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Jobless Rate Remains at 9.7 Percent, Long-Term Unemployment a Crisis
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The jobless rate remained at 9.7 percent, with 36,000 jobs lost in February, the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics reports today. The biggest hit came in construction, where employment fell by 64,000. Manufacturing remained steady but 18,000 jobs were lost in the information industry. Temporary help services added 48,000 jobs.
The ongoing agony for long-term (those jobless for 27 weeks and over) jobless workers continues, with 6.1 million workers in February, roughly the same level since December. Some four in 10 unemployed persons have been unemployed for 27 weeks or more.
When both unemployed and underemployed workers are counted, there still are 26.2 million people without full-time work—a 16.8 percent under-employment rate. In fact, the under-employment rate (which includes not just the officially unemployed, but also jobless workers who have given up looking for work and part-time workers who want full time jobs) worsened from 16.5 percent to 16.8 percent.
The AFL-CIO is moving an aggressive plan to push for new jobs, calling on Congress and the Obama administration to take five immediate steps to address the jobs crisis.
We’re launching a week of nationwide actions March 15 to call out Wall Street and the Big Bankers that pay bonuses—to the tune of $145 billion in 2009—but won’t pay taxes and against corporations that take the public’s money and use it to downsize and outsource jobs. Our message: Hard-working Americans need jobs. It’s time to pay up.
The unemployment rates for adult men stands at 10 percent and adult women, 8 percent. The hardest hit groups are teenagers, with 25 percent unemployment, black workers at 15.8 percent and Hispanic workers at 12.4 percent.
At our AFL-CIO Good Jobs Now! site, people are writing in to tell us their experiences with the nation’s jobs crisis. The experience of “Laid-off Worker” is all-too representative of what millions of America’s workers are undergoing:
I was laid off by a major telecommunications company. I was there three years. [T]he CEO made $18 million in bonuses this year and that doesn’t count his stock options, and people wonder why the U.S. is in the shape that it’s in. They laid us off, cancelled our insurance, told us that we self terminated and tried to block our unemployment. It’s time for America to wake up and make Congress do their jobs that they get paid a lot to do. Corporate Greed Is Killing America!!!!
(Share a story here and read stories here.)
A recent Atlantic Monthly article that’s making the rounds (it’s long but packed with great info), points out that “One big reason that the economy stabilized last summer and fall is the stimulus.” The recovery act passed last year by Congress now has saved or created 2 million jobs. But the jobs crisis is so bad, “the economy now sits in a hole more than 10 million jobs deep.”
That’s the number required to get back to 5 percent unemployment, the rate we had before the recession started, and one that’s been more or less typical for a generation. And because the population is growing and new people are continually coming onto the job market, we need to produce roughly 1.5 million new jobs a year…just to keep from sinking deeper.
Even if the economy were to immediately begin producing 600,000 jobs a month—more than double the pace of the mid-to-late 1990s, when job growth was strong—it would take roughly two years to dig ourselves out of the hole we’re in.
Congress—with Sen. Bunning’s irresponsible tantrum finally over—has finally taken action to address the jobs crisis, barely. The Senate passed and President Obama signed a 30-day extension for Unemployment Insurance (UI). But as the Economic Policy Institute (EPI) says, the $15 billion jobs bill passed by the Senate and the House is not nearly enough.
The bill, which would give employers tax breaks for new hires, is likely to create only a couple of hundred thousand jobs at a time that the country needs 11 million jobs just to return to pre-recession levels of employment.
The Senate will turn next week to a year-long extension in jobless benefits. But that still won’t make much of a dent in finding work for nearly 30 million people who need full-time jobs.
Yet many in Washington are making noises about reducing the nation’s deficit, even as the jobs crisis remains unabated and adequately addressed. So here’s a message for lawmakers from the bipartisan team of Lawrence Mishel, president of the progressive Economic Policy Institute and David Walker, president and CEO of the extremely conservative Peter G. Peterson Foundation: Address jobs now and deficits later. Writing jointly in Politico, Mishel and Walker lay it on the line:
We must be careful to maintain the type of public investments that can help fuel broad-based economic growth while strengthening the safety net for our most vulnerable populations. And we should take into account growing retirement insecurity as employer pension systems erode and personal savings falter.
People should be able to count on government benefits they are promised. It is, therefore, critical that federal benefit and funding levels be reconciled.
For all the disagreement in Washington, we both know that, like us, there are many who see the critical importance of addressing these challenges. We must accept higher deficits in the short-term in order to put people back to work.
Now here’s bipartisanship we can believe in.
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Despite the “all out” backing by the AFL-CIO of Obama and the Democrats in the 2008 elections, the major foreign and domestic anti-worker policies of the Bush/Cheney regime continue.
