Tight job market frustrates millions

Date: Monday, November 04, 2002 3:03 PM

H-1B and JOB DESTRUCTION NEWSLETTER

www.ZaZona.com

Gerard Weavers got a great reply in the Washington Times. It was in response
to the article that follows his letter.

Washington Times
October 31, 2002
Letters

Interpreting the U.S. unemployment rate

Yesterday's Page One article "Tight job market frustrates millions" did not
mention that Congress has twice raised annual limits on H-1B visas in the
past four years. The number of foreign workers who can be brought into the
United States to take our jobs is in excess of 200,000 per year under this
one visa program alone. About 800,000 H-1B visa foreign workers and another
400,000 L-1 visa foreign workers are here right now, each taking a job that
otherwise would have gone to a qualified American citizen. Americans working
in high-tech jobs are routinely fired and replaced by younger, cheaper and
more compliant H-1B workers.

Furthermore, the 6 percent unemployment rate quoted in the article is
artificially low and misleading. For example, a 45-year-old computer
programmer who is fired and replaced by a 25-year-old H-1B worker from India
has to find some way to make ends meet. The unemployed American programmer
who takes a job delivering pizzas is no longer counted in unemployment
statistics as an unemployed programmer — he is counted as fully employed,
albeit as a pizza deliverer.

Big business justifies flooding our domestic job market with foreign workers
under H-1B and other foreign-worker visa programs by claiming there is a
shortage of available skilled workers. Congress' own investigative body, the
General Accounting Office, found no evidence such a shortage exists. Rather,
H-1B and similar programs are profitable to big business insofar as they
drive down wages and reduce labor costs. The only real shortage that exists
is a shortage of good-paying job opportunities for Americans in their own
country.

The blame for our present unemployment problem lies squarely on the
shoulders of Congress, which keeps these visa programs in place at the
behest of generous big business interests.

GERARD WEVERS
Meridian, Idaho

http://www.washtimes.com/business/20021030-74555460.htm

The Washington Times
www.washtimes.com

Tight job market frustrates millions
Patrice Hill
THE WASHINGTON TIMES

Published 10/30/2002

Nikki Sorrel, a recent browser on the Monster.com job bulletin board,

has been looking for work for so long that she's given up until next year.
Washingtonian Carol J.T. has nabbed only one job interview since she lost
her software analyst job in January 2001.

They are not the only ones. The weak economic recovery this year has

produced barely more than 150,000 new jobs — less than the average number
created in one month during the 1990s economic expansion. With more than 8
million people looking for work, long-term joblessness has become a
significant problem for many.

While unskilled and less-educated laborers often took the brunt of

layoffs in past recessions, this time around joblessness is
disproportionately hitting workers with skills and education, from recent
college graduates and airline pilots to technology workers caught in the
dot-com bust, and executives dismissed from disgraced and bankrupt
corporations.

The unemployment rate has stayed at historically low levels, below 6

percent despite the recession, but labor analysts say that's partly because
many workers have grown discouraged and dropped out. The length of time it
takes to find a new job is at its highest in eight years.

"The recovery so far has been close to jobless," said Nariman

Behravesh, chief economist with the forecasting group DRI-WEFA. Though the
recession may be over, he said, businesses continue to trim workers and hold
off hiring to cut costs and restore profits.

This painful "restructuring and renewal" stage of the recovery, like

the one in the early 1990s, is likely to persist for months. But eventually
it will produce the healthy earnings gains needed for businesses to start
growing and hiring again, he said.

A survey by Watson Wyatt Worldwide found that more than half of

corporations cut staff in the last year even as the economy was recovering
and that nearly half imposed hiring freezes and kept a lid on raises. As a
result, a measure of help-wanted advertising published by the nonprofit
Conference Board last month fell to a 38-year low.

But recent job cuts are only a small part of the problem for the

unemployed. During the recession, nearly 2 million jobs were lost, according
to the Bureau of Labor Statistics, so the meager net gain in jobs since May
has offered little hope to those looking for work.

