November 07, 2005

National Data, By Edwin S. Rubenstein

American Worker Displacement Soars in October

[See also: Still No Jobs: Corporations Deserting American Workers, by Paul Craig Roberts]

Hispanic employment rose by a whopping 212,000 positions in October while only 2,000 new jobs were created for non-Hispanics. In percentage terms the Hispanic job count rose by 1.137 percent, or 569-times the miniscule 0.002 percent growth in non-Hispanic jobs.

These national figures are from the Household Survey of employment, announced Friday, which is blithely ignored by most of the media. Mainstream Media pundits focus primarily on the Payroll Survey, which reports total employment—56,000 jobs created in October according to it—but offers no details on race or ethnicity of the job recipients.   

They can run from the displacement story, but they can’t hide. An article on the front page of Friday’s New York Times reports on the “overt hostility” Louisianans feel toward “…the army of Latino workers who appear to be doing much of the dirtiest cleanup work, often in the employ of those big companies, and often for less money than local workers might insist on.”

Senator Mary Landrieu called “for an investigation of federal contractors, whom she said were hiring ‘low-wage undocumented workers.’” [In Louisiana, Worker Influx Causes Ill Will . by Leslie Eaton, November 4, 2005]

This raises an obvious question: How much of October’s American Worker Displacement is Katrina-Rita-Wilma related? Unfortunately, we do not have Household Survey results by state. (We’re looking into it, though.) We do know, however, that displacement has been a fixture in the American labor force for years.

October’s Hispanic job pop pushed VDARE.COM’s American Worker Displacement Index (VDAWDI) up to a record 115.0, up from 113.7 in September. [See chart.] This was the greatest monthly increase since March 2004—a period when the non-Hispanic job total was actually shrinking. The VDAWDI index measures the ratio of Hispanic to non-Hispanic employment growth since the start of the Bush Administration in January 2001. The Hispanic workforce is heavily immigrant and can be used as a proxy for overall immigration.