In America today there is a crisis. That crisis is economic inequality. The U.S. workforce has been blamed and dismissed for the growing gap between rich and poor. Much effort has gone into blaming the victim. Americans have been called fat, lazy and stupid along with the never ending drumbeat claim U.S. workers are uneducated and do not have enough technological skills.
Women are still low on the economic totem pole. A new Census report shows nothing has changed, women still make 77¢ to a male's dollar when both are working at full-time jobs and if one includes part-time, the ratio is even lower, 71¢. Worse than that, women with families and no husband around make the lowest median income of all, $34,002.
The BLS reports on individual occupations and wages. This is a separate survey from the employment report and unfortunately there is significant lag in the breakdown of 800 different specific job categories from the current overall employment statistics. While waiting for the March unemployment report to be dissected and digested, it might be of interest to look at the most recent occupational survey statistics from the BLS. For May 2011, 10 months ago, we have some seriously crappy jobs dominating the labor market.
While the data on what kind of jobs are being created is one year old, the report still gives insight on what kind of job growth has occurred since December 2007, the start of the Great Recession. What we have are low paying service jobs as the dominant job growth.
The Associated Press ran an article Sunday that focused on the wasted funds during the US reconstruction efforts in Iraq. There were stories of an unused children's hospital, a prison for 3,600 that will never open, and the diversion of reconstruction funds to pay off Sunni fighters to turn on al Qaeda.
AP failed to mention that the main reason that we have to rebuild Iraq is that the United States government invaded it and destroyed everything it could in a display of shock and awe. Also unmentioned were the unique post invasion strategies of no security for sites like power plants that keep the country running and the dissolution of the 400,000 man army, the main institution that kept order in the country before the invasion. But I digress.
Anyone paying attention should know that financial controls and accountability went out the window from the very first days following the defeat of Saddam Hussein's military.
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