Robert Reich on the latest jobs report:

[kentuck]

"The big story on jobs (hardly mentioned in today’s job report for June) is America is in the midst of a massive shift to part-time work. Part-time jobs accounted for 2/3 of all new jobs in June. Most people don’t want part-time work; they need a full-time job. But corporations are shifting to part-time work because it allows them to (1) avoid paying overtime, (2) avoid paying health insurance (evidence suggests Obamacare’s employer mandate, although delayed, is adding to the part-time shift), (3) more cheaply respond to ups and downs in customer demand, and (4) keep workers obedient and docile (and punish anyone trying to unionize) because workers need whatever hours they can get. So when you hear that the U.S. economy is creating lots of new jobs (288,000 jobs in June), be skeptical. Most are part-time."

[Benton D Struckcheon]

1. Part time work isn't.

When I was a kid, it was 20 hours a week and you had a set schedule, so you knew what days you were working. Today, they shift around the hours and it's around 30 hours a week, or just below whatever the state you're in defines as full time. So basically it's full time, because your spare time is destroyed completely, and you get no benefits.
This needs to be made illegal. Part time should be part time and full time should be full time, and there should be no gray areas allowed.

[Hassin Bin Sober]

4. Yep. I forget the number but a large percentage of the workforce is now on-call.

Wait by the phone.

Kind of like a scene from the movie On The Waterfront. Stand outside and beg for work. Cause trouble and don't get picked.

[abelenkpe]

7. That was me

Worked for a place for the past year that would call me in when they needed me. Contract work. No benefits. Told them I wouldn't be available June 5- Aug 12. What do they do? Call me in on June 6.

A year ago I had a great job. A job I loved. Full time, with healthcare, benefits, seniority, plenty of pto. Was there for 13 years. Won numerous awards. Today almost all those jobs have been off shored. I'm happy that fewer people are applying and receiving unemployment benefits but those numbers don't reflect the reality of our current employment situation or that fewer workers can effectively plan or save for retirement.

[Skittles]

9. BENTON KNOWS THE SCORE

these people cannot plan their lives, even to include another job - it's wrong, wrong, wrong

[Spitfire of ATJ]

25. A common dodge is three days at 12 hours each....

It's solely to screw you out of full time benefits. The attitude is that you should enjoy having four days off. A lot of people get a second job for those four days so they end up with only one day off and working constantly.

[MannyGoldstein]

2. 30 years of Republican/Third-Way policies

And here we are.

[leftstreet]

3. Make politicians part-time, on call, no benefits n/t

[Skittles]

10. heck, they're already part time

how many days of the year to do they work again? Assholes.

[abelenkpe]

5. K&R

[kentuck]

6. "Full-time work" needs to be re-defined.

Anything over 30 hours could be full-time with time and a half for overtime. This would have several positive effects, especially if wages were raised 25% to keep up with the loss of hours worked. We need to adapt to a changing labor force.

[DCBob]

8. No doubt this is true.. but what can anyone do about it?

We can't make it illegal to hire part-time workers. I suppose some sort of incentive to hire full-time might help. But there's no way this Rethug congress will pass anything like that. I think this is the new economy and the only way out of it will be once unemployment reaching a low enough level where companies have to offer full-time positions or they wont be able to fill the vacancies... imo.

[TheNutcracker]

32. see above post, it's the answer to your question and a true fix. France uses a different model too.

[conservaphobe]

11. There's always some pundit who wants to piss on everyone's parade.

FOX News will appreciate the talking points he just handed them.

[kentuck]

12. Is it a talking point?

Or is it true?

[Chucky-Doll]

13. Clintonite.

Clintonite Robert Reich always dumps on positive jobs reports under President Obama. The big picture is the economy is still much better off than it was 6 years ago. All the jobs that were lost 6 years ago have now been replaced by news jobs. And, a job is a job. 6 years ago most people couldn't even find a part-time job. It's practically a miracle that the economy has gotten better at all, because of all the republican obstruction. The economy would be even better without republicans.

Another good jobs report on President Obama's watch, and so many people are rushing to pour cold water on it. Why all the worry? It's not like President Obama has been getting credit for several months of good jobs reports.

[JDPriestly]

17. A job is not a job. Prices have risen in the past 6 years, and wages have not risen

to cover the difference. Even if the hourly wage had kept pace, the paychecks haven't because the work week has gotten smaller.

Robert Reich is, unfortunately, right. But no Republican is going to try to solve the problem.

At least Obama is advocating for a higher minimum wage. And that is the minimum required to deal with the serious problem of technology replacing human work. We need as a society to recognize that their is a problem,, but that the "problem" is really a wonderful gift -- technology that makes human labor easier, requires fewer hours of human labor to get the desired result. We will have to come to terms with some kind of new economic deal. Obama's campaign for a higher minimum wage is just a start, but it is a start.

The problem is not one that Obama created, and those who talk about the problem should not be dismissed as just picking on Obama. There is a problem. The numbers don't lie and they don't diss Obama unfairly. It is a societal problem. Just get behind Obama's solution or partial solution and back an increase in the minimum wage.

