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53 Million Temps: All You Need To Know About The "Jobs Recovery"
After years of ignoring the obvious, the Federal Reserve has been finally forced to admit that the labor force participation rate matters, and in fact has started to point it out as a clear negative when it comes to Yellen's "dashboard" of thresholds which will allow the Fed to raise rates (for the obvious reason that the Fed is desperate to delay ZIRP as long as possible and is now highlighting all that is wrong with the economy, contrary to Obama who is still focusing on all the rigged greatness of the US recovery) and to do so is going through Zero Hedge archives to note all those things which everyone had ignored for years and which we have pointed out as structural failures of the so-called recovery.
So while we are happy to oblige the Fed with our tens of thousands of articles summarizing what is broken with the US economy thanks to, well, the Fed, here is another one: one which the Fed can use next year when the time to hike rates has come and gone, and when the Fed is once again scratching its head what to blame it on.
The chart below shows the civilian employment to population ratio: a convenient indicator of the real state of the US labor market which does away with the labor force entirely, and the associated rhetoric of why it may or may not be plunging, and merely focuses on two simple things: total population and the total civilian population of the US. One thing is clear: the ratio crashed when the depression started and has flatlined since. Which, incidentally, may be all you, and the Fed, needs to know about the recovery.
But wait, it gets worse, because according to the WSJ, roughly one in three U.S. workers is now a freelancer.
Wait, how many?
Fifty-three million Americans, or 34% of the nation’s workforce, qualify as freelancers, according to a new report from the Freelancers Union, a nonprofit organization, and Elance-oDesk Inc., a company that provides platforms for freelancers to find work. These individuals include independent contractors, temps, and moonlighters, among others.
So 53 million, let's call them, temps? That is probably the most stunning number we have seen in years, and flips the entire premise of a "job recovery" on its head.
The experience of work has fractured in recent years, said Fabio Rosati, chief executive of Elance-oDesk. Layoffs that accompanied the recession forced many individuals to forge a living from short-term gigs, while online marketplaces such as Elance, TaskRabbit and Uber emerged to match independent workers with companies or individuals in need of labor. Plus, the rise of mobile technologies allow more people to work when and where they choose.
Or not work, considering there is no contract tying them to a job.
Independent workers “don’t have the workforce protections that have developed over the last 80 years. They are simply on their own,” said Robert Reich, the Secretary of Labor under President Bill Clinton and now a professor at the University of California, Berkeley. An accurate census would help policymakers determine how to fill gaps, he said.
Counting the number of contingent workers has not been a high priority in Washington, DC over the last couple of decades. The number “is likely to be large and growing and there is no political advantage in signaling that fact,” Mr. Reich said.
The punchline:
Companies, eager to lower payroll costs and take advantage of a more flexible workforce, are relying more on contingent labor. According to the National Employment Law Project, temp jobs now constitute an all-time high of 2% of all positions in the U.S., or 2.8 million.
So the Fed is trying to boost wages and generate demand-pull inflation at a time when some 53 million US workers, or a third of total, are "freelancers", which is a polite way of saying part-time workers and "moonlighters."
Well.... good luck!
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This is so bullish for stocks!!!
93 million people are not working, that's completely sustainable.
"Freelancers" are entrepreneurs who are forced to support the status quo of a parasitic bureaucracy and overreaching authority. Not to mention the big welfare queens on and off Wall Street.
There is a big difference between being an Entrepeneur and a self-employed contractor.
Don't mistake the risk taking, ambitious, driven business starter and grower---- the entrepeneur-----for an individual 'buying one's job' as a contractor as low bidder.
Being 'forced' to be a contractor presupposes the contractor would much prefer to have a steady job, benefits, and income, and finds entrepeneurialship a huge gamble.
The entrepeneur looks at and expects the uncertainties that come with starting and grwowing a business, expects to even lose money for a time.
There are a few Contractor/entrepeneurs I have known and they are extremely rare with talents and skills that are singular or very rare in nature. They could just as likely be full time employed, contracting their special services, or starting a business with themselves as the only employee. They comprise about .000001 per cent of the market, and they are generally in some neverland of computer tech.
Your POV of "entrepreneur" sounds like from a time when markets were free....
Not disagreeing with you but in an era where full time salaried jobs are becoming a luxury item for the upper crust, I think we can expand on the definition of entrepreneurs.
How about, an entrepreneur is a person who is able to somehow survive in this shitty economy without taking a paycheque from either the government or from a major corporation.
Just to survive here, you have to be pretty creative. Getting up the next morning and putting oneself out there is already a risky proposition.
I'm just being a tad sarcastic but not really.
