American Jobs DVD

In 2004 a television producer named Greg Spotts quit his job to make the documentary film American Jobs.   At the time something peculiar caught Greg's attention. The nightly news reported economic recovery and job resurgence yet more and more of his friends were out of work. What does a filmmaker do? In Greg's case he picked up his camera and hit the countryside, interviewing machinists, engineers, politicians, any one with or without a job (mostly without), who had an opinion on the subject.

The great part about the film is it's true Do-It-Yourself mentality. The guy's opening credits show him setting up his lights and his cameras and filming himself. The technical quality is very good for a low budget do it yourself adventure and he finds some interesting characters along the way. Including one lady that breaks down just how great the washcloth-making machine was. How it makes the cuts just right, the hems are all straight....it was just swell. That was until the textile factory the town was built around closed up and left everyone high and dry.

Spotts also covers white-collar jobs such as Boeing's Airplane Manufacturing, which is now shifting many of it's operations overseas. One woman, a software engineer, tells her horror story of being laid off on Friday and then having to come in and train her foreign-born replacement on Monday. She describes the American workers standing on one side of the table and the foreign replacements on the other side of the table as, "The Sock-Hop From Hell."

In another scene a software engineer with 14 years experience tells the story of Panda, his Indian replacement, sitting in his cube with an introductory manual.

Spotts liberally calls his film nonpartisan, which is a bit off the mark. The film is only lightly peppered with pro-NAFTA moments. NAFTA being the North American Free Trade Agreement which went into effect January 1, 1994 and leveled tariffs between Canada, the United States and Mexico on most goods. The agreement also eliminated or reduced many other international tariffs. Thus your modern-day Wal-Mart experience.

Spotts' film highlights many of those effected by NAFTA and offers some good slice-of-life segments but it is not nonpartisan. US Employment has grown over the last decade from roughly 120 Million to 135 Million. Unemployment rates have fallen from 6.1 in 1994 when NAFTA took effect to 4.5 in '98, then to 4.0 in 2000. They spiked again in '03 at 6 but fell to 4.6 in 2006. These are substantially better numbers than the 7-9's posted in the early 80's and the 5-7's posted from the late 80's until NAFTA took hold in '94.

There's the possibility that workers made better money prior to NAFTA, allowing one family member to work while the other stayed home. Are workers less satisfied today than pre-NAFTA? Valid points to consider but a bit too deep for this DVD review. Check out American Jobs, do a little research and you'll be well on your way to having a semi-deep unemployment conversation at your next dinner party.