Wary Companies Rely on Temps, Part-Timers, Hire Overseas<\/a><\/p>\nOver the past 10 years:<\/p>\n
\u2022 The U.S. economy\u2019s output of goods and services has expanded 19%.<\/p>\n
\u2022 Nonfinancial corporate profits have risen 85%.<\/p>\n
\u2022 The labor force has grown by 10.1 million.<\/p>\n
\u2022 But the number of private-sector jobs has fallen by nearly two million.<\/p>\n
\u2022 And the percentage of American adults at work has dropped to 58.2%, a low not seen since 1983.<\/p>\n
What\u2019s wrong with the American job engine? As United Technologies Corp. (NYSE: UTX \u2013 News) Chief Financial Officer Greg Hayes put it recently: \u201cSales have come back, but people have not.\u201d<\/p>\n
That\u2019s largely because the economy is growing much too slowly to absorb the available work force, and industries that usually hire early in a recovery\u2014construction and small businesses\u2014were crippled by the credit bust.<\/p>\n
[More from WSJ.com: CEOs Say Don\u2019t Expect Much Hiring]<\/p>\n
Then there\u2019s the confidence factor. If employers were sure they could sell more, they would hire more. If they were less uncertain about everything from the durability of the recovery to the details of regulation, they would be more inclined to step up their hiring.<\/p>\n
Something else is going on, too, a phenomenon that predates the recession and has persisted through it: Changes in the way the job market works and how employers view labor.<\/p>\n
Executives call it \u201cstructural cost reduction\u201d or \u201cflexibility.\u201d Northwestern University economist Robert Gordon calls it the rise of \u201cthe disposable worker,\u201d shorthand for a push by businesses to cut labor costs wherever they can, to an almost unprecedented degree.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n
Capitalism, like democracy, only works in a Christian society, because Christianity puts pressure on capitalists and reminds them that there are higher matters than the bottom line, such as the human dignity of the worker. Get rid of a Christian culture and you get a system of predator\/prey relationships, like the one re-emerging now as pagan values of mere power take over. The notion \u201call men are created equal\u201d is a piece of pure mystical dogma handed down from the Christian tradition. Reject that tradition, and there is not a reason in the world for a wealthy and powerful person to think that disposable serfs possess any dignity that should impose on his bottom line.<\/p>\n