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Friday, December 17
Iowa Jobs Fall in November
by
Linda Thieman
on Fri 17 Dec 2004 05:55 PM CST
 Iowa Jobs Fall in November
Iowa Policy Project
Recovery Pace Lags Three Years After Recession
MOUNT VERNON, Iowa (Dec.
16, 2004) -- Iowa's nonfarm jobs dropped by 1,500 in November after a
slow four-month climb, while the state's unemployment rate fell
slightly to 4.7 percent as 4,000 people left the state's labor market.
The
November numbers showed 1,455,100 nonfarm jobs, down from the 12-month
high of 1,456,600 posted the month before, but up 10,100 from a year
earlier. The number is up 2,900 from November 2001, at the end of the
last recession, and down 19,100 from the March 2001 start of that
recession.
Despite
that context, Iowa Workforce Development Director Richard Running
claimed in the agency's monthly report that Iowa "remains in a recovery
mode" three years after the 2001 recession.
"That's
overstating things a bit," said Peter Fisher, research director at the
nonpartisan Iowa Policy Project. "Iowa has spent a lot of these three
years lagging well behind any meaningful recovery pace from the
recession.
"Even
now, we are still over 19,000 jobs behind the more pertinent measure -
where Iowa stood at the start of the recession. That number shows what
kind of ground we need to make up."
Fisher
noted Iowa would have to gain nearly 1,600 nonfarm jobs per month
over a year just to get back to where the state stood at the start of
the 2001 recession. That compares with an average nonfarm job growth of
842 per month over the past 12 months.
"Over
the next 12 months, we need to do almost twice as well as we did during
the past 12 months," Fisher said. "We need a much stronger recovery
than we've seen if the economy is going to offer sufficient job
opportunities for Iowans still out of work or just entering the
workforce.”
The
2,900-job growth since the 2001 recession also lags far behind the pace
of the recovery from the 1990s recession. At the comparable 36-month
mark following the March 1991 end of that recession, Iowa had gained
70,200 jobs.
Iowa's nonfarm job numbers hovered between 1,444,200 (June) and 1,456,600 (October) through the year.
The
12-month increase in jobs includes a 1,100 net increase in
manufacturing, following a downturn in that sector in 2003. Financial
activities with a 4,600 increase, education and health services at
4,200 and construction at 1,800 had the largest gains.
The only major declines cited by IWD came in government, 2,300, and information, 800.
Key numbers from Thursday's release:
--
Iowa's unemployment rate stood at 4.7 percent, down slightly from 4.8
percent in October but up slightly from 4.6 percent in November 2003.
--
Iowa's nonfarm jobs stood at 1,455,100 in November, down from 1,456,600
in October and up 10,100 jobs, from 1,445,000, in November 2003.
--
Iowa's labor force stood at 1,631,600 in November, with 4,000 fewer
people working or looking for work than in October. The number is up
significantly, however, from the 1,603,000 labor force figure in
November 2003.
--
The nonfarm job total is 27,200 short of the 47,000 promised to be
created from June 2003 to November 2004 under the federal "Jobs and
Growth" tax cut.
Three years after the end of the 2001 recession:
-- Iowa has 2,900 more jobs.
-- Iowa's unemployment rate is up a full percentage point, to 4.7 percent from 3.7 percent.
Buying Into Failure: The Abolition of Social Security
by
Chad Thompson
on Fri 17 Dec 2004 11:30 AM CST
 Buying Into Failure: The Abolition of Social Security
As we
hear more and more pundits and politicians on television tell us the
enormous wealth that we will accumulate by eliminating Social Security,
there is a large piece of information missing: government-sponsored private investments simply don't work.
Paul Krugman notes the failure of such proposals today.
Yet,
aside from giving the Cato Institute and other organizations promoting
Social Security privatization the space to present upbeat tales from
Chile, the U.S. news media have provided their readers and viewers with
little information about international experience. In particular, the
public hasn't been let in on two open secrets:
Privatization dissipates a large fraction of workers' contributions on fees to investment companies.
It leaves many retirees in poverty.
Decades
of conservative marketing have convinced Americans that government
programs always create bloated bureaucracies, while the private sector
is always lean and efficient. But when it comes to retirement security,
the opposite is true. More than 99 percent of Social Security's
revenues go toward benefits, and less than 1 percent for overhead. In
Chile's system, management fees are around 20 times as high. And that's
a typical number for privatized systems.
...
Privatizers
who laud the Chilean system never mention that it has yet to deliver on
its promise to reduce government spending. More than 20 years after the
system was created, the government is still pouring in money. Why?
Because, as a Federal Reserve study puts it, the Chilean government
must "provide subsidies for workers failing to accumulate enough
capital to provide a minimum pension." In other words, privatization
would have condemned many retirees to dire poverty, and the government
stepped back in to save them.
The
same thing is happening in Britain. Its Pensions Commission warns that
those who think Mrs. Thatcher's privatization solved the pension
problem are living in a "fool's paradise." A lot of additional
government spending will be required to avoid the return of widespread
poverty among the elderly - a problem that Britain, like the U.S.,
thought it had solved.
Britain's
experience is directly relevant to the Bush administration's plans. If
current hints are an indication, the final plan will probably claim to
save money in the future by reducing guaranteed Social Security
benefits. These savings will be an illusion: 20 years from now, an
American version of Britain's commission will warn that big additional
government spending is needed to avert a looming surge in poverty among
retirees.
So
the Bush administration wants to scrap a retirement system that works,
and can be made financially sound for generations to come with modest
reforms. Instead, it wants to buy into failure, emulating systems that,
when tried elsewhere, have neither saved money nor protected the
elderly from poverty.
The problem of elderly poverty in the United States - for the most part - has been solved in 2004 America.
Something
else of note: despite the supposed windfall that will be produced from
the pockets of Wall Street financiers - the phrase "benefit reduction"
is still in play.
Krugman was nice about it - the comission the current administration set up to study the so-called crisis in 2001 plainly called it a "cut":
Although
Bush's Social Security commission gave him three main recommendations
in 2001 on how to fix the system, Bush has not said which alternative,
if any, he would support. The main plan put forward by that commission
would cut future promised benefits for younger workers in exchange for
allowing private investment accounts.
McClellan
suggested Bush would follow the commission's direction without
explicitly endorsing one of its proposals. "That bipartisan commission
put forward some innovative ideas to solve this problem," McClellan
said. "The president said that should be a guide for us moving forward."
Folks -
it doesn't get any clearer than this. This is a false crisis,
generated by those that want to pick the pockets of the American public
for personal profit.
Josh Marshall is putting together a list of
where congressional delegations stand on this issue. For the
Rapid Response folks: we need to contact the Iowa delegation and
find out where they stand on this.
If
anyone finds out, we'll post it here - and send any interesting
comments to whomever wants to print them - and keep them around for
2006.
One last item on this today: the Social Security Abolition
movement is being promoted by bringing "regular Iowans" to Washington -
so they can lie to the American people.
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