*(Via CBS News) – U.S. employers added 96,000 jobs last month, a weak figure that could slow any momentum President Barack Obama hoped to gain from his speech to the Democratic National Convention.
The unemployment rate fell to 8.1 percent from 8.3 percent in July, the Labor Department said Friday. But that was only because more people gave up looking for work. The government only counts people as unemployed if they are actively searching.
The government also said 41,000 fewer jobs were created in July and June than first estimated. The economy has added just 139,000 jobs a month since the beginning of the year, below 2011′s average of 153,000.
Dow Jones industrial futures, which had been up before the report, fell soon after it was released.
The hiring figures and unemployment rate will be among the most politically consequential of the campaign. They arrive just as the presidential race enters its final stretch. Jobs are the core issue, and the report could sway some undecided voters.
Read/learn more at CBS News.
The emphasis on job creation as being touted out by the media and the white house is problematic for me. Particularly, this quote from the CBS News article:
“Many of the jobs were in lower-paying industries such as retail, which added 6,100 jobs, and hotels, restaurants and other leisure industries, which gained 34,000. Higher-paying manufacturing jobs fell by 15,000, the most in two years.”
The reality is that there will always be people under or unemployed in this country because of the push for automation and outsourcing. The whole purpose of automation is to do more with less and outsourcing is about fattening the bottomline for big corporations. So we can forget manufacturing jobs because they are never coming back and forget about a living wage, too.
Which brings me to again to the type of jobs being created. It’s great to have a job but it seems nowadays, having a job seems to be sufficient enough for employers. Public service workers, for example, are seeing an assault on their pensions and basic benefits. Their local governments expect them to help pay for their own pensions and benefits. Yet, they do not want to increase wages, despite current inflation, and use wages as a bargaining chip during union negotiations. The media and state governments have dishonestly sold the idea that people who are doing public service work are making 6 figure salaries and raking in big pensions. Nothing could be further from the truth. I wish the President would forthrightly address this issue and not just simply tell union workers that he supports us. We need more than lip service and a low paying job. Con Ed this morning stated they plan to ask the state to allow them to hike up rate at 17% for gas and electric. We need more than just ‘ jobs’; we need a decent living wage! And this goes for those who have two and three degrees!
A job is a damn job especially when you ain’t got one. Those complaining the most probably the least qualified.
That’s not the point. It’s not enough to have a job. You need one that will pay the bills and allow a person to live comfortably. There are a lot of people who are more than ‘qualified’ but the jobs are not there. That kind of apathetic attitude does not help blacks because we are the ones who suffer the most from un/underemployment. That’s the problem with the black community. We don’t complain enough. We just support anything without question and that’s dangerous.