Yesterday, May 4, thousands of students protest yesterday against the on-going destruction of public education. The Democrats continue to vote billions for more war, give trillions to the banks and Wall Street, promote a “Health Care Reform” created by corporate lobbyists for more billions in profits,
and even with global warming occurring passes a “cap and trade” bill which
allows polluters to continue.
The refusal of the AFL-CIO to support “Medicare for All”, as voted for by convention delegates in the last convention”, really means the leadership of the AFL-CIO is like the saying: “You can’t teach an old dog new tricks”.
The AFL-CIO “leadership” is unable to change it’s economic and political strategy of the last 30 years, despite radical change in economic and political conditions. The capitalist economy has declined in last 30 years, permanently moved millions of jobs overseas, and has now collapsed.
The Democratic Party now controls Congress and the Presidency. What can the AFL-CIO expect from the corporate controlled Democrats? Nothing but further attacks and impoverishment of working people.
The time to break with the Democratic Party is NOW! Support Medicare for All, initiate a call to create a new anti-capitalist socialist party in the interest of the economic needs of all working people. Trade unionism is impotent today because the major benefits and living standards of working people are now secured through trade struggle and unon contracts. Today these economic needs of working people are secured through federal, state and local government legislation. Thus the trade union struggle must be expanded to a political struggle. The voice of working people must be heard on the mass media, where the needs and perspectives of working people are forever excluded from the corporate owned mass media.
The following article, with link below to read the full article, is from the
World Socialist Web Site.
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AFL-CIO pledges all-out backing for Democrats in 2010 elections
By Patrick Martin
5 March 2010
The AFL-CIO Executive Council announced this week that the union federation would provide even more financial and organizational support for Democratic Party candidates this year than in 2008, despite the anti-working-class record of the Obama administration and the Democratic-controlled Congress.
AFL-CIO officials who briefed reporters on the federation’s 2010 political operations said that it would spend even more than the $53 million laid out in 2008 to elect President Obama and Democratic majorities in the House and Senate. They said that the focus would be on a “firewall” of six states where a large number of Democratic officeholders—governors, senators, congressmen—are endangered, and where there are numerous union members.
The six states are California, New York, Illinois, Nevada, Ohio and Pennsylvania. All six have gubernatorial and Senate contests, and between them they account for 141 seats in the House of Representatives, one third of the total, with a current 97-44 advantage for the Democrats.
Union officials said they would provide both more money and more volunteers for the 2010 campaign, even though union treasuries have been hit by the impact of the recession on employment, particularly in manufacturing and construction.
AFL-CIO Political Director Karen Ackerman said that the political environment for Democrats was “very, very difficult” because of continuing high unemployment. She declared the principal goal of the unions was to prevent a “1994-like” surge that would cost the Democrats control of Congress.
There was a further demonstration of the complete integration of the AFL-CIO officialdom with the Democratic Party on the second day of the council meeting. The number two AFL-CIO official, Secretary-Treasurer Linda Chavez-Thompson, won the Democratic primary in Texas for the position of lieutenant governor. She will be the running mate of Democratic gubernatorial candidate Bill White, the conservative, pro-business mayor of Houston, against Republican incumbent Rick Perry.
…
Read the full article here:
http://www.wsws.org/articles/2010/mar2010/aflc-m05.shtml
I am a Labor Representative in MA… also a current student of Labor Studies. I went back to school to try and figure out a way to ‘stop the bleeding’ of jobs, low salaries…job loss..and the long list of losses that Americans are STILL enduring. Every Local that I speak with..the story is pretty much the same…LOSS, LOSS, LOSS… The ‘average’ American person…today, does not recognize the Union’s Acroynms..UWA, SEIU, NAGE..We need to pull ALL UNIONS TOGETHER..TO educate as to ‘WHO WE ARE’.. This would accomplish and possibly change the perception of ‘Unions’..because their is mis-conception out there, that we are ‘very powerful’…maybe that was true once, but it is certanily not the case today. Also… by bringing ALL UNIONS together… we will stand a better chance on holding these companies/manufacturers more accountable. This could also work with bringing pressure to pass the EFCA… It’s a idea..but I think it as some merit… and trying to gain back our voice. Someone else said it..what good is health care, if you can’t afford it, if you don’t have a JOB?… This idea.. could be a ‘simple’ AD’ campaign… by having every local contribute some funds ..to get the ‘message out there’… ‘WHO IS THE UNION’…’WHO WE ARE’..instead of being referenced with an ‘acroynm’.. LET US SHOW THE AMERICAN PEOPLE..AND CORPORATE AMERICA…’WHO WE ARE’…AND STAND TOGETHER… I wish Richard Trumka (who I wrote about this)… would consider this…and other unions as well. We are losing…losing …losing… jobs, health care….and our pride… as been crushed… we have no other choice..to STAND UP AND FIGHT BACK…
This question is off subject,but I have no-where else to go to ask it.What does a active member do when he or she can no longer afford to pay these always increasing dues in a time of prolonged unemployment?What are my options and what are we looking at in the way of jobs for our locals.
