't add up for some major Silicon Valley employers. Case in point: Adobe Systems Inc. The Associated Press reports that the San Jose-based software maker has trimmed about 3 percent of its work force, cutting 100 jobs as part of an ongoing realignment. The cuts made this week primarily affected workers at the downtown San Jose headquarters and offices in Seattle and Ottawa, Ontario, a company spokeswoman said today. Adobe, the largest maker of publishing and graphic design software, has about 3,500 workers worldwide. The company said cuts were made across a number of different product groups and not related to the planned acquisition, announced earlier this week, of Yellow Dragon Software, a small company that makes a programming tool and could bolster Adobe's electronic document products. Last month Adobe targeted revenues for its fourth quarter at $330 million to $350 million.
This part goes with previous post. Job growth figures released today by the California Employment Development Department show that Santa Clara County gained 2,500 jobs from September to October. Most of the gains in jobs were seasonal additions in education and government. Three key sectors -- professional and business services, information and manufacturing -- all lost jobs. The county's unemployment rate remained unchanged from the revised September rate, at 7.6 percent. Almost 70,000 county residents were unemployed in October.