We probably also need to change the definition of a full work-week to 30 hours. That's where employers are putting it. Then that is about right. If employers only need workers to work a 30 hour week, that's what should be considered full-time.

Obama does not take these things so personally. Why should his supporters? These are policy issues, not personal criticisms. Just dust off the shoulder like Obama does.

[Flatulo]

19. Do you really believe that all jobs are created equal?

My son has six years of college under his belt, and is a certified paralegal, yet works 29 hours per week at Boston Market. Think he can afford to get out on his own? No way, he's still living in my basement, and will be until he gets a "real" job.

He's gone on over 50 interviews, averaging one per week, at all the law firms in a 500 mile radius. None of them are actually hiring anybody.

[kentuck]

14. Computers and technology have totally changed the work force.

They now have ways of measuring productivity by the seconds, not days. They have ways of predicting when the peak times will be and when the slow times will be and will plan their labor needs accordingly. The 40-hour week is obsolete. So are the wage scales that workers have grown accustomed to. Wages need to be applied once again to productivity, regardless if the work is labor intensive or not. All the profits should not go to the top. If changes are not made, work itself could become obsolete.

[jeff47]

15. We have an enormous long-term problem

Productivity keeps going up as we invent more technology. We are able to do more and more with fewer people. But we're reaching the point where that is a huge problem.

Go back to before the industrial age, and the vast majority of people were working in food production. Harvesting a field took a lot of people. The industrial age comes along, and we invent the combine harvester. As a result, an entire field can be harvested by one guy....who can then go on to harvest a dozen more medieval-sized fields in one day. But the people who used to harvest the field still existed. They lost their jobs to productivity gains.

Where'd they go? Into the cities, where they started working in the newly-invented factories. And that worked for a while - we'd invent more efficient factories that needed fewer people, causing job losses. But we'd also invent new stuff to make, causing those people to be able to find work. But we eventually reached the point where we just didn't need many people working in factories, causing lots of workers to lose their jobs.

Where'd they go? They got jobs in the newly-expanding service sector. That worked briefly, but then we invented new technology to do more with fewer people. So instead of 4 cashiers manually typing in prices, we have one cashier monitoring 4 "self-checkout" lanes. Again, causing people to lose their jobs to productivity.

Where'd they go? Well, we've kinda run out of places for them to go. And productivity keeps increasing, increasing the number of people affected. So what do we do about it?

In the short run, we could play with things like the number of hours that counts as "full-time". Let's say 4 days a week, and instead of making $10/hour they make $12.50/hour so their take-home stays the same. That'll cause more people to get hired to cover the remaining days, but it's only a stopgap. Productivity will keep going up, and soon we'll be in the same boat again. Cut down to 3 days? Productivity will keep going up.

We're gonna have to radically change our societies in the near future. We simply will be unable to employ everyone. And creating a massive unemployed underclass is going to be completely unstable, so that won't be the solution.

[Flatulo]

18. Very good analysis. Back in the day, we were told that increases in productivity

would allow us to all work fewer hours yet still enjoy the same standard of living, and as a bonus, have enough time to enjoy the arts, have a glass of wine, smell the roses, and say hi to your fucking kids. But that hasn't happened at all. What's happened instead, is that there's an elite segment of society that is permanently employed, and a permanent underclass. The only problem is that no one wants to provide long-term support for the permanently under and unemployed.

I seem to recall the French cutting their workweek several times and also incorporating innovations like job sharing. But that would cut into the bottom line of that one per centers, so it's never going to happen here. Fewer and fewer people will work longer and longer hours. If you're in the professional class, the 40 hour workweek is a fucking dream. Think more like 55 to 65 as the norm. Don't like it? Get the fuck out of the way and make room for next guy.

[Horse with no Name]

20. Very good analysis

the one thing that HAS changed is the bottom line profits.

They have increased and instead of the money being returned into society, it is secreted away into offshore accounts and then the employers are being given tax breaks as corporations and then the shareholders are being given bonuses from the corporate side and tax breaks for being wealthy on the private side.

[JDPriestly]

16. Maybe automation has simply changed employers' needs.

Maybe we should increase the minimum wage (pretty drastically) and reduce the work week to 30 hours. Maybe that is how we can spread the gains in productivity so that we all benefit from it. As it stands the 1% gains because they can pay less for wages, provide fewer benefits and get the same productivity or even better productivity and grab the wealth produced by increased per-worker productivity. The 1% profits from the computerization of the workplace. Everyone else loses. If we increase minimum wage (and thus all wages) and reduce the hours in the workweek? Wouldn't that be a bit fairer?

[truth2power]

21. The positive spin on the latest jobs report has been all over the news...

I figured the truth was in the fine print somewhere. There is no real recovery; one could ask Prof. Richard Wolff, also, who is very good at explaining the backstory whenever they start with all the happy-talk.

[mrdmk]

22. people who say the employment rate is going down are correct

People who say the job market is improving are not doing their homework. Wages are stagnant, in some cases going down. The hours are all over the place, there is no cohesion. This started back in the late 1970's when the USA economy was being transformed from a manufacturing base to a service and financial base. The people ahead this this curve made it big time. Those were a few, most people got screwed...

