A borrowed quote from Putney Swope highlights the growing unemployment numbers, 15.7 million Americans are registered as unemployed, 10.2% of the workforce, the most since 1983 the 3rd year of the Reagan Presidency.The true number of unemployed Americans is probably not known, or if it is, then it's not announced, it wouldn't make for good reading. People who have stopped looking, those that are working 10-15 hours a week, people who just fall off the rolls. Uncorroborated figures on some sites say the figure is closer to 20 million Americans looking for work.
Official figures from Bloomberg state that since the recession began in December 2007, the economy has lost 7.3 million jobs with 3.5 million since January this year. President Obama has just signed a 20 week extension to benefits, will he have to sign another extension in 20 weeks time? Probably, there is no end in sight to the hemorrhaging of well paid jobs.
Government officials talk recession, how high does unemployment have to rise before the dreaded D word creeps into the headlines.
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Yesterday a fed ex driver volunteered as I ask people like this questions about business and he just said it was way down and some people who signed were gone. If numbers don't get better soon the d word is in play.
Fly - The politicians hate that D word, because any confidence there is would drain right out of the country.
The D word? Delicious? Discombobulation? Dork?
Randal - Dick? Dingo?
I don't think we'll see D on this trip. Hut we need to focus on main street rather than wall street or the next trip will be soon and grave.
TomCat - I couldn't stand another trip like this in my lifetime, so lets get busy with Main Street pretty quick.
To unf*ck what Bush did, is gonna take a long time.
Karen - A very long time, unless the country can get back to full employment.
I believe 20 million unemployed is a conservative figure. I am unemployed and not counted because I am not eligible for unemployment compensation as I worked for a church-sponsored school. Apparently people who work for "God" deserve less than everyone else. A lot of people I talk to has someone in the family out of work. Those who are working are earning less. The only thing keeping this from being a full-blow depression is that, unlike the Great Depression, where if the man of the house lost his job there was no other source of income, most every family does at least have someone who is working.
Here's another quote: "When whites are out of work they call it a depression." Jesse Jackson, sometime in the 1970s.
I've got twi recent college graduates living under my roof now. No luck for either of them finding jobs that have anything to do with their degrees. Not even Walmart is hiring college graduates now. They come too cheap from other countries. Thank you George Bush and US Chamber of Commerce for outsourcing our higher end jobs as well as many so many of our manufacturing jobs overseas. Real Americans those guys. No offense to you Holte.
Mr. Charleston - I am unemployed too, although at age 62, I have started to call it retirement, I have never claimed any benefits because I quit an OK job to move when my wife was offered a very good job. Good point about the 30s Depression, the man was the generally the only one working in most families, working women are keeping most households afloat these days, because the vast majority of the new unemployed are men. I know of several families where one worker is keeping the whole family going.
Tom - Things generally get a bigger headline when the white folks are affected, I suppose it's, for now, because they are the majority.
Truth - Our daughter with a BA and an MBA was out of work for a year, her husband had a good job thank goodness, but she was going nuts, two degrees and nothing. She ended taking something she didn't want to do and was way over qualified for, just to work. No offense taken.
When you're out of work for an extended period, it's an all-out depression for you, no matter what economists call it.
President Obama's first mistake was employing Geithner and Summers instead of Buffett and Krugman. His second mistake was trying to placate Republicans to achieve some semblance of bipartisanship and start off his administration on a positive note. The third and potentially fatal mistake he's made on this is failing utterly to simply hire people as federal workers for a whole hell of a lot of work that needs doing ASAP. For instance, put several thousand more Border Patrol agents on the ground, north and south, securing our borders. For instance, inspecting a hell of a lot more than 1 percent to 2 percent of the meat, fruits, vegetables and other edibles coming into our country from wherever. For instance, training and deploying a whole lot more physician assistants and nurse practitioners to small and medium-sized communities where few if any doctors are willing to practice medicine.
Those aren't short-term make-work propositions. They're badly needed services that will pay dividends in health, safety and peace of mind. Wingnuts would be beside themselves — making the whole thing ever so much more gratifying for the rest of us — if only Obama would spend more time channeling Roosevelt and Truman, and less time channeling Lincoln and Clinton.
