Study Shows Businesses Weren’t Cutting Jobs Until…

by Warner Todd Huston | May 15, 2010 2:33 pm

The Associated Press made an interesting concession — likely without even knowing they did so — in a recent report on the “new normal” of permanent job loss in Obama’s economy. The AP admitted that until the recession, American businesses weren’t firing people simply so improve the bottom line as many anti-business, left-wingers have been for decades claiming.

In the AP piece the headline moans that “Millions of jobs that were cut won’t likely return[1],” and goes on to say that “millions of jobs lost in the recession could be gone for good.”

It’s all pretty dismal news, but tucked inside the piece was this interesting paragraph:

Behind the trend are the cutbacks businesses made in the recession to make up for a loss of customers. To sustain earnings, they became more productive: They found ways to produce the same level of goods or services with fewer workers. Automation, global competition and technological efficiencies helped solidify the trend.

Well, let’s just think a minute about what this paragraph is saying, shall we?

The AP is saying that the cutbacks in jobs made by businesses were made due to the continuing Obama recession. This seems to admit that the millions of jobs cut were not being made before — as we know by looking at the low unemployment rates between 2000 and 2008.

The paragraph then informs us that businesses realized after they made the cuts that they could do without the workers they once had. They discovered that fewer workers, automation, and efficiency measures maintained quality outcome and sustained changes in the marketplace.

But what is this really saying that was left unsaid? This is no less a tacit admission that the claim made by the anti-capitalist, anti-business left is wholly wrong. Haven’t we heard for decades from the left that business is uncaring toward its employees? Aren’t daily bombarded with the idea that the “fatcat bosses” of business haughtily dismiss the needs of workers and fire them at will just to save a buck or two?

Well, this whole lefty meme seems to be upended by this paragraph in the APs story, doesn’t it? After all, this paragraph is saying that business only now, in this Obama recession, have realized that the loss of jobs hasn’t negatively affected the business. This is saying that business had millions of unnecessary employees until this Obama recession. This means that until now there have been millions of unnecessary positions fully staffed and paid for by the same businesses that lefties claimed didn’t care about making sure workers had jobs and that the only thing that forced them to finally fire all these people was the Obama recession!

So, perhaps all this time the business community that Obama and his cohorts say is so uncaring were floating the cost of millions of jobs that they didn’t really need to fund! And it was the Obama recession that got them to realize that they could fire them all without hurting their businesses.

That sure doesn’t fit the lefty narrative, does it? Like I said, my guess is that the AP didn’t even realize what they themselves had published.

Endnotes:
  1. Millions of jobs that were cut won’t likely return: http://finance.yahoo.com/news/Millions-of-jobs-that-were-apf-1022893308.html?x=0&sec=topStories&pos=7&asset=&ccode=

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