I am an outspoken and activist,when it comes to the union trades condition in America today.I donate my time and available funds to causes and candidates,but now I need to know how to hang on.
Can someone please tell me how to keep my hopes alive?
Organize, organize, organize. If you are an activist, start your own group to REALLY pressure legislators running for office in your area. Those guys live to be re-elected and as a former community organizer I have seen them quake when just a few hundred people start telling them what the real world is like. Organize boycotts, get some reporters on your side, use the Internet, set up your own blog. E-mail is now a powerful tool – if ten persons simply enlist 10 other on the Net after 6 iterations of 10 persons each time you will have reached 1 MILLION people. And I would expect that the interest level of many who are in the same situation you find yourself will be very high. Many out there feel alone and are convinced that no one cares or that it is useless to fight back. They might just need a catalyst. Go for it.
You can go to Working America. It is a group for not only former union members, but for those who have never been in a union who want to help with union causes. Then, there is Jobs With Justice. Depending on where you live, there is a local chapter in almost every state in the country. You could even start a JwJ chapter of your own if you wish. Their web site is http://www.jwj.org.
Hope this helps.
Long-term unemployment is a crisis, but chronic underemployment is also at an all-time high. Giant multi-national corporations are part-timing American workers to financial ruin, squeezing out older, well-compensated workers and exploiting younger workers who have low expectations for their future. Pensions, health care, and the middle class way of life is still under attack—where does one start over at age 50+, if the company decides one day that you’re just not worth the trouble?
Some of our younger co-workers are unaware or uncaring about their financial futures; they can’t see past their next paycheck and don’t think that there is any need for pensions or retiree health care because they’re convinced they’re never going to get it, anyway. Many have decided that businesses are never going to give them anything more than an hourly wage; they have seen what happened to their parents and grandparents and assume that they can’t make a difference. This hopelessness is pervasive— many of the jobs that are out there are part-time, short-contract, or without substantial benefits. A college degree holds no guarantee of a good job.
We need jobs that hold the promise of a brighter future for American workers; jobs that will help them build a life and enrich our communities. Jobs that will allow workers to retire with dignity, out of poverty—jobs that offer hope, and substance. We have plenty of dead-end minimum wage part-time temporary “jobs”. If we could take health care out of the employment picture, there could be more money for good wages and pensions and full time work. Or, we can stay the course and finish the race to the bottom.
What management has to learn is that people without jobs or not earning a living wage cannot consume. Those big bonuses paid for increased profits when workers are fired or salaries reduced is like cooking the goose that lays the golden eggs. What do they do when there is no one left to produce anything? Costs will be zero and so will revenues. America needs not to simply create jobs but shake up management from the top down. Those dipsticks need to wake up and do what they are so royally paid to do. I have never seen a more dismal, mediocre crop of CEOs in my entire working life (and it’s a long one!) Most of them could not manage a one-car funeral cortege. And what do they do when they get in trouble? Put the financial guy in charge. The only thing he knows how to do is cut costs. There are plenty of examples in the US economy of companies that got saved by their workers and too many examples of those that got tanked by their management!
PLEASE, AFLCIO, call for
(1.) a NATIONAL million (S) man march to surround the Republican Congress and the Supreme Court to demand that lobbyists be regulated at the least, and that PAID, which is not FREE (free = no dollars required, right?!),
(2.) ELECTIONS: ELECTIONS: SPEECH, be MANDATED TO “EQUAL time and terms” for ANY American candidates…. on the air, and in print. Five election debates with equal advertising time mandated by Congress for all parties…and NO more allowed…
(3.)Also, that the recent Supreme Court fiasco be overturned. (4.) Finally, a demand for a TARIFF AND TAXATION on all imports made by US companies who empoy foreign workers either here or ovefrseas…and restriction on Swiss accounts and offshoring….as the BASE LINE for these companies being forced to face reality.
5.Otherwise: let’s call for and ADVERTISE a national BOCOTT of products made out of the US.
