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The employment situation in the United States is much worse than even the dismal numbers from last week’s jobless report would indicate. The nation is facing a full-blown employment crisis and policy makers are not responding with anything like the sense of urgency that is needed. We told you before that research show America’s long-term unemployed citizens frequently end up depressed, dejected, and more unlikely to look for jobs as time drags on. We also told you that some companies are cruelly requiring job applicants to be employed in order to be considered for work. Today, we’ve got yet another reason why so many people are having trouble finding jobs. The nation’s economic woes boil down to this. Compared with a healthy economy, about 7 million working-age people and 5 percent of the nation’s industrial capacity are sitting idle, not producing what they could. The economy is growing again, but at a rate — less than 2 percent in recent months — that’s too slow to keep up with a population that keeps increasing and workers who keep getting more efficient. We are not even beginning to cope with this crisis, which began long before the onset of the so-called Great Recession. The economy is showing absolutely no sign of countering the nation’s staggering jobs deficit. “We have a large number of people who have just given up hope of finding a job,” said Mr. McMillion (President and chief economist of MBG Information Services in Washington). He pointed out that there are record numbers — “I mean lights-out record numbers” — of long-term unemployed people who are still looking for jobs. Of the 14.6 million men and women officially counted as unemployed, nearly 45 percent have been out of work for six months or longer. Rusty Rueff, a workplace expert with the jobs website Glass door, said their recent poll found that only 16 percent of people were worried about getting laid off, the lowest level in more than a year. But many workers were nervous that the recent market swings and bad economic news could affect their job in some way, such as their ability to advance of how big their paycheck is. Looking at the charts below (click for super interactive versions) you can see that today’s sorry situation far exceeds even the conditions seen during the double-dip recessionary period of the early 1980s, long considered by economists to be the worst period of unemployment since the Great Depression. post full 1287093426whyitdoesntfeellikearecovery 300x211 Scary Unemployment Situation (The Horror Show) We’re not heading toward the danger zone. We’re there. The U.S. will not remain a stable society if this great employment crisis is not addressed head-on — and soon. You cannot allow joblessness on this scale to fester. It’s wrong, and the blowback will be as destructive and intolerable as it is inevitable.
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Scary Unemployment Situation (The Horror Show)
