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Jobless Rate Still Bleak, with 15.4 Million Workers Unemployed
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The nation’s unemployment rate moved from 10.2 percent to 10 percent in November, with 15.4 million American workers unemployed, according to U.S. Department of Labor data released this morning. But when both unemployed and underemployed workers are counted, there still are some 26 million people without jobs or full-time work. At the start of the recession in December 2007, there were 7.5 million jobless workers and the unemployment rate was 4.9 percent
Economic Policy Institute (EPI) Director Larry Mishel says he would not interpret this decline as the beginning of a ongoing reversal in the unemployment rate. In fact, the jobs situation likely will worsen for up to the next 12 months, he says. One reason: There is a backlog of people who dropped out of labor force who will come back in—up to 3 million jobless workers. And when they start looking for jobs again unemployment will rise.
Unemployment rates for adult men now is 10.5 percent, 7.9 percent for women and 26.7 percent for teens. The jobless rate for white workers is 9.3 percent, 15.6 percent for African Americans, 12.7 for Hispanics and 7.3 percent for Asians.
Manufacturing jobs were hit hardest, falling by 41,000 in November. Construction employment declined by 27,000 in November, after averaging a 63,000 per month decline during the past six months. The number of jobs in transportation showed little change over the month while health care employment rose by 21,000.
EPI economist Heidi Shierholz says layoffs are still high but have gone way down from where they were. Yet, “hiring isn’t happening.”
There’s definitely fewer people losing their jobs each month, but the job creation isn’t there to help unemployed workers get jobs.
There is more good news/bad news as we enter the 15th month of the Great Recession, says Shierholz. Hiring of temporary workers has increased for the past three months, which is an indicator that employers are testing the waters to increase staff. But hours need to rise before a recovery for jobless workers is really in sight—and so far, the number of hours worked remains flat, hovering at 33 hours per week since summer—the shortest on modern record.
There are now more than six U.S. workers for every one job available—and that’s the part of the jobs crisis that gets most attention. But something more insidious also is occurring: Wages are declining while productivity is skyrocketing. Marvin Bohn, a professional cook and chef who was laid off when Antioch College closed last year, says he’s been working for more than 40 years in food service.
I should be able to find a job anywhere, but can’t find one. What I have found in the last two years, looking for work, is that my profession originally paid anywhere from $40 [thousand] to $60 [thousand] a year, and is now paying $25 [thousand] to $35 [thousand] for the same positions. So not only are you facing a lack of jobs, but you are also facing smaller paychecks. They are telling you to accept it, saying economic times are tough, and you look at the guy telling you who’s driving a Lexus and you wonder, “How is he suffering?”
Compensation so far in 2009 has been cut by the largest amount in nearly two decades, with a government index of real average weekly earnings down 1.9 percent since its high point last December. But in the third quarter of this year, productivity grew at a faster rate (8.1 percent) than hourly compensation (5.4 percent).
At yesterday’s White House jobs summit, AFL-CIO President Richard Trumka took the pain of America’s workers directly to the president, telling him: We need jobs now. Trumka discussed the AFL-CIO’s five-point plan for immediate job creation, which includes increasing aid to state and local governments to prevent layoffs and maintain vital services and creating jobs through funding projects like repairing and building infrastructure. Economists like Nobel Prize winner Paul Krugman say that now is not the time to cut the federal deficit—that in fact, without spending money to create jobs immediately, the nation will return to an official recession.
Private-sector corporations—some of whom have made off with billions in taxpayer money—have failed to create jobs. Corporations didn’t hesitate to ask for help from the government—and America’s workers deserve no less. Congress and the White House need to act immediately.
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14 Comments
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a VERY SMALL TICK DOWN too.
actually I see no improvements that will put our manufacturing people back at work.
See what you think by looking at the facts
http://keepamericaatwork.com/?p=5730
Regards,
Virgil
http://www.KeepAmericaAtWork.com
People round the World have to be laughing their proverbial asses off in watching the demise of a once great democracy. We’re everywhere, unilaterally fighting endless and financially wasteful wars, while the other developed countries take their financial treasure and spend it on their countries, providing health care for their citizens, building things, creating jobs and other people improvement initiatives.
They must be in hysterics watching our federal representatives incapable of legislating for the people, seeing how our bought and paid for branches of government, the Senate in particular, being totally helpless to act. They have seen how Wall Street failed the global investment community, only to see the down trodden US tax payers bail-out the big banks and investment sectors, then seeing the rip-off artists go back and do it again.
