A recent Wall Street Journal opinion piece by Mortimer Zuckerman, Chairman and Editor-in-Chief of US News and World Report, indicates the true US unemployment rate is 19%, when you include the people who have given up and quit looking for work and the involuntary part-timers who can’t find a full time job. He backs it up with recent numbers from the US Department of Labor. He doesn't say in so many words that the Obama administration is lying about unemployment numbers, but the implication is clear.
Mortimer also cites some other scary numbers confirming the US is experiencing – not a recession – but a modern day Depression, with a big D. He makes the interesting point that we don’t see the soup kitchens and bread lines of the 1930s because in the 21st century, the chronically jobless get checks in the mail.
- More than 45 million Americans receive food stamps. This is 15% of the population compared with the 7.9% participation from 1970-2000. Food-stamp enrollment has been rising at a rate of 400,000 per month over the past four years.
- A record number of Americans – more than 11 million – collect Social Security disability. Half of these beneficiaries have signed on since President Obama took office in 2009.
- Annual wage increases have dropped to an average of 1.6%, the lowest in the past 30 years. Adjusted for inflation, wages are contracting.
Although historically US News and World Report, like the Wall Street Journal, is known conservative editorial leanings, the piece is decidedly non-partisan. It makes the telling point that changing presidents on November 7th ain’t going to solve the problem.
In fact some of the policy solutions Zuckerman proposes, which include an expansion of public and private training programs, programs to address the decay in public works and infrastructure and “special subsidies” for private employers who hire the long term unemployed, seem pretty radical when contrasted with the Republican Party’s austerity and budget cutting initiatives.
Read more here.
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Jill Cloutier
cheshyre grin
al mariam
Patrick D Hahn
Jan Sand
Arthur Louis
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Comments
Even at 19%, which I believe is an underestimate, we've hit a sustained period of 4 years of unemployment numbers that come extremely close to the 25% sustained unemployment of the Great Depression.
I want my New New Deal. Fire up the WPA...shit...something.
I guess I'll start selling BBQ from a website on the internet... my own little dot com venture. I wonder if Bain Capital will front me some start-up financing?
it might be fairer to pay people for being a citizen, with incentive pay for different levels of genuine social productivity. not that fair enters the equation in any but idle hypothesizing.
Here in Canada the numbers do not include:
1- Those whose unemployment insurance benefits have expired.
2- Those on social assistance
3- Those seeking their first job
4- Those who temporarily left the work-force for medical reasons (i.e. to have a baby)
5- Ex-convicts
6- Ex-military servicemen/women
7- Seniors trying to return to the work-force
8- Former small business owners who've lost their businesses.
9- Former clients of medical or mental health institutions
10 - People with part-time jobs who want full time work.
And the list goes on. A number between 25% and 35% id far more realistic.
Rated.
.
Resistance may be futile, but it's all we have left.
I think Sky and Malcolm are probably right - that the real unemployment figures are much higher. We have 19% unemployment according to Dept of Labor figures - in other words, Obama is lying about what his own numbers say.
I agree, Alaska, that things will get progressively worse. Eventually people will become as frustrated as the pre-collapse Soviets - and decided they would rather live on the street and eat out of dumpsters than continue to attend soul-destroying jobs.
It's not funny anymore.
I'm sure that Alaska Progressive is right about students not having work for them when they get out of college with their enormous student loan debts. On top of that an enormous percentage of the work that is being done is for useless purposes that are designed primarily to make the rich richer without providing a benefit for the majority. One of the biggest examples is advertising jobs that are designed to sell useless products. Perhaps what also known as might mean is that "the only thing worse than not having a job was having a job" that serves no good purpose. But when it comes to advertising jobs those that can get them are often treated fairly well because they don't want celebrities exposing their scams.
Is the 19% the U-6 number? I haven't look in a long time.
My problem with the administration, well all of them of late, is that they come out with the number, the administrations run with the good news, then they amend the number. What they can't get it right the first time? That is what makes me mad. To hear the president blow his horn about how things are getting better when the number is release then say nothing when they announce they were wrong by 1/3 or more.
I'm not really sure where he gets the number from.
According to the Dept of Labor U6 doesn't include people who haven't applied for work in the last 12 mos (http://www.bls.gov/news.release/empsit.t15.htm).
I found 2 sites that do measure "long term marginally attached workers" at http://ideas.repec.org/p/epo/papers/2012-01.html and John Williams' www.shadowstats.com. Williams estimates the true unemployment figure at 22%.