Job openings have gradually started to crop up in some fields,

particularly service areas such as health care, teaching and temporary
employment.

The revival of prospects in devastated industries such as technology

and investment banking could take years, however, because of the speculative
growth that drove both to excesses during the turn-of-the-century boom, Mr.
Behravesh said.

The good news is that cost-cutting by businesses has produced strong

productivity gains that enable the 131 million workers who still hold jobs
to enjoy solid income growth. That, in turn, fuels steady growth in consumer
spending and supports growth in the overall economy, he said.

But for now, the void of job opportunities is creating a growing angst

not only among the unemployed, but among people who have jobs and feel stuck
in place with little opportunity for advancement.

"It's amazing how difficult the market has become," said an unemployed

worker on one of the popular Internet chat rooms sponsored by Monster.com.
Hailing from North Carolina and calling himself just "That Guy," he was one
of dozens who poured out their frustrations recently

"I'm honestly ready to just give up," he said. "I'm not even trying to

move up career-wise. I'm willing to take a $20,000 cut in salary, don't care
about benefits, and am willing to switch industries. Yet I'm having more
difficulty than I ever had before."

"Carol J.T." said she's had no luck finding a job in the Washington

area, despite her solid technology skills. She said she would accept any
"legal, reliable means of producing income," including part-time, contract
or temporary work but has gotten no offers.

"Yankee Gal" said she lost her job a year ago, ostensibly because of

the downturn caused by the September 11 attacks. But now she thinks "cheap
employers used 9/11 as an excuse to freeze hiring and simply dump more work
onto already overtaxed employees."

In a chat room for technology workers, an aerospace employee from

Southern California with 19 years' experience said he has been out of work
since May and is finding that employers won't give him a chance because he's
overqualified for the positions they have.

A tech worker from Washington state advised him to play down his strong

technical skills by devising a "low-tech" resume that emphasizes broader job
skills such as writing and customer-service experience.

By switching to such a low-tech resume, the Pacific Northwest worker

said he was able to land a customer-service job at a department store. "At
least I'm working again after spending six months at home waiting for the
phone to ring," he said.

Several tech workers said they've seen software support and other

desirable jobs moved offshore to India, where workers are paid one-fifth as
much as American workers. Because of that, several said they don't expect to
see job or income gains in their field for years to come.

John A. Challenger, president of Challenger, Gray & Christmas Inc., a

Chicago outplacement firm, said workers are experiencing "a sequel to the
jobless recovery" that lasted 15 months after the 1990-91 recession.

But the pain level may be even higher this time around for those who

were once highly paid in technical and management jobs, he said. Nearly half
of those out of work for at least six months today are high-income
professionals, a record for that category, he said.

Some unemployed workers have been hurting themselves by continuing to

have unrealistically high salary expectations nurtured during the "bubble
years" of the 1990s, he said. Dot-com and other tech professionals, in
particular, may have to take salary cuts of 20 percent to 30 percent, he
said.

Another source of job losses has been the massive wave of bankruptcies,

mergers and corporate scandals in the last year, which is having "the
greatest impact on the ranks of middle management and support staff," Mr.
Challenger said.

"Unfortunately, in this job market these categories of workers will

have the toughest time finding a job."

Adding insult to injury, laid-off workers are receiving drastically

less generous severance payments than they did just three years ago,
reflecting the urgency of cost-cutting by businesses, he said.

The average length of severance pay has plunged by more than half, to

10 weeks from 21.8 weeks in 1999, he said. And the drop in pay occurred just
as the length of time it takes workers to find new jobs climbed to an
average 18 weeks.

Most laid-off workers are entitled to unemployment benefits that last

about eight months after their severance pay runs out. More than 3 million
workers are drawing extended unemployment benefits. But about 2 million are
expected to run out of benefits by the end of the year.

Some workers are prolonging their unemployment by refusing to relocate

to where the jobs are, Mr. Challenger said. It's understandable, he said,
that they want to stay close to their friends, family and professional
contacts. The "nesting" urge has grown strong since the September 11
terrorist attacks.

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