Then, they see a society blatantly being exploited by the big health care insurance companies, backed by crazy anti people federal laws, that allow them to continue to exploit human sickness, as the people just sit back and endure their abusive
behavior.
We’ve become the laughing stock of the World. The country that used to be the beacon for human rights has been compromised in all of it’s human relationships; we torture, we’re intolerant, we have more prisons and criminals behind bars than the rest of the World combined, people gravitate to owning guns to mitigate their
inherent social fears, we waste with reckless abandon and “the government of the people, by the people and for the people” has transitioned from being a noble way of life, now reduced to being a mere slogan.
It’s appalling that we can witness a stock market coming back, while unemployment is creeping into double-digits, especially when you count the underemployed.
Where’s the urgency in our government…. like it was immediately before the bank bailout.?
Where are the dire consequences of people without adequate resources to feed themselves…… without health care?
Does our government serve for the paper wealth or the labor wealth?
Unemployment payments need to be ncreased in proportion to how many people in the household depend on the income, not on the person’s previous salary.
Those unemployed should receive immediate Medicaid, especially if they have chronic health problems like asthma and diabetes.
And they should receive free tuition at a local college to go back to school if they are willing.
I’ll bet this would still be less than the bank bailout our government passed overnight and will do the same for the escalation of the ‘war’ in Afghanistan.
The White House Jobs Summit yesterday demonstrates to me that it’s time to acknowledge that this President doesn’t feel that helping labor is not as important as helping capital. He should be the President of all of us, but in fact, he treats working people as if their needs are optional. While I tend to believe in constructive engagement politically, I also think that when the situation is dire enough, as it is today, there is a need to withdraw support when the President himself makes a statement afterwards essentially against taking action. The very structure of the private sector needs a jolt and this notion that labor just needs to wait seems ridiculous when people are starving and losing their homes. Apparently this summit was merely an opportunity for the White House to “punch their ticket” as far as one of their political allies goes. But I question whether there should be support for someone who is not willing to fully address the problem but is instead engaged in supporting a conservative ideology which is designed not to work for everyone.
I think the minimum wage needs to be raised at least to $10 or mroe–Obama said he was going to raise it and it hasn’t happened. Employers who don’t offer full-time (40 hours) should be penalized for part-time workers. Requiring every employer to provide the minimum of single-coverage health, dental and vision insurance would also eliminate alot of part-time.
Here in ND, UNDEREMPLOYMENT is a huge problem. I get tired of our so-called “low unemployment” being pointed out–ND is about low-wage, part-time jobs flipping hamburgers and cleaning rooms, lack of transportation to get to shopping and employment. lack of benefited jobs, no union representation. The rich get richer–the poor get poorer.
A minimum wage increase to $10/hour will unlikely happen. It already went up to $7.25/hour this past July 24th, the third and last installment increase when Congress passed legislation in 2007 to raise the minimum wage to $7.25/hour following the Democratic takeover of Congress. It may be looked at again in 2011 or 2012, depending on what the make-up of Congress looks like following the 2010 mid-term congressional elections.
The minimum wage definitely needs to be raised. However, we all must consider regional difference between let’s say, Arkansas and California.
More important then “minimum wage” is the issue of living wage. The short term answer is a guaranteed income for all over the age of eighteen (of course, we need to deal with orphans as well, and there still is an issue related to AFDC), increasing with age.
Over the long term we need an equity union to perhaps write off or down the liabilities and bring the cost of assets back to earth.
With respect to a guaranteed income, it should be only enough to meet the bare essentials including the idea that youth can share apartments and houses (although everyone should get equity from their “rent” payments) up to a certain age (suggested for discussion, 23).
Concerning meeting needs, there is a huge difference, climate wise, between McAllen and Minot. And PLEASE let’s not dally another second regarding the opportunity costs associated with automotive squandering and MUCH HIGHER PRIORITIES like home heating, cooking, and electricity…
In Peace. Friendship, Community, Cooperation, and Solidarity,
Mike Morin
I believe that there are 3 things that need to happen for us to get people back to work. First any manufacturer who closes an american plant and moves it over seas should have to pay a stiff tariff for those goods when they return to the US. Secondly banks must be forced into lending money to mainstreet to get the economy back working and thirdly we must re-energize the labor union movement in America. Thanks to our Republican friends we are becoming a minimum wage society and minimum wage won’t allow anyone to do much. We must get our unions back to full strength so that people have money to spend and workers have better working conditions. Labor has taken advantage of the worker for too long. It’s gotta stop now!
