Today's Contribution to the Blogging Industry

I just love the contemporary use of the term "industry." The word calls to mind smokestacks, molten steel pouring out of the giant crane-operated ladle in a shower of sparks, lathes and vertical mills with coolant washing chips off the workpiece, people assembling machinery ... in short, the production of tangible goods. But in this story, we're told what's going on in the "leisure and hospitality" industry, as well as in the "temporary-help industry." Yeah, well, at the moment I'm in the blogging industry, I guess. If I were a good-looking harlot, I could be in the sex industry. Whatever.

Meanwhile, this economic "recovery" we've been told about continues in robust fashion:

Washington — Private employers added a smaller-than-expected 83,000 jobs in June, but the unemployment rate edged down to 9.5% as many workers dropped out of a labor market that remains very sluggish.

The Labor Department reported Friday that total payroll employment, including government workers, was down 125,000 in June, reflecting the loss of 225,000 census workers who finished their assignments.

The decrease in Census Bureau staffing was expected, but most analysts were looking for stronger job growth in the private sector, which has yet to generate momentum and looms as a major threat to the overall economic recovery. In May, private employers added just 33,000 jobs. What's more, the average hours worked in manufacturing and other industries in June declined, as did average hourly earnings.

Job gains last month were largely in low-paying industries -- leisure and hospitality, and the temporary-help industry. Manufacturing payrolls grew by 9,000, but that was much smaller than the average of 25,400 in the prior five months. And the construction industry shed another 22,000 jobs in June.

Although the jobless rate in June fell from 9.7% in May, that reflected a big drop of 652,000 people in the labor force over the month. The labor force is made up of workers and those actively looking for jobs. With the economic recovery weakening and many employers reluctant to hire, many more unemployed people may have quit looking for work, which would push down the jobless rate.

In fact, the percentage of the overall working-age population that is in the labor force fell last month to 64.7% -- near a 25-year low.

News stories like this put me in mind of those super-slow-motion videos we've all seen, showing collision tests in which SUVs populated with instrumented dummies are crashed into barriers. Each such story is like a freeze frame, showing crumpling sheet metal, bits of shattered glass suspended in mid-flight, the driver dummy burying his face in the airbag. The long-awaited crash of the American corporate empire is in progress, and has been for some time. Recovery? I rather think not -- not if, by "recovery," we mean Americans living as they did even in 2000, to say nothing of the idyllic 1960s.

But away with all of that. I just want to know -- at last! -- where Mr. LeBron James will be plying his trade, occasionally sending a basketball through the twine, and how many tens of millions he'll be compensated each year for his heroic contributions to the sports industry. And, of course, to see the death industry continue and even improve its amazing productivity in the Middle East.