the Voice of
The Communist League of Revolutionary Workers–Internationalist
“The emancipation of the working class will only be achieved by the working class itself.”
— Karl Marx
Feb 20, 2017
Companies continue to announce new jobs.
Amazon said it would create more than 100,000 new full-time jobs over the next 18 months. IBM said it would add 25,000 jobs over the next four years. Walmart has said it will create 10,000 jobs this year. And so on.
These “new job” announcers carefully omit the fact that many new hires follow new layoffs. For example, Walmart cut 16,000 retail jobs in early 2016, and slashed another 7,000 jobs at its U.S. stores in late summer. In 2016 alone, Walmart fired more than double the number of workers that it pretends to be “adding” in 2017. Amazon’s 100,000 figure looks impressive, but other merchandisers have cut 250,000 jobs since 2012, leaving overall a 150,000 job deficit in merchandising.
What’s being created is more unemployment, not jobs!