Just when I think I can stop ranting about the economy, I find another nugget - no, pearl - of sheer incompetence by the Bush administration. This is the administration that really just keeps giving. You almost have to respect the high degree of ineptitude these idiots have when it comes to economic matters.
Bush went to an ivy-league school to get an MBA, and all we got is a shitty economy.
Courtesy of the Bureau of Economic Analysis, anyone can look at a pretty in-depth picture of a variety of national economic statistics. Thanks to an idea I got from San Jose Lady on Dkos, I wanted to look at the quality of jobs being created and lost over the last few years to see the Bush economic miracle in action. Wow. The phrase "you want fries with that" has taken on a whole new meaning for me.
From 2001-2002, the US economy lost a large number of jobs that either make things or require technical knowledge.
Manufacturing - 1.1 million jobs
The information industry - 225,000 jobs,
Professional, scientific, and technical services - 225,000 jobs,
Computer systems and design - 140,000 jobs
Wholesale Trade - 120,000
And what areas of the economy increased their number of employees from 2002-2003?
Finance and insurance + 22,000
Health Care and Social Assistance + 442,000
Food Service and drinking + 153,000
Education + 93,000
Government + 373,000
Let's move forward 1 year, from 2002-2003, the last full year of information in the BEA's database. The following industries lost jobs.
Manufacturing - 740,000
Information - 185,000
Computer and Electronic Products - 145,000
Professional, scientific and technical -15,000
And the following industries added jobs
Food Service and Drinking Places 151,000
Government + 85,000
Education + 64,000
Health Care and Social Assistance + 345,000
In the Bush economy, we serve food and drinks, educate kids or take care of the ever-increasing aging population. We don't make things or create new things.
There are some logical explanations for some of the job losses. Productivity increases in the manufacturing sector are partly responsible. Essentially, technology enables firms to make the same number of goods with fewer people. I have also read about "overstaffing" in information technology as a result of the huge technological build-up in the 1990s and the Y2K non-event. However, neither of these two explanations completely explains the entire loss. Outsourcing to economies where labor is cheaper and businesses going bankrupt are as guilty a culprit as structural reasons.
In addition, notice how the skills required for the jobs lost have little to no similarity to the skills required for the jobs gained. In other words, the people who lost jobs are not able to find suitable employment with the skills they have. So, where to the manufacturing employees go? McDonalds or any other eating establishment to take a massive cut in pay in order to get behind on their mortgage and eventually become homeless.
Cross-posted on JScoop