Southwest Virginia Population decline 2010-2018.

Government War on American Labor Good for Commerce

by Lewis Loflin

As an IT worker myself I was refused any job in the manufacturing sector due to having college. Then I was refused even applying for an IT job because the state contract stipulated the positions were only open to women and non-whites. This is an issues I'm well aware of.

The ruling class war on American labor. Economists and think tanks agree lower pay and salaries for workers makes business more profitable and is good for the poor that can better afford cheap crap. It's bad enough outsourcing to China and Mexico, but what about jobs they can't outsource?

Flood the labor market with millions of foreign workers both blue and white collar. This is the discontent that elected Trump and has the Democrat Party in chaos. Democrats promise free stuff for problems both parties created by design.

An article by Jeff Bukhari February 15, 2017 in Fortune title, "Why H-1B Visas Aren't So Great for Silicon Valley Workers" proves my point.

"Bringing in computer scientists from abroad has been good for the U.S. overall, raising wages nationwide and bringing down costs for computer products. But the practice hasn't necessarily been great for native-born workers in the country's IT sector."

Whose wages has this increased? Nobody I know. This practice across entire sectors of the economy is national policy, working people be damned.

"In 1990, 11% of U.S. computer scientists were immigrants. By 2001, more than 21% of workers in the sector were foreign-born."

Today the number is even higher I'm guessing 25%. They claim this is good for non-college educated workers that got cheaper crap. Economists count lower prices as income for working people, to quote,

"The study found that immigration in the computer science sector led to an increase in wages across the broader economy of 0.04% to 0.28%. There was a more pronounced effect for non-college educated workers, whose paychecks saw a 0.43% to 0.52% bump...immigrant labor meant prices for computer products were 1.9% to 2.4% lower..."

That is nonsense. These workers have stagnant and falling wages for decades. The study cited did admit:

"Put simply, for every 100 foreign computer scientists working in the U.S., between 33 and 61 domestic workers were displaced. The influx of foreign workers also held down wages, the authors concluded, with compensation being 2.6% to 5.1% lower than if foreign workers were not allowed..."

They estimated 6.7 million people are employed in the tech sector. Today about 25% of tech workers are imported replacement workers. That is 1,675,000 people times 0.66 equals 1,105,500 American worker fired-driven-driven out of the labor force often stuck with student loans and being under-employed if at all.



The Bureau of Labor Statistics May 16, 2019 notes:

"In 2018, there were 28.2 million foreign-born persons in the U.S. labor force, comprising 17.4 percent of the total."

Now let's note that between 33-66 American workers for every 100 imported replacements were displaced by foreigners, say 50 per 100 or 14.1 million Americans.

That doesn't count wage suppression. To quote, "The median usual weekly earnings of foreign-born full-time wage and salary workers were $758 in 2018, compared with $910 for their native-born counterparts." That's $142 a week per imported cheap labor worker times 28.2 million or $4 billion plus extra profits for business.

My guess this result in about $100 in suppressed wages for everyone else across broad sectors of the economy. The National Academy of Science study claimed $300 billion a year in lost and suppressed wages across the economy. But it gets worse.

In Virginia my study shows wages in meat packing have fallen 50% adjusted for inflation since 1970. That industry is near total foreign born many illegal aliens. In Bristol Virginia 66% of Hispanics live in poverty along with 2000 plus whites. Now let's add in welfare, schools, jails, etc. Importing replacement workers and their families make poor Americans poorer and the imported workers are also poor.

But this is still good according to our ruling class:

"The lower wages in the sector were not necessarily a bad thing for the overall welfare of the nation, the report concluded. Lower wages allowed for higher company profits, which in turn led to an increase in the number of IT firms that entered the market, thus spurring competition and innovation."

Note: if you get fired and replaced by an imported replacement worker you can:

"Instead of working in computer science, for instance, a worker may choose to be an architect or manage a production team. The diversification would raise the productivity of workers overall, the authors concluded."

Yes these are far lower paying jobs if you can get one. Most likely one will end up at an Avis rent-a-car desk for $30,000. Now for those thousands in student loans one was stupid enough to take out for a computer science degree...

Ref. Fortune.com.

Back to History, Causes of Poverty in Southwest Virginia

To quote Lenowisco Broadband Study Warned against Call Centers (PDF file):

"The region has been replacing traditional (better paying) manufacturing jobs with (low paying subsidized) call center jobs, which provide limited advancement and work opportunities. Call centers represent the factory floor of the Knowledge Economy; they are an important part of a diversified economic development strategy, but the region must be careful not to rely too heavily on them, as the work is easily moved to other regions and/or other countries."

Lenowisco Broadband Study Warned against Call Centers (PDF file)

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