The mortgage meltdown is more like a tsunami than a ripple, reverberating across multiple sectors of the economy. Wall Street has been on a wild ride this summer. Last week with its August employment report, even the Bureau of Labor Statistics had to admit that jobs are being lost. Construction was hit hard.
See the Economic Policy Institute’sanalysis:
"Reflecting the housing market turmoil—including sharply diminished home sales, rising inventories, and falling prices—construction employment fell 22,000, driven largely by a decline in residential contractors. Related losses also occurred among financial institutions that deal with mortgage lending. Putting these sectors together, EPI's residential index fell by 28,000 jobs in August, and is down 127,000 since April 2006."
We here at LiUNA have to wonder if the worst wave isn’t yet to come and who will be hit next? While Wall Street analysts teeter on their toes for the next month’s job figures, trying to crunch the numbers and paint the economic future, our members are feeling the heat right now. We represent the men and women who build America – homes, roads, schools, and hospitals, and we are in the fight of our lives to keep good jobs that have put food on the table. Middle class jobs are sinking; and, with the collapse of the housing sector, goes America’s last economic buoy.
If you don’t think construction work affects you, you’re wrong. Growing unemployment in this sector is going to eventually impact other sectors as well, since all of the manufacturing related to construction will slow. Jobs related to building, like cabinet-making and tiling, will be hit. Working families will have less money to put back into the economy, causing further ripples. Further, working families are losing their homes at astronomical rates and the credit crunch may deepen before it gets better. This means less money to spend on buying our kids’ clothes to go back to school, and less money to invest in our futures.
It’s the future we’re worried about. The New York Time’s David Leonhardt points out the anxiety that American families are feeling.
"The problem is that, as far as most families are concerned, the modern economy has little room for error. It has to be firing on almost all cylinders — adding something like 200,000 jobs a month for at least a couple of consecutive years — before employers feel competitive pressure to pay their workers more."
Many fear the next generation will be worse off than the preceding, projecting that poor job prospects will result in a lowered quality of life in America.
When it comes to a jobs plan, the last seven years have been woefully lacking. In fact, some might say the current administration has been downright negligent. (See our post on Mr. Bush’s attempt to throw out prevailing wage and Davis-Bacon.) Wages are stagnant. Foreclosures are up. Benefits are disappearing.
It’s time to turn that around. LiUNA’s members will be hearing from presidential candidates next Monday and Tuesday, September 17 and 18, at a national candidate webcast at LiUNA! Live. Scheduled to speak are Senators Joseph Biden, Hillary Clinton, John Edwards and Barack Obama, and New Mexico Governor Bill Richardson. The union is making the webcast open to all Internet users, because we see our interests as the same as the nation’s interests. We’ll be listening for a comprehensive and restorative jobs plan.