rssThe Jobless Recovery Trudges Joblessly On
Friday, March 05, 2010 at 4:12 pm
- 7 Comments
Economy cheerleaders erupted today at the news that only 36,000 Americans lost their jobs in February, as compared to the 50,000 American jobs expected to be sacrificed to the Snowpocalypse gods. Of course, that means 15 million Americans remain unemployed, and 40 percent of those people have been unemployed for more than six months — and that’s not even the worst of the bad news.
If you count people that want, but cannot find, full-time work and those who are unemployed but no longer actively looking for jobs (what with employers still shedding jobs rather than creating new ones), underemployment is up to 16.8 percent. Part of that may well be that the Labor Department counts anyone who worked for even an hour during the Snowpocalypse as “employed,” even if they did not get paid for the forced time off.
Worse yet for the many Americans paid by the hour, the average workweek fell to 33.8 hours. Someone working that many hours at minimum wage would earn $12,743 in a year, which is above the poverty line for a single person but far below it for anyone with dependents. The poverty line for a family of two — which could be a mother with one child — is $14,570, or $510 less than a person making minimum wage would earn if she worked 40 hours a week every week for a year. Of course, the official poverty line doesn’t currently take into account the actual cost of living, health care costs or child care costs — all of which, when added into the new supplemental poverty measure, increase the number of officially impoverished people. Most people who were able to work the average number of hours at a job at minimum wage would likely need two such jobs to be able to provide the basics for themselves and their families, but there aren’t enough jobs for nearly 17 percent of Americans to get one, let alone two.
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7 Comments
Comment posted March 5, 2010 @ 9:31 pm
Spot on article! Everyone is focusing on the jobs lost number when the reality is we should be looking at the long term unemployed number. And FYI to the Senate-best address the long term unemployed who are will be runniong out of benefits this month. The long term unemployed need more benefit tiers. To not address this will mean more people losing their homes to foreclosure and homelessness as well as them NOT being able to provide basic necessities for themselves and their families.
Comment posted March 7, 2010 @ 4:57 am
AMEN to that Anita this country was once a special place they want us down and out 8 bucks an hour is the new middle class FUCK this country and everyone in it!
Comment posted March 8, 2010 @ 2:30 pm
The employment numbers that come out are formed and shaped for the purpose of making the the best of a bad situation. The 'happy talk' is designed to get Wall Street giddy and the stock market to rally. That's all that counts. It doesn't matter that the long term unemployed are not counted. It doesn't refer to the number of workers underemployed, working part-time, or in temp jobs. Many of the jobs will never return, having been outsourced to cheap labor countries or just done away with. Corporations have now realized that they can generate higher profits if they eliminate workers, resulting in higher productivity and cheaper benefit costs. The Obama Administration and the Congress are focused on results for Wall Street, not American workers. That's precisely why Geithner and Summers are in there. The longer the unemployment hovers around 10 percent (really 17 percent), the more Americans get used to the dismal jobs situation, and the less outrage is exhibited. It's a jobless recovery all right.
Comment posted March 18, 2010 @ 5:43 pm
Sign the tier 5 petition!
http://www.change.org/actions/view/the_99ers_ne…
Comment posted April 1, 2010 @ 1:25 am
there are only rich and poor they fucked the middle class that there is no more!!!
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