From: nyxfer%panix.com@UMCVMB.missouri.edu (N.Y. Transfer)
Subject: INFO:Jobless Scandal: Millions Not Counted
Followup-To: alt.activism.d
Originator: daemon@pencil.cs.missouri.edu
Organization: University of Missouri
Resent-From: "Rich Winkel" <MATHRICH@UMCVMB.missouri.edu>
Date: Thu, 9 Apr 1992 19:52:24 GMT


Via The NY Transfer News Service ~ All the News that Doesn't Fit

Jobless scandal: millions never counted

By Stephen Millies

(Copyright Workers World Service: Permission to reprint granted
if source is cited.)

Why do millions of working and not-able-to-find-work people feel
in their bones and their pocketbooks that the current economic
crisis is a lot more serious than George Bush is letting on?

Are folks just drowning in their pessimism? Indeed, why don't
people have the "vision thing," as the president would phrase it,
to realize that "prosperity is just around the corner"--as
Herbert Hoover repeatedly admonished people in the early 1930s?

Here's part of the answer: The U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics
has admitted the number of jobs lost in California in 1991 was
over six times greater than it previously estimated.

This means the BLS failed to find 85 percent of the job losses in
the Golden State. One-third of a million jobs vanished last year
in California.

Cover-ups and bankruptcies

"We expected a substantial revision in the numbers, but these
losses just take your breath away," Jack Kyser said to the Los
Angeles Times. (April 2) Kyser, who is the top economist at the
Economic Development Corp. of Los Angeles, caught his breath to
say that "recession and restructuring of the economy have been a
devastating combination."

Well put, Mr. Kyser. But why should there be a "substantial
revision" of the jobless figure in the first place? This latest
BLS version is still 80,000 short of the jobless figure computed
by the California Department of Finance, which examined the drop
in payroll taxes.

Is this part of a deliberate cover-up to mask the actual number
of the unemployed?

Capitalist governments are about as eager to admit how many
jobless their system produces as feudal monarchs were anxious to
spread the news of a famine. Any regime of the exploiting class
does not like to give such invitations to revolt.

But a big part of the reason the BLS fails to count the
unemployed is because of underreporting of bankruptcies.

The restructuring of the economy, which economist Kyser
mentioned, includes not only huge layoffs at big firms like GM or
Sears Roebuck. The restructuring of these gigantic corporations
also consists of brutally cutting back on their suppliers, which
may run into thousands of firms.

The end result is a wave of bankruptcies. Even if these firms
have only a few employees each, when tens of thousands of these
outfits go bust it means hundreds of thousands of jobless.

Los Angeles is filled with these small sweatshops, many of which
are nothing more than a garage with a couple of "Bridgeport"
milling machines and maybe a drill press. These were set up as
part of "outsourcing"--that is, corporations deliberately farming
out work to trim their union work force.

Not only are bankruptcies slow to be reported; the sweatshops
that simply wind up their affairs and go out of business don't
have to announce anything at all.

But the number of the jobless increases all the same.

                               ###

This article originally appeared in Workers World newspaper. A
10-week trial subscription is available for $2. A year's
subscription costs $15. Makes checks payable to Workers World,
and send to 46 W. 21 St., New York, NY 10010.Phone (212)
255-0352. You may contact Workers World editors on New York
Transfer or PeaceNet at "workers."

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