"Democrats Call for New Aid Package as 80,000 Jobs Are Cut," what is this some kind of joke?
Here in Minnesota the Democrats are allowing the St. Paul Ford Twin Cities Assembly Plant to close because they refuse to consider public ownership of a plant we taxpayers have subsidized over and over again. For what taxpayers have invested in this plant we probably could have built five of the green communities for the ritzy hotzy-totzies like Mayor Coleman and his little sidekick Pat Harris want to put in the plant's place.
I don't like "free enterprise" but I sure as heck wouldn't complain if they wanted to build a truck plant in my backyard that would provide good jobs like workers have at Ford right now.
Out of work in Minnesota? Thank a Democrat!
Rita
http://www.nytimes.com/2008/04/05/business/05econ.html?ex=1365048000&en=f9d9e16edc5dfc95&ei=5090&partner=rssuserland&emc=rss
New York Times
April 5, 2008
Democrats Call for New Aid Package as 80,000 Jobs Are Cut
By LOUIS UCHITELLE
The nation’s employers eliminated tens of thousands of jobs for the third month in a row, the government reported Friday, and top Democrats immediately called for new measures to help suffering American workers.
After the early-morning report from the Bureau of Labor Statistics that 80,000 jobs had disappeared in March, the speaker of the House, Nancy Pelosi, said she would propose a second economic stimulus package. Hers would supplement the $150 billion in tax rebates scheduled to be mailed to millions of Americans beginning next month.
The presidential candidates, already divided over how to alleviate the mortgage and housing crisis, divided again over how to generate jobs and help the unemployed.
In separate statements Friday morning, Senators Hillary Rodham Clinton and Barack Obama supported another stimulus package and an extension of unemployment benefits, among other measures. In contrast, John McCain, acknowledging that “many Americans are hurting,” said that lower taxes and less regulation would generate jobs.
“People have been focused on the housing crisis, and rightly so,” said Andrew Stettner, a policy analyst at the National Employment Law Project, “but now the deterioration in the job market should be demanding much more attention from policy makers.”
The job losses this year are roughly equal to those that disappeared in the early months of the last recession, in 2001. Recognizing that employment was weakening, Ben S. Bernanke, the Federal Reserve chairman, testified on Wednesday that “a recession is possible,” but not necessarily upon us.
Wall Street took a dimmer view after Friday’s report. “These job numbers strengthen the case materially that we are in a recession,” said Edward McKelvey, senior United States economist at Goldman Sachs. “They remove all but a sliver of doubt that the economy is contracting.”
In March, the unemployment rate rose three-tenths of a percentage point, to 5.1 percent, its highest level since September 2005, after Hurricane Katrina. The majority were men and women searching unsuccessfully for jobs after a layoff or they were temporary workers unable to move to a next job, the Bureau of Labor Statistics reported. The job losses were widespread across industries and service companies.
Gina Gerhardt, 47, a mother of two in Chicago, lost her job in December as a project manager at a roofing company. “There are so many applicants out there, that if employers found my résumé among the hundreds they get, it would be a miracle,” she said. Lately, she has resorted to food stamps, she said, to make ends meet.
In response to the job losses, Ms. Pelosi said that Democrats would urge President Bush to work with them on a second bipartisan stimulus package that would bring relief from the income losses when jobs disappear.
“We need to work together to restore consumer and market confidence, to assist millions of Americans threatened with the loss of their homes, and to help families meet the rising costs of necessities,” Ms. Pelosi said in a statement. This would be in addition to legislation to provide relief for homeowners behind on their mortgages.
Some Republicans, like Representative Roy Blunt, of Missouri, called for lower taxes, while Senator Olympia J. Snowe, whose home state of Maine has high unemployment, called for additional benefits for those who are unemployed.
The unemployment figures will lend ammunition to Congressional Democrats as they press ahead next week with parallel proposals to offer aid to struggling homeowners as well as to inject money into the economy as Ms. Pelosi has proposed.
The March decline was the largest job loss since March 2003 when the economy was still shaking off the lingering effects of the 2001 recession. Since the start of the year, 232,000 jobs have disappeared, the bureau said yesterday.
More than once in the past, three consecutive months of job losses have marked the start of a recession. “It is our view that we are already in one,” said Drew Matus, a Lehman Brothers economist, offering a view widely held on Wall Street.
Major stock indexes barely moved Friday, suggesting job losses had been anticipated. Many economists restated their forecast that the Federal Reserve’s policy makers will drop their benchmark short-term interest rate when they meet on April 30 — perhaps by as much as half a percentage point in an effort to lower the cost of credit and thus stimulate spending.
The jobs picture had few bright spots. Only education and health care, hotels and restaurants registered noticeable gains in the private sector. Construction was the biggest loser, shedding 51,000 jobs as the slowdown in residential building spread to the commercial sector.
Manufacturing, which has been losing jobs for years, was particularly weak in March, shrinking by 48,000 jobs, in part because of a strike at a supplier of auto parts that resulted in cutbacks in auto vehicle production and layoffs.
Unemployment rose in every sector of the work force, except among teenagers. Hourly wage gains slowed for production workers, who constitute 80 percent of the work force. The 5-cent rise last month brought the average wage to $17.86 an hour, an increase of 3.6 percent since the previous March, not enough to keep up with inflation.
“You can talk all you want about the importance of stock portfolios and the wealth embedded in your home,” said Jared Bernstein, a senior economist at the labor-oriented Economic Policy Institute, “but when you get right down to it, most people depend on their paychecks.”
Many forecasters argue that the economy will rebound by the fourth quarter, a view rejected by Ian Shepherdson, chief domestic economist for High Frequency Economics.
“We are in for a much longer recession than Wall Street thinks,” he said. “This particular downturn is driven by a rare contraction in consumer spending, and that is starting to hurt a broader range of people than those hurt by the mortgage crisis.”
Parul Vora, 28, who holds a master’s degree from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, thought she was immune to unemployment — until Yahoo laid her off recently as a researcher in San Francisco earning in the low six figures.
“To me, the layoff was an introduction to the dark side of corporate life,” Ms. Vora said. “It was a reminder that at the end of the day, you are doing breakthrough research for a company that is making decisions about your life, and you have no control over those decisions.”
David Herszenhorn contributed reporting from Washington, Michael Grynbaum from New York, Carolyn Marshall from San Francisco and Crystal Yednak from Chicago.
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