Happy Holidays!
Post-Thanksgiving Updates on Several Topics
As we start welcoming the 2021 holiday season, I want to wish my readers a belated Happy Thanksgiving! I hope your Thanksgiving weekend was enjoyable and that you were able to celebrate safely. I also apologize for the sparse content lately, but I wanted to send you a series of brief updates on a handful of issues I have been monitoring. Lastly, I want to outline my vision for the Economic Justice and Progress Newsletter for the rest of 2021 and my plans for 2022 as well.
The first major change I have planned is to turn my Jobs Report Analysis series into a quarterly series rather than a monthly one, but I still want to mention a few key statistics in this article.
October 2021 Jobs Report
The October 2021 jobs report brought relatively good news both in terms of new jobs created, but also in terms of revising prior months’ results. As you can see in the graph below, 513,000 new jobs were added throughout October, but August and September were also revised upwards by 117,000 and 118,000 jobs, respectively.
The combined impact is that the U.S. economy is 766,000 jobs stronger than estimated at the time my previous jobs report analysis article released. The unemployment rate remains on a downward trend—sitting currently at 4.6%—but there are still 7.4 million unemployed people, which is roughly 1.7 million more than before the pandemic began.
While I won’t go into the details in this article, the table below shows a breakdown of which industries gained and lost jobs throughout October. Like September, October saw the leisure and hospitality industry lead the gains while government jobs—driven by declining public education employment—lost more jobs than any other sector.
The upshot is that the economy is slowly but surely improving as of this article’s publishing, but we still have a long way to go, and the pace of our recovery appears to be sputtering along the way. The graph below shows our three-month averages for job gains, and while the more recent blue estimates are not as bleak as some of the green bars from the previous month’s estimates, we’re still seeing a steady downward trend. I plan to discuss more details in a quarterly, rather than monthly, edition of my jobs report analysis series in January.
Hopefully October marks the beginning of a reversal of this downward trend, but much of our outlook depends on the economy’s primary disruptor: the pandemic.
The Pandemic Is Not Over
While virtually everyone wishes that COVID-19 and its variants were no longer spreading across the world, we ignore the pandemic at our own peril. There was a winter spike in 2020—as you can see in the CDC graph below—and I worry about another spike in 2021.
The local minima in October—i.e., the lowest points along the curve in recent months—showed averages of roughly 64,000 new cases in the U.S. per day, but November’s averages once again began to approach 100,000 daily cases. We have many tools at our disposal to avoid reaching last year’s peak average of approximately 250,000 new cases every day. But with the virus mutating into more and more variants as time goes on, and claiming more lives in the process, the pandemic remains a danger to both the economy and to everyone’s health and wellbeing.
I suppose what I’m trying to say is: stay safe out there.
Infrastructure Bills
Another important topic I want to discuss briefly, but cover in further detail in future articles, is the ongoing infrastructure negotiations. When I wrote an October article which celebrated the Congressional Progressive Caucus’s solidarity in remaining firm on a two-bill strategy “for a brief but important moment”, I suppose I underestimated just how brief this moment would ultimately be.
Just over a month after that brief moment of celebration, Congress allowed the two bills to be decoupled and for the smaller bill to pass without any meaningful assurances that the Build Back Better Act will remain intact or pass at all.
Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act — the Bipartisan Infrastructure Bill
The bipartisan infrastructure deal passed through Congress on November 6, 2021, and was signed into law by President Biden shortly thereafter. The Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act contains, as far as I can tell, the same provisions it had at the time I wrote an article analyzing the two infrastructure bills.
I’ve mentioned before that I support the Act’s provisions overall, but that many of the potentially negative aspects of passing this bill alone could have been mitigated by passing other provisions through the budget reconciliation process. However, the Build Back Better Act now has an uncertain future.
Build Back Better Act — the Budget Reconciliation Bill
Since I published my article analyzing the contents of both infrastructure bills at the end of August, the $3.5 trillion budget reconciliation package has since been decoupled from the bipartisan bill and whittled down to roughly half that amount. Recall that this was an already reduced amount, given the initial goal was $6 trillion, which itself was roughly half of the $10+ trillion we likely should have committed to existential crises.
This is also less than half of the roughly $4 trillion worth of infrastructure spending Senator Joe Manchin proposed before all his corporate campaign donors started telling him to play “kingmaker” again.
Still, the House of Representatives passed what appears to be a hollow shell of the original vision for Biden’s Build Back Better Agenda, but not before riddling the bill full of unnecessary red tape and gutting core provisions. The bill could still ultimately end up being a net positive, if it ever passes the Senate, but it could have been so much more.
I think David Dayen, the executive editor of The American Prospect, summarized the situation well in a recent article:
I’ve made my views on BBB pretty clear. It’s the product of a hobbled and often captured legislative process, skimping on its programs while also maximizing the hassle that ordinary users will go through to qualify for them. Despite that crucial context, it’s better than most of what comes out of Congress, with important investments in family care, housing, health care affordability, and cash assistance. But outside of making those too poor to pay taxes eligible for the Child Tax Credit, almost none of BBB is made permanent. (Indeed, the increased dollar amount to the Child Tax Credit is extended only through 2022.)
Perhaps we’re in the “nothing would fundamentally change” phase of the Biden presidency. Still, workers across the country are trying to bring about positive changes in their workplaces.