We just had a Labor summit at the White House, and I surely hope something will come out of it. The big culprit in our loss of jobs is outsourcing. Tax credits for hiring American workers and a wider tariff system would be a step in the path to increased American employment. My latest political cartoon is about this very proposal, it’s up on my website right now
http://www.whatnowtoons.com
left of center political cartoons
Will the President’s Tax Advisory Panel propose anything that will help to make the economy more job friendly??
The President’s tax advisory panel postponed its report on tax reform options to allow for more submissions. They have a tough task – suggest ways to improve the fairness of the tax system, increase jobs, enhance the efficiency of our economy, reduce incentives to take on too much destabilizing debt, and enable the government to raise needed tax revenue before foreigners stop lending to us, all without raising taxes on people making less than $250,000 a year. There is a way to do all of that. Will their report include it?
The simple principle behind the solution is to avoid taxing things that you want to encourage. We want to encourage jobs. We want to encourage companies to locate operations in America. So, reduce taxes on employment. Start by getting rid of the 7.65% tax that employers incur on every dollar they pay to their employees (up to about $107,000 per employee), while at the same time requiring employers to give each employee a raise in the amount of the tax saved. Make up that revenue loss by imposing a new form of sales tax (the Value Added Tax or VAT that virtually every other country on the planet uses, which does not tax businesses) of about 8% on purchases. Give an equivalent subsidy to retirees who don’t benefit from the employment tax reduction. Regular working people will come out even or a little ahead on this trade, but the VAT on people who spend more than $107,000 a year will help to reduce the government’s debt. So this allows the government to get the money it needs without taxing business or employment or regular working people or retirees.
Next, give corporations a deduction for dividends that they pay to shareholders, including your IRA, 401(k), or other retirement account. What does this do? Well, it increases the value of your retirement savings by up to 54% by getting rid of the hidden tax on your investments. It also gets makes America the best place in the world, taxwise, for our corporations to have their jobs and operations, instead of the worst place in the world like it is today. It also gets rid of the incentive for corporations to borrow too much and become financially unstable. Make up the revenue lost by getting rid of special tax rates for capital gains and by imposing a 7.65% tax on income over $500,000 a year. If corporations are allowed a deduction for dividends that they pay, then we don’t need special capital gain rates any more. They just subsidize rich people and encourage the kind of real estate speculation that helped fuel the current crisis. The 7.65% tax is the same that normal working people pay on every dollar of their wage income. Why shouldn’t people who make over $500,000 a year pay the same tax, especially since they would benefit heavily from allowing corporations a dividends paid deduction?
Visit http://www.sharedeconomicgrowth.org for more information. And let Congress know your opinion.
here in Erie County Buffalo NY which has been going downhill since the St.Lawrence seaway was built there is such a dearth of good paying jobs its not funny We were already in a downturn since the late 1970′s and what s worse is it is just about impossible for people who receive SSI ,SSd, or both to get meaningful employment in fact i am one and am better off collecting.Atv least I wont be homeless
First of all, the reported unemployment rates (though reportedly relativly high) are a gross misrepresenation of the workers’ and potential workers’ plight.
I would guess that you all know that the unemployment rate is only the number of those who were working covered by unemployment compensation funds, that are now collecting.
I’m not an expert on this, but if I remember correctly, the law in Massachusetts was that only firms with 25 employees or more were required to pay into the State fund.
At least, fortunately, we have a Democratic majority in Congress, so there has been Federal Extensions on the time limits associated with most, if not all, State Unemployment Programs.
Secondly. Tricky Willy Clinton, to manies potential or actual benefit, eliminated or reduced that villain with a terrible name, Welfare, while putting many if not some of those manies on Social Security. Social Security tends to be overly miserly to those truely in need and unecessary for some, if not many, of the elderly.
Based on recent reports, I have roughly calculated that 1 in 5 citizens of the USA are receiving Social Security “compensation”.
So you see, Virginia, the seasonal stimulus is not anywhere close to being true.
Besides, manufacturing is industrial, whereas people are much more happy workers when they have the opportunity and education to be artisan industrious.
In Peace, Friendship, Community, Cooperation, and Solidarity,
Mike Morin
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Did our labor leaders really expect the candidate who received the most campaign donations from Wall Street bankers and financial firms and who chose the crook Geithner as Treasury Secretary to do anything for workers? Did they really believe the party that gave us NAFTA and wasted billions on armaments and wars in Afghanistan and Iraq would actually help bail out workers? The Democrat party has taken union members’ money and our support in every election and betrayed us every time. Obama is no different. Of course there is no money for job creation, unless those jobs are in Afghanistan bribing warlords and digging graves.