American Thinker:

The jobs collapse
Lee DeCovnick

Another warm summer day in Obama's America; we can only grimace in pain at the ugly repetitive news that erodes our county's character and grimly reminds us how much real damage this Administration's failed economic policy has inflicted on the citizens of this nation.

From sfgate, the San Francisco Chronicle's website:

Cisco Systems Inc., the world's largest maker of computer-networking gear, is reducing its work force by about 9 percent to reduce costs and raise profits as the company tries to become more competitive.

Monday's announcement to cut 6,500 of its roughly 73,000 worldwide employees follows up on a plan disclosed in May to eliminate thousands of jobs. Two-thirds will come through layoffs, and the rest through an early-retirement plan. The company said 15 percent of employees at or above the level of vice president are being eliminated.

Cisco has long been a high-growth company, but after rebounding from the recession, its sales started stalling about a year ago.

Don't forget that in June, this country created only 18,000 new jobs, well below the 175,000 jobs that are needed every month just to break even with the anticipated retirements and attrition in the non-farm, non-government workplace.

From sfgate:

It will soon take hours to pay a traffic ticket in San Francisco, months to get court records and at least a year and a half to get a divorce. With a few exceptions, only criminal cases will go to trial.

Two hundred Superior Court employees, more than 40 percent of the staff, are about to be notified that they will be laid off Sept. 30 because of devastating losses of state funding.

"The civil justice system in San Francisco is collapsing," Katherine Feinstein, the court's presiding judge, said Monday. Facing a $13.75 million deficit in an $88 million budget, Feinstein said, the court plans to close 25 of its 63 courtrooms on Oct. 3, all in the Civic Center courthouse at 400 McAllister St. She said layoff notices have already been sent to 11 of the court's 12 commissioners, who handle juvenile, traffic and probate cases. Their cases will be reassigned to the court's 51 judges.

Don't you think it's odd that the courts take such a severe hit, but San Francisco's cushy union jobs, and other protected liberal constituencies seem relatively untouched?

From sfgate:

Borders, the country's second-largest bookstore chain, which not so long ago had more than 600 stores nationwide, threw in the towel Monday and announced it was going into liquidation.

Gone, beginning in less than a week, will be the 399 stores left over after its Chapter 11 filing in February. They include six in the Bay Area - in San Francisco, Palo Alto, Sunnyvale, Santa Rosa (two stores) and Vacaville. Approximately 10,700 employees nationwide will be let go.

Neither were there any saviors with the requisite expertise willing to step forward "to operate it as a viable company," said Michael Tucker, past president of the American Booksellers Association, who is also CEO of the Bay Area independent book chain Books Inc.

While Borders' disappearance comes as little surprise, it represents a significant loss, Tucker said. "It's a loss for communities where Borders was their only store. It's another loss for publishers. And 11,000 more people are going to be put out of work."

Let's see, if we add the 6,500 lost Cisco jobs to the 11,000 lost Borders jobs, we will have almost balanced out the 18,000 news jobs from June. From Veronique de Rugy in NRO we read:

Even controlling for the effects of census employment, federal employment has increased constantly throughout the recession and into today. Since January 2008, net of census hiring, the federal government has grown by 3.5 percent, gaining 98,000 jobs.

What about employment in the rest of the economy? Since the beginning of the recession, state governments have added 42,000 employees to their payrolls. Local governments have cut 258,000 jobs (1.7 percent of their January 2008 workforce). Overall, total government employment has shrunk by 0.5 percent since January 2008. And the private sector has lost 7.2 million jobs, or 6 percent of its January 2008 workforce.

The Congress and the White House do not create jobs, they redistribute wealth. Private enterprise creates jobs. If the clowns in Washington don't pass a budget that encourages investment, rewards risk, lowers business taxes, and cuts federal spending, we can anticipate a European- like decade of double digit unemployment and annual growth rates under 2%.

The politicians, their co-dependents and enablers continue to play the blame game on the debt ceiling deadline. We must forcefully demand that the government get the hell out of our schools, grocery stores, gas stations, bedrooms, medical offices, wallets and purses, so we can live our lives as independent citizens, not as chattel slaves in Obama's socialist regime.