Expanding on the traditional words that we have used for centuries is probably number 2 among my pet peeves. So in keeping with my stance on not permitting words to take on new meanings (the latest travesty of that kind of crap is calling what gay men and lesbians do in the new world as, "getting married"), earlier ones, like, "a reduction in the rate of increase is a "Cut", when it is an increase, is another.
But I digress.
I don't disagree that it takes a distinctly different mentality to survive or even prosper as a singularly self-employed individual selling one's services to the highest bidder (there was another name for that among women and boy toys at one time) but it cannot meet the standard of the multivariate skills, talents, products and services true entrepeneur is, does, and doesn't do.
Jobs, Smith at FEDEX, Gates, Schmidt, and all the APP makers, Turner, Branson, Zuckerberg, Musk, and many lesser lights that began in garages and b 4 long built sizeable companies, are the classic entrepeneurs. To be an entrepeneur in the real sense, means stumbling on the sticky plant and turning it into a product that gave us Velcro; Postit Notes, etc. and having to hire staff, and eventually more and more of them.
There should be a separate category for the self-employed, and there already is.
Many entrepreneurs are struggling or dying on the vine due to lack of funding. Don't underestimate the funding sources behind some of the names you're mentioning.
We're in a very different economy today than we were in the Eighties or Nineties. There's no technology revolution anymore to benefit from.
This economy is a race to the bottom because BIG corporate America wants it so. The quest for the positive bottom line and shareholder "value" at all costs has taken the lifeblood out of the American economy.
Germany's economy is thriving because of a very vibrant and innovative private industrial sector. The "Mittelständische Unternehmen" which is typically not a publicly traded company, not owned by a major bank or corporation is the lifeblood of the German economy. These companies are innovative, create good paying jobs in Germany and drive the exports.
That sector is very organized and has representation in Berlin just as much as the big banks and their BIG pub cos. The agreements between politics, the BIG pub corps and the medium private corps are efficient and have a symbiotic nature.
The Chinese are investing in that segment and buying German innovation right at the vine, they're buying these midsized private enterprises. It's considered a sell-out and the German economy will suffer as a whole for it
Jobs sold out use iPhone data to NSA Gates used daddy's $ to learn computers and dad's influence landed IBM and Turner's CNN is the propaganda arm of the government. Schmidt & Zuckerberg same as Jobs a NSA troll. Only Musk and Branson are true entrepreneurs the rest are imitations. Don't know Smith though.
My brother actually did it in the trucking business - twice. Not your average turnipseed. And an all around great guy to boot.
At my place, any job that is posted below management level, is exclusively temp-to-hire. The entire hiring process has changed since the early 2000s. In the 'old days', you would apply for an opening at a company. Today, you apply for a contract- or temp-to-hire opening, which is filled by a staffing agency.
It's the try-before-buying method; employers get to try employees out and shed the ones that don't work out. We've had some people there for YEARS on temp status, never buying out their contracts. It's silly.
Real satisfaction comes from pointing out to "temp-to-hire" companies that the relationship is two way.
Lots of them have created an environment where there is no way in hell I would work for them. Even despite the uncertainty and risk of doing it yourself.
How many of these "freelancers" are paying all their taxes...??
I personally know several freelancers (artists, hair/makeup, etc) that don't declare shit. The black market economy is getting bigger and bigger....
Why not "freelance" and work cash jobs? Declare next to nothing. Join the FSA. You can live quite well making $20-30k a year in cash jobs AND living off of EBT, welfare, Section 8 housing, etc.
Everything in life is temporary.
Life itself is a Temp Job.
Thank God for that!
<-- What's a TEMP Job
<-- They're ALL TEMP jobs
No need to need proof of rigged markets. Just look at the way the market performs. Ever higher on bad news.
A straight line continuously breaking the highs.
Wall Street will get their ever larger bonuses. It's the way it works. And the Federal Reserve's printing presses to support it.
Who needs actual jobs when we can just PRINT MOAR? Print moar jobz!
Who needs actual jobs when we can just PRINT MOAR? Print moar jobz!
Who gives a rip, BTFD, even if it is for a nanny-second.
Businesses learned how to circumvent the cost of ObamaCare. Wait till April 15, 2015 rolls around. IRS incoming taxation will be a dried weed looking for California water.
Socialism works until you run out of other people's money.
A number of social terms appeared during the past 20 years in Japan to describe symptoms of the "Lost Generation."
What you're describing is the "Freeter" phenomenon.
"Japanese expression for people who lack full-time employment or are unemployed, excluding housewives and students. The term originally included young people who deliberately chose not to become salary-men, even though jobs were available at the time. Freeters may also be described as underemployed or freelance workers. These people do not start a career after high school or university, but instead earn money from low skilled and low paid jobs."
