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July Jobs Numbers: Still a Crisis
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Another 131,000 jobs were lost in July, and the U.S. unemployment rate remained at 9.5 percent, as in June. The new data out this morning from the Department of Labor reflects a lack of private-sector hiring and large numbers of jobless workers returning to the market. Private-sector hiring increased by 71,000 but was offset by the 143,000 decrease in temporary federal Census employees who completed their work. The unemployment rate was unchanged only because another 181,000 workers left the labor force.
The number of people who are underemployed, which includes those who are too discouraged to look for work or are working part time out of economic necessity, is 16.5 percent. Some 26 million U.S. workers are without jobs or full-time work.
Manufacturing employment increased by 36,000, health care by 27,000 jobs and mining by 7,000. Construction employment decreased by 11,000, with 10,000 out due to strikes. People of color continue to suffer disproportionately, with 15.6 percent of black workers unemployed and 12.1 percent of Latino workers jobless.
AFL-CIO President Richard Trumka said today the economic recovery “is still far too weak to power the job growth we need to offset the almost 8 million jobs lost since the recession began.”
Meanwhile, 14.6 million workers are formally unemployed, and nearly half of them have been unemployed for more than 26 weeks. Yet every effort to dig us out of our 10.5 million jobs hole has faced enormous opposition from Republicans who choose to vote against good jobs and working people for cheap political points. This is inexcusable.
Economists say if monthly private-sector employment gains are 50,000 or fewer, it’s an alarming sign of a weakening economy. Even if employment growth reachest the fastest level in the recovery from the two 1990 recession, economists project that the nation may not reach pre-recession levels of unemployment until 2015. As the Economic Policy Institute (EPI) puts it:
The much slower rate of growth seen in recent months suggests that without additional policy action, unemployment will remain high for years to come.
In fact, without the federal American Recovery and Reinvestment Act and other public policy responses, the nation’s unemployment would be nearly 16 percent today, with 8.5 million fewer jobs, according to EPI.
In an economy still suffering from high unemployment and sluggish growth, it can be easy to lose sight of the enormous progress that has been made since late 2008 and early 2009 when the country was losing close to 750,000 jobs per month.
Lawmakers on Capitol Hill took another good step yesterday when the Senate passed a bill to help states maintain hundreds of thousands of jobs—fire fighters, teachers, police and others—and the House is returning from recess next week to move the bill. (E-mail your representatives now—urge them to vote for the state jobs funding.)
One of the most troubling parts of the nation’s jobs crisis is long-term unemployment. Of the 15 million workers now unemployed, nearly half have been unemployed for more than six months. In July, the Senate overcame a Republican filibuster to extend unemployment insurance (UI) through November for the nearly 7 million workers who have been jobless for six months or more—and they will need to extend it again, because there are five workers for every one job.
The ramifications of this massive joblessness are widespread: Unemployment is now a leading cause of housing foreclosures and personal bankruptcy. Four million homeowners are in foreclosure proceedings or delinquent on their loans and this year, there likely will be even more than the 1.4 million personal bankruptcies suffered in 2009. In May, a record 40.8 million Americans received food stamps, the 18th straight record-setting month and 19 percent higher from a year earlier.
Yet some reactionary anti-worker lawmakers are resisting calls to address the nation’s jobs crisis, and instead are raising a red flag about the nation’s budget deficit. Yet as EPI Research and Policy Director John Irons writes, aggressive deficit reduction could short-circuit the progress the economy has made to date. Irons said major deficit reduction should wait until the unemployment rate has been at or below 6 percent for six straight months. In fact, reducing federal funding too soon could imperil an economy that still has seven million fewer jobs than it did at the start of the recession.
As AFL-CIO President Richard Trumka told the federal budget deficit commission in June, the solution is not to further squeeze the hide of U.S. workers.
There is no good economic policy reason that requires fiscal contraction at this time—neither concerns about inflation (which is practically non-existent), nor about long-term interest rates (which are extremely low by historical standards), nor about the crowding out of private investment (because so much labor and capital is unemployed), nor about the long-term debt (on which short-term stimulus has a small impact).
In other words, we can do something about the jobs crisis if we choose to. But we do have to choose—between providing more stimulus, on the one hand; or causing more joblessness, more wage cuts, more poverty, more inequality, more foreclosures, more waste of human potential, and more suffering, on the other.
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8 Comments
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Tula,
“Some reactionary anti-worker lawmakers are resisting calls to address the nation’s jobs crisis…”
BUT is the AFL-CIO, the Obama administration and the Democratic Congress doing all THEY can to address the crisis? That’s the big question.
I am copying below the AFL-CIO’s “SHORTER WORKWEEK RESOLUTION NO. 160″ from 1959. It is ironic that more than half a century later, shorter working time isn’t even on the AFL-CIO’s agenda. In a subsequent comment, I will post the National Association of Manufacturers’ 1961 response to the call for a shorter work week.
Further to my earlier post regarding the 1959 shorter workweek resolution of the AFL-CIO, below is the response from the National Association of Manufacturers on “The Shorter Work Week and Unemployment” from the NAM’s 1961 pamphlet, “The Issue of the Shorter Work Week.” My comments on the NAM pamphlet follow.
In its historical “proof” the NAM conveniently forgets that the workweek DID decline substantially between 1910 and 1961. Also there were a couple of World Wars, a Depression and a Cold War arms build-up in the interim. It’s not as employment adjusted automatically to the new productivity regime! One gets an insight into the NAM’s basic understanding of the issue by substituting blanks for the alleged causes and remedies for unemployment:
“It is sometimes argued that __________ is necessary to cushion the impact of the loss of jobs due to __________. Claims that __________ will reduce job opportunities are based on the false premise that society has only a fixed number of things to be done or a limited variety of products to be made and workers in excess of those required to meet these needs will be idle.
“Nothing, of course, could be further from the truth. People’s __________ are unlimited; it is only our capacity to __________ that is limited by our ability to __________.”
It is clear that the NAM’s basic argument is to dismiss ANY proposed remedy for unemployment on the grounds that the presumed cause of the unemployment is “based on a false premise.” (Again, pay no attention to those inconvenient wars and depressions. “Nothing to see here, folks. Move along.”)
It’s one thing, though, for the reactionary anti-worker employers’ organization and their reactionary anti-worker economist and reactionary anti-worker lawmaker enablers to make such fatuous arguments. It’s something else again for organized labor to defer to such empty claims and abandon the fight for shorter hours.
I’ve got one more follow up comment, which cites 1930s AFL President, William Green’s argument for the Black-Connery 30-hour bill.
My third comment consists of AFL President William Green’s 1932 argument in favor of a 30-hour work week
Thanks for posting these articles!
I agree with you…. the Obama admin and the Democrats should be doing a lot more for unemployment with the same dire urgency they seemed to profess when they bailed the banks out.
Real health care reform (Medicare for All) would have created jobs overnight, when the employment/benefits contract was dissolved and people no longer had to work to have health care. Many would have moved on, decreased their hours or retired earlier if they didn’t have to worry about health care for themselves and their family.
Thanks, Sea Star,
For a couple of proposals on how the campaign for shorter working time could be organized and guided see tinyurl.com/canoe-compass
PS — I love the graphic!!!!
S.
Tie tax cuts to quality job production in the U.S. Build a factory in the U.S. and receive a big tax break. Build overseas and get a tax increase. Level the playing field and the rest will take care of itself.
We got part time in our airline contract and can work as few as four hours on a shift. We have men coming to work for twenty hours a week, a 50% pay cut! A poor idea for a union contract. The company pays a lot less and has hired NO ONE!
Jobs Report Terrible, Again…
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