2/21/09

-20 Million Jobs And Growing In China

There is no good news in this piece. Many Chinese workers have left the cities and returned to their farms if they had one in an attempt to scratch out a living. Others stay in the city as there is nowhere else to go in the hope jobs will return. The government is concerned about uprisings but that's not new.

Possibly in the future some of the jobs may return but not at previous levels. Making trinkets and other inane products to fulfill afternoons of shopping for soccer moms and the like just for the sake of buying will never be the same here and that's as it should be.

Worse news may be yet to come: Exports, the country's economic lifeblood, plunged 17.5 per cent in January. In addition to the estimated 20 million, another 5 or 6 million migrant workers could lose their jobs in the month to come. Some argue that even those numbers underestimate the scope of what is happening.

4 comments:

  1. damn... what a crazy number to even think about...

    it's gonna be so bad here in the states too... not as bad as China, but bad... Our unemployment rate now is actually hidden because of the way be classify part time and underemployed workers... when even those jobs disappear, not to mention all those jobs that were based on Debt Vudu, you'll start seeing some crazy numbers.... as it stands our unemployment is more like 12-15% than the actual number...

    at least we won't have an epic humanitarian crisis on our hands... can't really guarantee the same for China...

    one love,
    --Reverend Manny and the Twilight Empire

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  2. In some ways Rev this 20mil number gives a better indication of where things are at as it's pretty quite here on just what is happening. The local fish wrapper for years touted positive numbers but don't say shit now. Most of the junk these Chinese were making was coming here.

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  3. That is a gorgeous picture! It isn't funny but everyone wanted to see us go down but they didn't realize that when we did they were going to.
    The poor and third world countries will be the first to go. China will be hit much harder than most so called civilized Nation's because their growth and prosperity was due to us!

    We think it is bad now just wait until the food crisis that has 6 billion starving hits the US!

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  4. China's having the same problem that Japan was having in the '80s. They haven't grown a consumer economy yet. When they do, economic problems caused by batshit crazy trading partners might not affect them as much.

    I bet they'll be less eager to lend us money, too. Odd thing about that is, in a way it's worse for them than it is for us. We have to be nice to them, because they're holding our note. If we default, though, they're the ones who will feel the pain.

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