It describes nearly 50% of all Japanese youth today.
We will all be "freeters" soon.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Freeter
....or NEET's, if you are young enough. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/NEET
Looks like all .gov has to do to jump start the economy is to force banks to offer "freelance payment loans" where the borrower can pay back any amount at any time or pay nothing back for a period of time. That would work out well.
Here are numbers we could have fun with: the LA Times reported that about 2 years ago, tree trimmers employed by LA county were planning to strike for higher wages; at the time they were taking down $4500/month, along with $500-$1,000/month in a dozen or so benefits. I did further research regarding other work categories for cities and counties. Result? The same.
It finally occurred to me these guys were sort of overpaid, that a large majority of the private labor force would be happy to do this work at half the rate.
So, why not terminate all who work for these cities and counties, and replace them with applicants who bid for a position. This should be done over a three or six month period.
This led to further research, namely the financial statements issued by cities and counties, special districts and state governments. I found that they have amassed surpluses in the trillions. When I studied this for California, I found surpluses (about the year 2000) that divided out to $20,000 for every man, woman and child in the state; you read that right, every man, every woman, every child. Then I factored in numbers included only in footnotes and the dividend ballooned to over $40,000 for every man, woman and child.
These surpluses are in the form of cash and bonds, real estate and stocks, domestic and international; and represent an over collection of taxes. See, ‘Who Owns City Hall?’ and ‘Of Lords and Cattle’.
It all generated several questions, such as, ‘Who owns these surpluses?’ and, ‘When do I get my dividend?’
Oldie but goodie.
In the past, I owned and operated an auto repair. One of my techs applied for a job with a local municipality "garage". Working on local .gov cars and trucks. He got the job. I couldn't compete with the salary and bennies. I wished him well.
He stopped by to chat in a week or so. The first thing the crew did was have him put away all his air tools. Except impact for lug nuts. We wrench by hand. No need for speed. We will run out of work. Oil changes required 3 days. Extrapolate this across other tasks.
I fiqure an oil change at the city garage probably cost on the order of $400.00 at the time.
And there you have it.
Cartels, Gangs & ISIS all have 100% employment and can't meet demand for full time openings
All these numbers are released based on the Fed wanting to keep 0% interest. Their concern is themselves. They certainly don't want the public catching on to their worthlessness. So they roll out ridiculous GDP numbers to make the public think they are doing what is best. The problem then becomes they have to find a way to keep 0% interest. So they roll out fewer than expected job numbers.
The real telling chart will be the composition of employees across a wide spectrum of businesses, i.e. large corporations and small businesses. How many full time, part time and temp employees each business has on the payroll.
I guarantee you'll see a trend concerning Obamacare that composition due to the employer mandates. The temp workers are exempt under the rules for a company.
http://obamacarefacts.com/obamacare-employer-mandate.php
http://business.time.com/2013/06/27/how-temp-agencies-learned-to-love-th...
And to keep down costs for those temp agencies, Obamacare prioritizes and incentivizes them to push H1B1 foreigners over US citizens to fill those positions because a US citizen would count as a part time employee while H1B1 workers are exempt.
Have you ever looked at the IRS definitions of independent contractor. There are about twenty bullets of must meet definitions. Its been awhile since I seriously studied them, but I can tell you MOST independent contractors do not qualify as such. If the IRS wanted to, this charade would end in a NY minute. The crux of the matter hangs on whether the contractor is subject to employer daily or task oriented oversight. Almost all will fail this challenge.
Why in the hell would you subject yourself and your work to be defined by a bunch of thugs and criminals that you know are out to financially ruin you at every opportunity. They are simply the illegal collection arm of the bankster cartel.
Has it ever occured to you that the IRS Code is hard to understand, because it was intended to be that way. It is illegal as hell.....at its very outset, because the whole concept of an income tax upon individual citizens is "UNCONSTITUTIONAL!"
You must learn to think outside the box. You don't need to ask anybody's permission to make a living!......It is your human right.....your constitutional duty.
It's going to get much worse.
The book of all books on prepping
http://newamerica-now.blogspot.com/2014/02/beyond-collapse.html
the only full time jobs left are with government or government dependent industries like law and accounting.
".....like law and accounting." Two of the most non-productive scams ever inflicted upon business men.
Once upon a time, being an "independent contractor" meant sky high hourly wages and flexibility. Today you have the shitty, hollow version.
........Without "income" taxes, OvomitCare, and imbeciles in management above you that should have been removed from their positions half-a-lifetime ago.