Striketober Extended Into Strikesgiving
Last month we discussed how a wave of strikes swelled across the country in what many called the “Striketober” movement, and it persisted throughout November as well. This continuation has been aptly called “Strikesgiving” and shows no signs of slowing down. Perhaps throughout December workers will be wishing one another a Merry Strikesmas?
Negotiations may have progressed since the publishing of this article, but I will try to relay to you the latest on some of the strikes and labor organizing that I’ve been following.
The crews behind movies, television shows, and other stage productions with IATSE—the “union behind entertainment”—have ratified new contracts.
According to a November 15 statement, the “Contracts between IATSE [International Alliance of Theatrical Stage Employees, Moving Picture Technicians, Artists and Allied Crafts] and AMPTP [Alliance of Motion Picture and Television Producers] address quality-of-life issues such as rest and meal breaks; boost revenues from streaming; include raises for all members and lift those at the bottom to a living wage.”
I am, however, still seeing the 10-hour minimum turnaround about which many members expressed concerns, so this may be revisited in future negotiations.
There are provisions addressing weekend turnaround periods, which were also priorities for members; perhaps these improvements will help prevent burnout and exhaustion.
I hope that having better rested crews will help to reduce the frequency of costly and even deadly accidents on production sets. Workers’ rights are not just about economic justice, but also safety and wellbeing.
The United Autoworkers Union (UAW) members striking at John Deere plants also ratified a new agreement. A UAW statement summarizes certain key provisions of the agreement:
“[the agreement] includes an $8,500 signing bonus;
20% increase in wages over the lifetime of the contract with 10% this year;
return of Cost of Living adjustments;
three 3% lump sum payments;
enhanced options for retirement and enhanced CIPP performance benefits.
Healthcare remains the same for the life of the agreement.”
As of last week, the roughly 1,400 striking workers at Kellogg’s cereal plants remain on strike as negotiations once again broke down.
A major point of contention appears to be the two-tier compensation system Kellogg’s uses, which—at least in this writer’s humble opinion—sounds an awful lot like paying different workers different amounts for what appears to be the same type of work.
Negotiations will reportedly resume sometime next week, so I’ll definitely continue watching for updates.
Teamsters recently voted for new leadership, opting for a candidate who wants to negotiate stronger contracts for members, and rejecting the Hoffa-endorsed candidate who ostensibly represented the status quo.
According to this New York Times article on the subject, the newly elected Sean O’Brien, a Teamster with Local 25 in Boston, plans to leverage stronger contracts with already unionized companies, such as UPS, as reasons for workers of other companies to join the union:
The result appears to reflect frustration over the most recent UPS contract and growing dissatisfaction with Mr. Hoffa, who has headed the union for more than two decades and whose father did from 1957 to 1971. The younger Mr. Hoffa did not seek another five-year term.
In an interview, Mr. O’Brien said success in organizing Amazon workers — a stated goal of the Teamsters — would require the union to show the fruits of its efforts elsewhere.
“We’ve got to negotiate the strongest contracts possible so that we can take it to workers at Amazon and point to it and say this is the benefit you get of being in a union,” he said.
Stationary Engineers with the International Union of Operating Engineers (IUOE) Local 39 are striking in Northern California for better working conditions in Kaiser facilities.
As of last week, they were entering their 67th day of striking, and are apparently still waiting for Kaiser executives to negotiate in good faith.
The National Labor Relations Board (NLRB) recently ordered a new union vote in Bessemer, Alabama, after reviewing objections raised by the Retail, Wholesale and Department Store Union (RWDSU) regarding Amazon’s conduct during the initial election.
Starbucks workers are registering union elections with the NLRB and expect the first vote count on December 9.
I could go on, but workers across the country are increasingly beginning to realize just how essential they truly are, and are engaging in solidarity with one another for better working conditions. Whether they are already unionized and are negotiating better contracts, or they are looking to form a union with other workers who are tired of being overworked and underpaid—often in unreasonable or dangerous working conditions—I hope employers begin to treat their workers with the dignity they deserve.
I hope the future holds good news for workers everywhere, but in the meantime, I want to also discuss the future of the Economic Justice and Progress Newsletter.
Future Plans for the Economic Justice and Progress Newsletter
As I mentioned at the top of the article, I’m considering a number of changes, one of which involves making my Jobs Report Analysis series a quarterly, rather than monthly, series. I also plan to scale back the frequency of posts in general, perhaps to once a month rather than multiple times each month.
On that note, I might implement a schedule so that readers know when to expect my monthly article in their inboxes. Perhaps I’ll start publishing articles on the first Sunday of each month beginning in 2022.
While throughout 2021 we discussed a lot of news as it pertains to legislation and maintaining political momentum, I expect 2022 will be spent focusing on key issues surrounding upcoming elections. I plan to publish a sort of “year in review” type of article towards the end of next month which also outlines future plans in further detail, including which new books I’m considering purchasing for reference in future articles, so expect that in your inbox in a few weeks.
I’m also going to begin experimenting with subscriber-only content, while still leaving the majority of my content free to read, but I hope to have a clearer vision of what this newsletter will offer paid subscribers next year. If you have any thoughts on what subjects you would like me to cover, feel free to leave a public comment below or reply to the email so that your comments only appear in my inbox.
With that said, I want to thank everyone for reading and for taking the time to learn about making the world a better place, but if you are interested in a glimpse behind the scenes and at other projects I’m working on currently, please consider becoming a paid subscriber for $5 per month or $50 per year.