American Economy ‘Boom’ Claimed Amid Mass Unemployment and Misemployment

March 8 , 2021 (EIRNS)—The employment and unemployment reports of the U.S. Labor Department, whose new weekly and monthly editions appeared March 4-5, must be put in the context of the past year’s degradation of what was already an economy in very serious—though “stable” under Trump—condition. For many months now, 18-20 million Americans have had to be on unemployment benefits, although some of them were working occasional days, were perhaps being paid something by their sometime employers, etc. At various times between 4 million and 7 million more of them have been “out of the labor force but wanting a job”; and the additional number forced to work part-time has been in the range of 5 million. Over an entire year, goods-producing or productive employment (manufacturing, construction, mining, drilling, transport) has lost nearly 1 million jobs and not gained any back, returning to already very low 2015 levels.

Rapid GDP growth, a “scorching economy” and various other ejaculations will be claimed and made in the first quarter because of large increases in consumer purchases.

But directly in the face of what was urgently proposed by the LaRouche movement’s Special Report “The World Needs 1.5 Billion New Productive Jobs,” there has been no federal move during the entire year to create any productive employment, in infrastructure, industry, even in healthcare. And total private bank credit has been drawn down to well below the level of early spring 2020.

As a result, production and processing in some critical areas of “producer goods” has fallen significantly—semiconductor chip components, aluminum, lumber are well-publicized examples—resulting, now, in shortages and in rapid producer goods inflation.