248,000 jobs created last month. Construction & manufacturing.

[napi21]

I want to know what kind of manufacturing? You can create manufacturing jobs as part time, or for the length of the contract as Boeing does when they hire thousands to complete a military contract, and when the planes are done, so are the employees.

It's SOP for construction jobs to increase in the Spring of the year. How many of them are very low paid laborers who do nothing more than carry lumber, and are basic gofors?

These jobs reports are the perfect proof that you can make the numbers prove anything you want to prove.....just don't give too many details.

[Generator]

1. I don't trust the numbers either

But five more soldiers and how many others killed today in Iraq? Those are the numbers that are going to bring Bushco down.

[Nlighten1]

3. Someone made the point earlier that...

there were over 300,000 new employees joining the market so the numbers are a wash.

[keithyboy]

2. But how many jobs were lost? Is this net? What kind of jobs?

I know too many people who are unemployed and have been for a while. Some have even lost their unemployment and are moonlighting in meanial jobs.

[gatorboy]

6. I think one thing that many people aren't keeping in mind

is alot of these are jobs that normally start up when the seasons start to get warmer, especially the construction jobs.
A bulk of the other jobs are tourism which is now beginning to pick up. So to say this growth has something to do with the Bush administration is silly. it's simply work that shuts down in the fall and picks up in the late spring.

[candy]

10. Did the figures go up last spring?---

Just curious,my research skills are nil.

[newyawker99]

14. Hi gatorboy!!

Welcome to DU!! :toast:

[rocktivity]

17. I can remember the summer when IT was so hot in New Jersey

that Jersey shore area businesses had to import employees Europe and bus them in from Newark and New Brunswick to do the menial work!

:headbang:
rocknation

[mopinko]

4. half trillion in deficit spending

ought to create SOMETHING!!!!!

[IrateCitizen]

5. I take exception with one of your remarks

It's SOP for construction jobs to increase in the Spring of the year. How many of them are very low paid laborers who do nothing more than carry lumber, and are basic gofors?

Having worked in construction for several years now (as an engineer, but nonetheless), I will tell you that there are not really any laborers like you describe. Laborers tend to be pretty skilled in the construction industry, as they have to be able to do a large number of tasks.

What you have described -- carrying lumber and acting as "gofers" -- is what an apprentice does.

But you're dead-on WRT the spring spurring new construction jobs -- many of which were eliminated last November/December.

[napi21]

7. Sorry if I used the wrong term, but.....

I have lived in the South since 1987. First SC, then TX, now Ga. There is a home under construction across the street right now. I see the 3 trucks come every morning. They drop off the immegrant workers at 8:15AM and come back arou 5:15PM. A few of these guys came over to my house to ask for some water (that God one of them spoke a little English, and I knew what agua was in Spanish). They don't do anything buy carry lumber, pails of nails that are hauled up to the roof, and clean up the scrap that is strewn around the site.

Do these guys ever show up on the employment rolls??? I have no idea. I can tell you that in Tx, it was very openly accepted that if it weren't for the Mexican workers, NO HOMES WOULD EVER GET BUILT!

Perhaps Gogors was the wrong term, but I don't think apprentices is the right one either.

[RoyGBiv]

8. Not any?

You sure about that?

Maybe it's different in your neck of the woods, but construction companies around here (OKC) regularly, beginning about the end of March, hire what they call "general laborers" that do exactly the kinds of jobs that were described and certainly are paid very low wages.

There's no apprenticeship to it, not in any traditional sense of the word. These laborers are used then let go when the construction market slacks off in the Fall.

[IrateCitizen]

9. Perhaps my viewpoint is a bit jaded...

... considering I live in the NYC metro area, and NOTHING gets done here unless it's union labor.

[Beaker]

11. it's different where there are unions.

I worked for close to 20 years as a union Laborer in and around chicago. the main part of the job was pouring concrete, and job-site maintenence- which, on high-rise projects entails a lot more than just pushing a broom, and requires a little bit of knowledge of all the union trades- carpenter, iron worker, concrete finisher, etc. (I personally was also responsible for doing inventory over all of my company's job sites and storage facilities).
each of the "skilled" trades have their own apprenticeship programs, and it is generally the apprentices who do a lot of the "gofer" work for the journeymen in each trade.
you generally don't see immigrant day-laborers on a union construction site, and in chicago- the vast majority of them are union sites.

[mopinko]

12. i worked construction here in chicago also

it was a while ago, but laborers shoveled and swept. there were not allowed to touch the tools, or do any work that was "owned" by the trades. they weren't even allowed to do much demolition. the wages were pretty good then, tho. they were union jobs with bennies, and they made a little more than half what a skilled tradesman made.

[RoyGBiv]

13. Good point...

It's been so long since I've seen the influence of a union around here that I forget about the effect they have on these labor situations.

And since "right-to-starve" was passed, it's gotten even worse.

[seabeyond]

15. construction happens every summer

i want the facts on manufacture. is it the contractors in iraq, is it the mcdonal jobs, is it a bogus false number

[Oddman]

16. Funny how all these "jobs" are being created and

the unemployment rate stays the same . . .

How do they do that?


A Complete Failure in Leadership
A Pathetic Excuse for a pResident

[caffefwee]

18. These aren't the high tech jobs of the Clinton years

Unless you consider serving fries high tech.

[rocktivity]

19. DING DING DING! Caffefwee, you're our grand prize winner!

This is exactly what I meant in my earlier post--menial summer jobs went begging during the those years because teenagers were making more money putting Web pages together!

:headbang:
rocknation

[caffefwee]

20. What did I win?

Please tell me it's not an autographed picture of George.

[caffefwee]

21. Hey I've come to claim my prize

I'm waiting! You're not going to welsh on me lol