I agree with Jerry Wells that “The time to break with the Democrat Party is NOW.” But that’s still about 20 years late. Labor should have broken with the Democrats in 1990 when Tony Mazzocchi started Labor Party Advocates, and started organizing a Labor Party for real. By 1994 and Clinton’s great sucking sound of NAFTA job losses, it should have been priority number one to go independent. When the Cal Nurses Association backed Ralph Nader (arguably the best candidate and most important labor supporter of the past 50 years) the AFL-CIO should have followed suit. By now we would have elected many state and congressional representatives and had a real influence on the Democrats; instead labor is taken for granted, offered a few weak reforms and crumbs, and called upon to waste union dues on yet another betrayal by the corporate-controlled Democrats.
You make great points Paul.The Demorat party of today has Labor in their back pockets,realizing that we have no where else to go with our voting bloc.Our Labor Leaders have still not come to the point where they can wean themselves off the teet of Corporatist Dems.Meanwhile we all suffer as the membership does not have the power to change directions in midstream.
Obama has reversed positions on pretty much everything he campaigned on,so that just proves the theory that the culture and systemic corruption rules the day in our government and our elected leaders,once inserted into that corrup system,play the game.
Yesterday, Tom Delay told cnn viewers on “State of the Union” that those who are unemployed are those who don’t want to work.
I am calling on the unions to help us tell Tom that we want to work but can’t find jobs. We can’t continue to burry our heads in the sand pretending this unemployment would go away if people think like Tom Delay.
It takes only a few good people. Anything anyone of us can do is a step in the right direction.
Dear unemployed of the nation. Dear millions of unemployed,
You heard Tom Delay say on sunday March 7th, 2010 that you are unemployed because you want it. Let us all match to Tom’s office in Washington from today to Labor day, to ask for work. All of us should show Tom that we are willing to work if only Tom would show us where the jobs are.
Let’s start. The message should be clear. We want to work, the republican party put us out of work with outsourcing and tax giveaways to companies that shipped our jobs overseas. They broke our economy with 2 wars and tax breaks at the same time.
I am looking for all good people for organization and leadership for this action.
Let’s do it. Let’s get back to work.
Ange
Yes, we cannot wait any more. We have seen what happens when the corporations move some of our jobs out of the country, the pressure on the few jobs that remain steps up. In my animation industry we’ve seen a steady flow of jobs to countries like Canada and France where their governments put up cash for productions to get jobs in their countries,. Plus these countries have national health care, so the productions don’t even have to think of those costs. As a result, jobs are few and many of us experience months of no work, while we fight over the few jobs that remain. This pattern is happening to all of America, and has to stop. we want our jobs back.
I just posted a new “The State of Labor in Today’s Job market! Cartoon” on my web site
http://www.whatnowtoons.com
It’s time for all of us to speak out, before it’s too late.
Let’s stop complaining and finger pointing and face the facts.
We killed of nuclear power almost forty years ago thereby killing thousand or even millions of construction jobs, permanent maintenance jobs
We killed of off-shore and Alaska oil exploration and sent millions of union jobs overseas. At the same time we sent billions of dollars to oil rich countries.
We committed billions of dollars to “green” energy — Wind turbines and solar cells made in China. “Green” now stands for dollars sent out of the country.
We are committing billions to build cars that run on electricity while restricting the use of coal, our main source of energy.
We may be getting a health care bill that will kill off our union health care and selected insurances while enriching other insurance companies, trial lawyers, drug companies and the AARP.
We may be getting an energy bill that would further limit oil and coal, do nothing for nuclear, eliminate more jobs and raise our energy bills.
Energy ran our industrial revolution and the birth of our unions. Our anti-energy policy is killing of our economy.
Sandy Levin, Ways and Means Committee New Chairman
How to help the unemployed NOW?
Stop Taxing Unemployment Benefits!
So does it make any sense in 2010 to keep the tax man’s hammer down on the unemployed? Did the government not give the banks a break who created this economic mess in the first place? Did the government’s bail out money not provide profit, survival and fat bonuses for the Wall Street crews? Does the government not plan tax breaks for small business who reinvest in plant, equipment and rehires? Did the government not give big auto a Cash for Clunkers program to boost sales along with financial restructure for GM? Is there not a 8,000 dollar tax credit for first time home buyers who are fortunate to have jobs? So why is there no mention of 100% tax free unemployment compensation for the down trodden, displace and forgotten, we the unemployed.
Is it because we the unemployed have no voice? At the Unemployment Gone Mad community http://unemployment-gone-mad.com we are seeking to change this injustice with a new tax reform bill and one voice. The bill is called the “Jobless STUB Retro 2009 U/B Tax Free Act”? STUB, is like the paycheck stub we no longer have and stands for STOP TAXING UNEMPLOYMENT BENEFITS. The new legislative bill needs Sandy Levin, Ways and Means Committee New Chairman to step up and committee members to climb on board. This bill will make all unemployment collected in 2009 totally tax free.