By Joe Guzzardi

Beneath the headlines’ hype about a seemingly improved February Bureau of Labor Statics jobs report lays the uncomfortable truth. Yes, the economy created a higher than anticipated 242,000 jobs, but once again the majority were part-time and/or in low-paying sectors.

Posting the most gains were health care, ambulatory services, and social assistance, an aggregate increase of 82,000 jobs. While health care administrators earn a decent salary, the less glamorous jobs in the field pay a modest hourly wage. Retail, food services, bars, and education also added jobs but, as is the case with health care, the positions are hourly, and subject to management’s discretion—when sales are strong, personnel is added; when sales are weak, people get laid off.

On the whole, adding employment in these sectors will not contribute to a more vibrant economy, especially when wages and the average hours worked per week drop, as they did in February. Stronger hiring in manufacturing and mining means the economy is humming. Unfortunately, manufacturing and mining, which includes oil, lost jobs.

Tara Sinclair, chief economist for Indeed.com, a major job placement site, refers to the phenomena as a bifurcated labor market: robust demand for service employees which pump up jobs’ totals, but weak demand for blue collar jobs. The New York Times called the jobs report proof of “polarization” in the labor market.

In their effort to paint the rosiest possible picture, analysts overlooked the mathematical reality that 242,000 jobs makes only a tiny dent to offset the 8.2 million unemployed, the millions more under-employed, and the more than 90 million detached from the labor force.

A dire Economic Policy Institute analysis reported that 41.3 million Americans, or 30 percent of the labor pool, receive public assistance. Nearly half of them, 19.3 percent, have full-time jobs. In fact, the jobs they hold are often the ones the Wall Street analysts crowed about in their positive reading of the February data—retail, hospitality, and health care. With profits and chief executive officers’ salaries soaring, the burden of subsidizing underpaid workers through welfare benefits falls to taxpayers.

Another variable in the American hiring picture is rarely discussed, even through the data is important and readily available on BLS Household Employment and Current Population surveys. Since President Obama’s inauguration in 2009, nearly four million foreign-born immigrants have entered the labor market, 4.4 times faster than American-born. In 2009, nearly 15 percent of all working persons were immigrants. Over the next seven years through February 2016, the foreign-born workers’ share rose to nearly 17 percent.

Much of February’s job growth came, it should be noted, in areas that rely heavily on immigrant labor especially hospitality and hospital services. An ever-increasing immigrant population, more than one million legal immigrants annually and 750,000 guest workers each year, have led to the inevitable displacement of American workers from jobs they need to sustain their families.

Since federal immigration policy isn’t tied to the labor market’s health, or to automation advancements, Americans should expect over the coming years, at worst, more job losses or, at best, continued wage stagnation and dilution in their take home pay.

Do We Really Need To ‘Rebuild The Military’?

By Ron Paul

The Republican presidential debates have become so heated and filled with insults, it almost seems we are watching a pro wrestling match. There is no civility, and I wonder whether the candidates are about to come to blows. But despite what appears to be total disagreement among them, there is one area where they all agree. They all promise that if elected they will “rebuild the military.”

What does “rebuild the military” mean? Has the budget been gutted? Have the useless weapons programs like the F-35 finally been shut down? No, the United States still spends more on its military than the next 14 countries combined. And the official military budget is only part of the story. The total spending on the U.S. empire is well over $1 trillion per year. Under the Obama Administration the military budget is still 41 percent more than it was in 2001, and seven percent higher than at the peak of the Cold War.

Russia, which the neocons claim is the greatest threat to the United States, spends about one-tenth what we do on its military. China, the other “greatest threat,” has a military budget less than 25 percent of ours.

Last week the Pentagon announced it is sending a small naval force of U.S. warships to the South China Sea because, as Commander of the U.S. Pacific Command Adm. Harry Harris told the House Armed Services Committee, China is militarizing the area. Yes, China is supposedly militarizing the area around China, so the U.S. is justified in sending its own military to the area. Is that a wise use of the U.S. military?

The U.S. military maintains over 900 bases in 130 countries. It is actively involved in at least seven wars right now, including in Iraq, Syria, Pakistan, and elsewhere. U.S. Special Forces are deployed in 134 countries across the globe. Does that sound like a military that has been gutted?

I do not agree with the presidential candidates, but I do agree that the military needs to be rebuilt. I would rebuild it in a very different way, however. I would not rebuild it according to the demands of the military-industrial complex, which cares far more about getting rich than about protecting our country. I would not rebuild the military so that it can overthrow more foreign governments who refuse to do the bidding of Washington’s neocons. I would not rebuild the military so that it can better protect our wealthy allies in Europe, NATO, Japan, and South Korea. I would not rebuild the military so that it can better occupy countries overseas and help create conditions for blowback here at home.

No. The best way to really “rebuild” the U.S. military would be to stop abusing the military in the first place. The purpose of the U.S. military is to defend the United States. It is not to make the world safe for oil pipelines, or corrupt Gulf monarchies, or NATO, or Israel. Unlike the neocons who are so eager to send our troops to war, I have actually served in the U.S. military. I understand that to keep our military strong we must constrain our foreign policy. We must adopt a policy of non-intervention and a strong defense of this country. The neocons will weaken our country and our military by promoting more war. We need to “rebuild” the military by restoring as its mission the defense of the United States, not of Washington’s overseas empire.