The Obama Administration has tried its best to convince the people that economic recovery is beginning to show.  It might be slow, but it’s coming.

Others, notably many observers on Wall Street, are telling the people that, if there is a recovery coming, it had better be based on something more than additional jobs in the old sectors of the American economy, because in some of the most important parts of the economy, the jobs are not coming back soon.

Two views of the economy and the prospects for recovery, yet, many of the players have a foot in both camps—or, at least they did.  Many of Obama’s economic advisors came directly out of a Wall Street environment.  Their views are colored by their experiences as the shapers of the national economy, with a sharp eye on how they were shaping the global economy.

As far as wage working Americans go, none of these experts have the experience necessary to make the decisions that will help the millions of families who are desperately trying to lift themselves out of a terrible situation. 

According to the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics, there were 14.8 million Americans unemployed in September, a 9.6 percent unemployment rate.  Those numbers were unchanged from the previous month.  Longtime observers of the economy and the job market have estimated the numbers to be much higher, since the unemployed are not counted, once they stop looking for work.

The past 30 years has been a time of rapid transfer of manufacturing and heavy industry out of the country.  With those sectors went millions of the best-paying jobs the country had ever seen, so it is small wonder that there is less money in the American pot.  Less money means less business and less buying and, in a consumer society, less buying means a sharply diminished economy.  Thus, the spiral began.

Now, wage-working Americans are being told that the recovery may be slow, but it’s on its way.  Can we blame them if they just don’t see it?  Can they be blamed if they’re angry about the state of their nation and their lives?  They are angry, but they don’t really know who is at fault.  How are those jobs going to be brought back from wherever they went so long ago?

In early September, one assessment was this, from 24/7 Wall St.:  “It has become clear that jobs in some industries may never come back or if they do it will take years or decades for a recovery. 24/7 Wall St. examined the Bureau of Labor Statistics’ ‘Employment Situation Summary’ and a number of sources that show layoffs by company and sector. The weakness in these sectors will make it harder for the private industry, even aided by the government, to bring down total unemployment from 9.6% and replace the 8.3 million jobs lost during the recession. The losses in these industries have to be offset by growth in others before there can be any net increase in American employment.”

The list of job categories that will not see much of a recovery—at least, according to 24/7 Wall St.—includes state and local government jobs; construction; installation, maintenance, and repair; automotive manufacturing; pharmaceuticals; big telecom; newspapers; airlines; realtors, and bank tellers.

There have been “jobless recoveries” before, but this one promises to be unique.  How can it be called a recovery?  It depends on how you look at it and on who is looking at it.  Management of firms that have shifted their production to other countries and look toward other countries for their start-up money, as well as goods, will see recovery at a pretty good rate, because they’re doing well.  But, they make up only a small percentage of the American people—1 to 5 percent. 

The other 95 percent is made up of the Americans who are losing their homes, seeing their manufacturing plants closing, scrambling to add another job to the family income, and standing in line—so to speak—to get one of the jobs that they and four other unemployed persons are trying to nail down.  For them, recovery seems but an illusion.

As has been pointed out by many, over the years, this problem has been decades in the making, with American corporations looking to get the goods made by the cheapest labor—and that’s not in the U.S., where the government, in effect, subsidized the “outsourcing” of jobs to the lowest-wage countries.

This has been called “free trade,” but it only has been free for transnational corporations.  It has never been free for workers of any country.  This so-called free trade, indeed, has been a race to the bottom, as was predicted, even as corporate propagandists convinced a majority of Americans that it was good for them.  It’s a good thing that, with modern technology, the unemployed can file for their benefits on the phone or on line.  Otherwise, the size of the lines at unemployment offices would be frighteningly reminiscent of the lines of the Great Depression.  As it is, we just have a “Great Recession.” 

Average Americans, workers, listened to the free traders in both parties, never looking ahead to where a global economy might take them in 10 or 20 years.  The end of those years is here, and the predicted catastrophic results have come to pass.  Yet, there are those who threaten further devastation, if the U.S. does not rid itself of its “protectionist” impulses.

Just this week, a right-of-center pundit, David Harsanyi, called out Republicans who voted with Democrats on a trade bill that he sees as “protectionist.”  He wrote:  “No matter how many times history proves the protectionists wrong, they come back and scaremonger and demagogue us into believing trade is harmful.  And admittedly, there are few more abstract and politically problematic positions to defend.”

As with those of his political bent, Harsanyi has set up a straw man, saying that opponents of the “free trade,” global economy believe “trade is harmful.”  He doesn’t quote by name (or quote anyone at all) any progressive who has said trade is harmful, because it’s not likely that he can find one.

The world always has had trade.  No one could stop that, least of all governments.  People who had a horse, camel, or boat were going to trade, no matter what.  They did and they continue to do so.  But the terms of trade have always been set by the powerful—The terms of trade are set by him what’s got the biggest guns—and that’s what we’ve seen in this global economy for at least three decades.  The benefits never trickled down to the workers, peasants, or indigenous people, anywhere, including the U.S., and they never will under the current system of “free trade.”  The powerful, those for whom Harsanyi speaks, will benefit, as they always have.

This week, President Obama announced a $60 billion program to improve roads, the airline system, and railroads, infrastructure work that will provide jobs.  However many new jobs are created has yet to be determined, but it’s possible that this program, like so many before it, will be launched without regard to other large problems the nation faces, namely the deteriorating environment, dependence on fossil fuels and the increasing cost of oil, and the social disruption that, to a great extent, is causing political gridlock at the state and national levels of government.

It makes us feel good that we might be able to create jobs through the infrastructure improvement program, but what America needs is to bring back (whether they were sent to other countries or just disappeared right here at home) a volume of manufacturing and industrial jobs that will truly set American families on the road to recovery.  Without producing necessities here at home—as opposed to desires created by our massive advertising and public relations “industries”—there never will be true recovery for the people.  The status quo will simply further enrich the few.

BlackCommentator.com Columnist, John Funiciello, is a labor organizer and former union organizer. His union work started when he became a local president of The Newspaper Guild in the early 1970s. He was a reporter for 14 years for newspapers in New York State. In addition to labor work, he is organizing family farmers as they struggle to stay on the land under enormous pressure from factory food producers and land developers. Click here to contact Mr. Funiciello.