[Horse with no Name]

24. Using healthcare as an industry example, I live in an area where nurses can't find jobs

To me, that is the bellwether for significant economic decay in the community...simply because that is the last person that the hospitals stop hiring since, by license, a nurse can perform most of the other functions in the healthcare setting.

[Tierra_y_Libertad]

23. "Workers of the WORLD Unite!" Is still a damned good idea.

[littlemissmartypants]

26. Numbers manipulation is a craft of the 1%. eom

Kicking.

[IDemo]

27. Don't forget about contract workers

My present job is under a contractor basis, or 1099. Even though the IRS is explicit in defining the terms of contract vs full-time W2 positions, employers are increasingly getting away with avoiding their share of Social Security contributions along with the health benefits and overtime by calling employees contractors.

[xchrom]

28. du rec.

[SmittynMo]

29. The economy still sucks

Many people who lost jobs during the recession and were never rehired have stopped looking for work. Just 62.8 percent of adult Americans are working or are looking for a job, compared with 66 percent before the recession.

Add this to the super low unemployment(mostly part time jobs being added), and we're still around 10%.

[muntrv]

30. Single Payer would address #2.

[rickyhall]

31. I'm sick of just getting by, there is no future.

I still have things I'd like to do in this life, but I'm still barely getting by. I live in a tired old house that needs improvements I can't afford, I drive 26 year old car, I haven't had a travel vacation in years, I can't afford to go out let alone date or even have a girlfriend. It's terribly lonely and depressing. I've been looking for work for so long nearly all the employers know me but still they say they can't use me. I could possibly do better in a city but I can't afford to go.

[woo me with science]

33. K&R for the truth.

It was a restructuring to benefit the One Percent, not a recovery.

[progree]

34. Over the past year, part-time jobs were 9.2% of the 2.1 million new jobs

Last edited Thu Jul 3, 2014, 05:30 PM - Edit history (1)

according to the Household Survey (the only survey that has part-time job numbers. The 2.1 million new jobs is also from the Household Survey for consistency, not to be confused with the 2.5 million new payroll jobs from the Establishment Survey over the past year).

[font color = blue] "Part-time jobs accounted for 2/3 of all new jobs in June" [/font]

OK, I got it, looking at Summary Table A

The whole enchilada in a pdf file is at: http://www.bls.gov/news.release/pdf/empsit.pdf
or access just the tables you need from the links at the bottom of this: http://www.bls.gov/news.release/empsit.nr0.htm

In June,

* "Employed" increased by 407,000
* "Part time for economic reasons" increased by 275,000
So, 275,000 / 407,000 = 67.6% = about 2/3. So that's where he gets his 2/3 of new jobs in June were part-time, apparently. (More accurately, 2/3 of the new jobs were part-time for economic reasons)

I sure would like a link to the larger article so I can be sure of what he's talking about, but this seems to be it.

These all come from the Household Survey (not to be confused with the Establishment Survey that produces the payroll job numbers, like the 288,000 new payroll jobs you might have read about today)

Interestingly, if one looks at Table A and Table A-8

In the last 3 months,

* "Employed" increased by 479,000
* "Part time for economic reasons" increased by 133,000
So, 133,000 / 479,000 = 27.7% = a bit more than 1/4 of new jobs were part time for economic reasons

In the last 12 months,
* "Employed" increased by 2,146,000
* "Part time for economic reasons" DECREASED by 650,000

So it all depends on the time frame you look at.

I'd have to do some hunting to find the data for longer than 12 months .... which is worth looking at too.... like the last 3 years, last 5 years, whatever.

Oh, I don't know why he's using part-time for economic reasons (essentially people who are part-time but want to work full-time) and not ALL part-time (includes people working part-time that like it that way)...

Here's the same thing, but looking at all part-time jobs (both involuntary and voluntary part-time)

In the past 3 months
total part-time went up 797,000 while total employed went up by 479,000, meaning that 318,000 full-time jobs were lost, OUCH!

In the past 12 months
total part-time went up 198,000 while total employed went up by 2,146,000, meaning that 1,948,000 full-time jobs were gained. Part time jobs were 198/2146 = 9.2% of all new jobs.

Anyhoo, beware the tricks of the economic pundits out there - see the OP, near the top of the OP: http://www.democraticunderground.com/1018232159

Many of these data series are incredibly volatile. This particular trick is called " Highlighting adverse one-month changes in some highly volatile component" and making it out to sound like it is characteristic of the history of the Obama administration. (Typically the next month the statistic zags back to something normal or even great, so the next month the pundit looks and inevitably finds some other statistic that zigged way in the wrong direction and make a big hoo hah about it. It never ends).

[font color = red]On edit 340p CT 7/3[/font] -- I can't really say Robert Reich is intentionally playing tricks until I see his article in full - Link would be appreciated. Well, I found this and I guess this is the source, and he doesn't say anything more than what you quoted. https://www.facebook.com/RBReich/posts/821604491185482

I posted a comment there, but since it is comment number 733, I'm not holding my breath for a response.