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jobs (in services). Legal and illegal immigration and work visas for
foreigners exceed US job creation.

During the current school year, 3.3 million high school students are
expected to graduate. If we assume that half will go on to college, that
leaves 1.6 million entering the work force. College enrollment in 2007
totaled eighteen million. If we assume twenty percent graduate, that
makes another 3.6 million job seekers for a total of 5.2 million.
Clearly, immigration, work visas, and high school and college graduates
exceed the 1.5 million jobs created by the economy. Unless retirements
opened up enough jobs for graduates, the unemployment rate has to rise.

The US unemployment rate is creeping up, and according to John Williams,
the official unemployment rate greatly understates the real rate of
unemployment. Williams has followed the changes that government has made
to the official indices over the years in order to spin a more
politically palatable picture. Williams uses the original methodology
prior to the decades of spin. The original way of measuring unemployment
indicates the current rate of unemployment in the US to be thirteen
percent, much higher than the 5.1% official number.

Williams also calculates the CPI according to the same way it was
officially calculated prior to the recent decades of spin. Williams
estimates the current CPI at twelve percent, three times higher than the
official four percent figure.

Williams reports that upward growth biases built into GDP modeling since
the early 1980s "have rendered this important series nearly worthless as
an indicator of economic activity". Williams estimates that US GDP
growth has been in negative territory during almost all of the 21st
century. The notion that the US is just now entering a recession is
nonsense if we have in fact been in recession for most of the 21st century.

America's post-World War Two economic dominance was based on the
destruction of other economies by war and socialism. It is a different
world now, and Americans have given little thought to the economic
challenges of the 21st century.

_____

Paul Craig Roberts was Assistant Secretary of the Treasury in the Reagan
administration. He was Associate Editor of the Wall Street Journal
editorial page and Contributing Editor of National Review. He is
coauthor of The Tyranny of Good Intentions (2000). He can be reached at
PaulCraigRoberts at yahoo.com

http://www.counterpunch.com/roberts04092008.html

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