But they are giving us the Prozac of better numbers on the Dow, Man we are back over 5 digits for the benchmark stocks, oil is stabilized at near $80 and all is well because the titans are going to get their bonuses for saving us.
Holte you just have to do a better job of keeping up with Miss Mary Sunshine.
Detroit (the city proper) is running 30% unemployment, which is 5% above the numbers of whites unemployed in the 30's and 20% below the number of blacks unemployed at that time.
The metro area (excluding the city) is running near 16%.
What depression? Pass the Prozac please.
S.W. - Physicians Assistants and Nurse Practitioners take 2-3 years to train and more could be trained if Nursing Schools could get the Faculty to train them, my wife is a Nursing Faculty in the Georgia University System so I'm speaking with some knowledge. A nurse with a Master's Degree and is a Clinical Specialist would have to take a pay cut to teach. My wife has a Phd in nursing and could make a better salary if she left academia, but she loves her job, most of the time. Flooding rural communities with Nurse Practitioners would save the health care system millions of dollars in Georgia alone, my wife and her colleagues think it will take 20 years to fix health care. A big obstacle to progress is the AMA.
Walking Man - I know that Michigan and Detroit in particular, have been hammered economically for many years. Big corps. have a habit of using local populations till they see a cheaper one elsewhere, or they mis-manage and go under. The post-industrial society can be tough on communities, I experienced it in my home town, but on a lesser scale that Detroit.
a lot of jobs are NEVER coming back
-- they are shipped overseas for lower wages
-- electronic productivity has taken many away
-- and worse - the income inequality. it is criminal that there are up to 20 million unemployed and the salaries of the financial world are out of control- yes on our dollar, but also the complete greed and selfishness of those people
it is good to be king of wall st. as long as the banks have free reign in this country and wall st expects increase profits over full employment - expect this to last a very long time
Businesses won't hire, claiming they can't get loans from banks. Banks won't lend, because they claim the businesses don't have the cash flow to repay the loan. The employees don't get rehired, and it all starts all over again. Vicious cycle, someone is going to have to break it, if it means a tax penalty on banks that don't lend enough to small businesses, and, once the banks get in line, a tax penalty on businesses who find that it's way cheaper to have one person doing the job of 5 others than to pay 4 more people, and don't think for a minute THAT isn't getting put into the mix here.
unemployment is probably closer to 25%, because of the untold numbers whose employers just outright fired them (that's not eligible for benefits, so doesn't get counted), the people who's benefits ran out already even with the extensions, those who just flat gave up looking because there is NOTHING out there, those who took part time jobs and therefore don't get counted, etc. etc. etc.
I hate to say it, but I think Washington is going to have to get involved in some more forceful way with this part of the "recovery."
Dcap - As long as we have the corporations shaping legislation and the tax code, the jobs lost to cheaper labor markets will never come back. Wall Street sees itself as special and above the trauma being experienced in the wider world. They think they are necessary for the country to recover, whereas they are the reason (along with regulators)for the demise.
Bee - Politicians of both flavors never give us the true figures on unemployment, as you said, there are millions of people not on the unemployment rolls, so don't get counted in whatever percentage they decide to throw at us. It is dishonest and just another disappointment for us to endure, do they think we can't handle the truth? Truth on unemployment would be so refreshing.
Holte wrote: "Physicians Assistants and Nurse Practitioners take 2-3 years to train and more could be trained if Nursing Schools could get the Faculty to train them."
The military already trains them. That training capability could be scaled up considerably, ensuring large numbers of qualified graduates for several years. By then, I have a hunch civilian schools would be inclined to increase their capacity, lest the government continue cutting in on their territory so to speak.
S.W. - The military trains them because they have an unlimited budget, civilian schools do not. They would churn out more graduates if they could afford to pay faculty. Plus the military graduates specialize in wound care. My wife's College of Nursing is going to have cut back accepting students at every nursing level next year because they don't have the faculty.
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