Julianne Malveaux

Dr. Julianne Malveaux is an economist, author and commentator, and the president and CEO of Last Word Productions Inc., a multimedia production company. She is described by Dr. Cornel West as “the most iconoclastic public intellectual in the country.”

As a writer and syndicated columnist, her work appears regularly in USA Today, Black Issues in Higher Education, Ms., Essence and the Progressive. Her weekly columns appear in numerous newspapers across the country. She is the editor and author of a number of books, including Sex, Lies and Stereotypes: Perspectives of a Mad Economist (1994) and Wall Street, Main Street and the Side Street: A Mad Economist Takes a Stroll (1999). Most recently, she co-authored Unfinished Business: A Democrat and A Republican Take on the 10 Most Important Issues Women Face (2002).  She also is a frequent commentator on television and radio.

Dr. Malveaux received her bachelor's and master's degrees in economics from Boston College and earned a doctorate in economics from MIT. She lives in Washington, D.C.

Read Julianne Malveaux's guest commentary below on economic facts and fictions.

Don't Believe the Numbers Hype

By Julianne Malveaux

The 2006 Economic Report of the President is one of the most intriguing pieces of fiction that I've ever read.  It paints a rosy picture of the economy (of course, it also says the economy was not at all damaged by Hurricane Katrina in 2005, but then, it didn't ask the million or so people who were displaced by the hurricane), projecting high growth and unemployment rates until 2011.

While the report sizzles with macroeconomic ecstasy and growth rates of more than 3 percent a year, there is a microeconomic angst that many Americans are experiencing.  If the economy is doing so good, they ask, why am I doing so bad?

This is especially true in the labor movement.  The unemployment rate has been less than 5 percent for 10 months, and jobs are being generated, albeit at a sluggish pace.  (Just 75,000 jobs were generated in May 2006.  We need to generate 300,000 jobs a month to make tax cuts worth it and to keep pace with population growth).  Bush administration pundits wax eloquent about the health of the job market, even as millions of workers, barraged with headlines about layoffs, fear for their jobs.

The unemployment numbers don't measure the fear that causes workers, too often, to shoulder indignity because they need to work, need to pay their bills, and cannot face the uncertainty of looking for new work.  These days, the workforce is a buyer's market, which means that employers are sitting in the catbird's seat, dangling the promise of decently paying jobs with some benefits at a few workers.  The alternative, as too many will testify, is low-paying or contingent jobs with no benefits and no power.  When people get jobs with decent pay and good benefits, they are often reluctant to squawk at injustices.

If "The Devil Wears Prada" and the workers get health care, some workers feel they have no choice but to tolerate the devil's evil ways.  But that doesn't improve the terms and conditions of work for the people who have to report to the devil or dance to the tune of the corporate piper that requires long and uncompensated hours, rude and callous treatment, and just plain incivility.

Too many workers are afraid to speak up, and even when they speak up, many know their protests will have few consequences or even spark retaliation.  After all, corporate human resource departments, seen as "soft" in this cutthroat, profit-driven world, have been so sharply cut that many complaints are not followed up on.  (One of the more chilling stories I heard was one in which the boss complained upon was asked to follow up on the charge against him.  Guess how that turned out?)

When people talk about their bosses, they are really talking about imbalances of power, the absence of civility, and a disrespect for working people that is reflected in the fact that the average CEO makes more than 800 times as much as a minimum wage worker.  Lots of folks have good jobs with good pay, but an increasing number have good jobs with good pay and poor working conditions.  The numbers suggest that the job market is healthy and robust.  Ask a worker how she is experiencing the job market.  The good news, all too often, has not trickled down to the assembly line, the office, or the retail store floor.  There is macroeconomic ecstasy, microeconomic angst.  The stories that people tell about the way they work are discordant notes in the gleeful song of prosperity and success.

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