The number one issue in the election this year, polls tell us, is “the economy.” But what does that mean?
That depends on who you are and where you sit in the vast structure of inequality that engulfs us. If you’re sitting pretty, “the economy” means an expanding gross national product, the growth of your investments, higher stock prices, and lower personal and corporate income taxes. “The economy” for the well-to-do is all about increasing income and wealth with no interference from government meddlers.
For the rest of us, those sitting lower down, “the economy” is deeply connected to finding and holding onto a job that provides a decent income and benefits. Without a stable job it doesn’t much matter if housing or food is expensive, because if you don’t have work you can’t afford much of anything. You’re in trouble, big trouble. Proposals for systemic economic growth seem far removed from your day-to-day struggles.
A low unemployment rate, to be sure, is critically important to working people. Tight labor markets help drive up wages and create job more openings, but that’s not the same as having a stable job. Unemployment can be low and you still can be bounced from job to job, continually undermining your standard of living.
How do these corporations get the money for nearly three-quarters of a trillion dollars in stock buybacks each year? They lay off workers, freeing up cash by reducing payroll expenses. The more the better.
The research from my book, Wall Street’s War on Workers, shows that more than 30 million workers have lost their jobs due to mass layoffs since 1996. The usual explanation for these layoffs puts the blame on new technologies and the inevitable decline of manufacturing jobs because of stiff global competition from workers in other countries who earn much less.
But that’s not the whole story. If it was, then why are high-tech workers also seeing their jobs disappear? (Spoiler alert, it’s not AI.) In 2023, approximately 264,220 jobs were lost in tech companies, the crown jewels of our post-industrial economy. So far this year, another 135,811 have evaporated.
The Challenger Report, which tracks overall corporate layoffs, finds that 75,891 jobs were cut in August 2024. It also shows that on average this year, 891 jobs per month were cut due to AI. (For a fuller description on why new technologies like AI are not the primary job killers, please see Chapter 11 in Wall Street’s War on Workers.)
Why is there so much job instability? For the most prosperous corporations, it’s not due to a lack of profits, technology, or foreign competition. Meta, Alphabet, and Microsoft laid off more than 40,000 workers in 2022-23 despite booking hundreds of billions of dollars in profits.
These high-tech behemoths kill jobs because of what “the economy” means to their CEOs and to their major Wall Street investors. Their economy values higher stock prices, which translates into enormous incomes for investors and the company executives who are mostly paid through stock incentives.
How do they raise the stock price? Better products? Sure, that works but it takes too much time. The best and surest........