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Staggering unemployment figures cannot be sugar-coated
There are those who say the economy is starting to recover from the worst recession since the Great Depression, and they take heart even from the miserable state of the American job market.To this way of thinking, things are getting brighter because the country is losing fewer jobs every month than were lost at the peak of the bloodbath. Which is like telling a terminal patient that things are looking up because he's dying a little slower. The concept is meaningless garbage and will remain so until unemployment and underemployment recede from astronomical levels. At 10.2%, the jobless rate is higher than it has been in more than a quarter-century, and at 17.5%, the rate of people who are working below their capacity is at a record high. That is the kind of statistical carnage inflicted by the loss of 7.3 million jobs, and counting, in just less than two years. Virtually every industry - manufacturing, retail, financial - is feeling severe pain. The scope is astonishing. As but one telling measure, the Obama administration projects, in a best-case scenario, that the government's $787 billion stimulus package saved or created 640,000 jobs, a number that is less than one-tenth of the positions that have evaporated. True recovery is going to be dreadfully slow, with the government hard pressed to do extensive additional stimulating, given the oceans of red ink that are already swamping Washington. As long as jobs are hard to come by, if not nonexistent, working- and middle-class America will suffer from downward pressure on wages. And as long as there is downward pressure on wages, the engine of consumer spending will remain stalled. And as long as consumption stays tanked, the economy will continue to decline. As the old saying goes, hope for the best but plan for the worst. Grasp not for straws of hope, because the real danger that Washington must confront is that down and down we go. Posted by: Fred 2009-11-09 |
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