No summer jobs available for Indian students in America

WASHINGTON: Indian grad students studying in the US are finding the summer hard.

Those who chose not to go back to India for the summer break, hoping to get summer jobs, are finding that for the first time there are no jobs...not even in grocery stores and fast food eateries.

Employers cut 62,000 jobs in the month of June as soaring fuel prices and a slowing economy forced companies to reduce costs.

The US Department of Labour reported that the economy has lost about 438,000 jobs since the beginning of the year. The unemployment rate was at 5.5 per cent.

Amar, a sophomore student at George Washington University, realized that he could not stay in DC this summer and went home to Karachi.

He eatery he was working in the downtown area shut down when the owner was unable to make his lease payment.
"The collapse of the housing bubble is slowly sinking more and more sectors of the economy," said Dean Baker, co-director of the Centre for Economic and Policy Research.

The Labour department report states that 5.4 million Americans, about 3 per cent of the workforce were working part time either because their hours had been cut, or because they could not find full time employment.

Charles Page, a real estate agent in Centerville, Virginia once sold 5-6 million dollar homes. In barely a year, he has gone bust and now works for a realty company, that too part time.

The political criticism of the economy has been bipartisan.

Senator Obama said yesterday " The American people are paying the price for the failed economic policies of the past eight years, and we can't afford four more years of the same."

Not to be outdone by the Democratic candidate, Senator John McCain said: "We must enact a jobs-first economic plan that supports job creation, provides immediate tax relief for families, enact a plan to help those facing foreclosure, lower health care costs...."

Across the political spectrum, there is concern growing into a near panic that the there is need for a more aggressive action by the federal government to prod economic growth.