[See also National Data, By Edwin S. Rubenstein: A Cold February for White Workers]
March 10. The BLS payroll jobs report released today lists 205,000 new private sector jobs for February. As has been the case for a number of years, the new jobs are in domestic nontradable services. The sources of February's new jobs are: construction (primarily specially trade contractors) 41,000 jobs; wholesale and retail trade, transportation and warehousing, 15,000 jobs; financial activities (includes insurance and real estate) 22,000 jobs; professional and business services, 39,000 jobs (roughly half of which are in administrative and waste services); education and health services, 47,000 jobs; waitresses and bartenders, 21,000 jobs.
During the past year, the economy has lost 60,000 private supervisory jobs, 48,000 manufacturing jobs, 65,000 jobs in nondurable goods (mainly textiles, apparel, paper and paper products), and 25,000 jobs in air transportation. Over the last year, the economy has gained 203,000 jobs for waitresses and bartenders.
New York Times reporter Vikas Bajaj again misreported the BLS release. He attributed 38,000 state and local government jobs to businesses. [Jobs Grow and Wages Rise as Economy Picks Up Steam, March 10, 2006]
Charles McMillion of MBG Information Services reports that hours worked in manufacturing have fallen 7.1 percent during the 51-month old current recovery and that growth in total private sector hours worked in non-supervisory jobs is the weakest of any recovery on record. This suggests that many new jobs are for less than a full 40- hour work week, which could account for the lack of growth in median household real income.
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Paul Craig Roberts [email him] is the author of Alienation and the Soviet Economy and Meltdown: Inside the Soviet Economy, and is the author with Lawrence M. Stratton of The Tyranny of Good Intentions : How Prosecutors and Bureaucrats Are Trampling the Constitution in the Name of Justice. Click here for Peter Brimelow's Forbes Magazine interview with Roberts about the recent epidemic of prosecutorial misconduct.