Moar H1B Visas Please!
Golf cart one we have a problem...
I know a guy that reviews the finances of IPO's that get financing for a private equity firm. When I told him that I could not find any work, he could not believe that I could not find a job since the economy is doing so well.
I knew that I was in trouble when I could not even get an interview busing tables.
So, what am I doing now? I'm trying to launch a new company based on one of my product designs. Fuck it! I'm going for it. I have no other choice! This is what I should be doing! I will succeed!
I believe these "independent contractors are forming the backbone of the new economy to come. They will be much more energetic and innovative than their current, staid, boxed-in, salaried stable mates.
A successful work history will be the primary subject of interest on their curriculum vitae, not the drunk-tank (university) from which an applicant may have been most recently sprung. Moderate-sized companies will be the desired norm in a new economy. Many, many businesses will compete for contracts with many different ideas on how to accomplish the same goals.
The size of a business could be a handicap to its own survival when it becomes a stumbling giant amoung energetic, innovative Lilliputians. Debt will become the burdensome, consuming cancer that is always has been.
Good Luck!
the people who work in tech and finance are so out of touch with ordinary americans, its not even funny.
The Whitie House has a credibility problem when it comes to this subject. Nah. No one would dare call him on it would they.
yeah, zero hours contracts rife in the UK, so people are so stressed and worried if they can pay the bills from day to day.
See http://andreswhy.blogspot.com/2008/09/job-and-duty.html
From above graph , it seems that all societies on the planet are rapidly heading towards religious Fundamentalism . All over . The West as well .
Better dust off those old hymn books .
Everybody will soon be singing in the choir , or else !
Plenty of jobs for the highly intelligent and skilled ( engineers, programmers, stats/machine learning types) and skilled trades.
the non-tech office jobs are going away or are for the lucky few to have them.
i work at a F500 company and they just hired about 12 new people (contractors) and most of them have math/stem backgrounds.
welcome to obamastan.
if your feet hit the floor in the morning and your brain works,, be thankful. I was "downsized" from a 22 year position in 2010 making well over 100K. I no longer feed the beast. I have paid multiple hundreds of thousands of dollars in my 40 plus years working . I have subsidized the government goons "IRS" that steal from me. Paid property taxes to school districts that spend 14K per year per student to turn out a product that is functionally illiterate if they stick around 12 years.
I have been on my own for 4 years. I work in a field I am familiar with. I rep for 3 companies in two big industries. No sales, no money. Imagine if all of America was paid based on performance and not just showing up on time and breathing? When I see city workers leaning on shovels,,, sleeping in their trucks, sloughing off all long faced to their next job,, I wonder. Why do they have jobs. I had a city crew come out to pour 5 linear feet of concrete curbing and place in a new storm grate in front of the house. 8 men, three trucks, one trailer, one skidsteer. 8 hour day. 8x8 is 64 hours labor. 42 dollars an hour plus benefits. 64x42=2688. Expensive strom grate huh?
Pull out. Quit feeding the beast. Go minimal. 1099 is the way to go. Don't eat out. Don't buy a thing new. Shop local. Grow some food. Get your movies from the local library. If you don't need to drive, don't. Walk somewhere. Stop and smell the roses. I chased the dream for a lot of years. I have lived with money and without it. Like mom used to say living with money is alot easier. I woke up and looked around and did some serious reflection. What does 100k plus a year mean? 35k a year feeding the beast. Just stop.
Starve it. Starve them. I am unloading the "dream house." One bedroom apartment is next. Momma isn't real pleased but that's the way it goes. Starve them. Let someone else pay 8k a year in property taxes to "educate" illegal aliens in two languages. Done, finito, over,,, nada, nichts,,, no more. Over it,, tired of it, written by a 59 year old white guy,, the most discriminated class in Amercia.
I hear you loud and clear, Deerhunter.
Watching these useless eaters struggle will be a pleasure. I hope to see it.
Is that selfish or morbid? I really don't care.
Eeee-Bol-llaaaaa.....
These comparisons of participation rates before and after the crisis of 2008 always make the unstated assumption that participation rates in 2007 were somehow optimal. But is that really true? For several decades now, the phenomenon of both parents holding full time jobs has been considered typical. IMO, the results in terms of the welfare and education of the children have been clearly negative, along with behavior problems and, ultimately, crime statistics. At the risk of being labelled an old fuddy-duddy male chauvinist, I would suggest that a home with growing children is a home that needs a full time parent. It does not matter whether that parent is the male or female (how's that for a save!!). The stay-at-home can contribute to family economics by growing and cooking fresh food and eliminating the cost of child care.