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Addendum: The Job Numbers for September
This morning's job numbers are bad enough -- 263,000 more jobs lost in September, and unemployment now at 9.8 percent -- but look behind them and the news is even grimmer. The only reason the numbers don't look worse is that 571,000 workers dropped out of the labor force. Remember, too, that the economy needs about 125,000 new jobs every month just to keep up with a growing population. So we're even further behind.
The numbers would be even worse but for the stimulus package. According to an analysis by the Economic Policy Institute, the stimulus is saving or creating between 200,000 and 250,000 jobs a month. Without it, job losses in September would have been nearly twice what they actually were.
State governments, meanwhile, continue to shed employees. Here's one of the most depressing statistics I've seen (if you need any additional ones): Some 15,600 teachers didn't return to work in September. They were laid off. So our classrooms are bigger, we have fewer teachers, and our students are presumably learning less -- at the very time when they need to be learning more than ever.
The numbers would be even worse but for the stimulus package. According to an analysis by the Economic Policy Institute, the stimulus is saving or creating between 200,000 and 250,000 jobs a month. Without it, job losses in September would have been nearly twice what they actually were.
State governments, meanwhile, continue to shed employees. Here's one of the most depressing statistics I've seen (if you need any additional ones): Some 15,600 teachers didn't return to work in September. They were laid off. So our classrooms are bigger, we have fewer teachers, and our students are presumably learning less -- at the very time when they need to be learning more than ever.
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Maybe an upside, while a small one, could be a reduced birth rate, enabling struggling families a breather.
One thing has become clear to me, this Administration supports Financial markets and Corporations more than citizens. They're being tight fisted with spending on infrastructure and loans for commercial and residential solar energy and energy efficient homes to expand employment.
October 2, 2009 1:10 PM | Reply | Permalink
http://www.shadowstats.com/alternate_data
I still have a job, but I sometimes feel like I'm sleepwalking through a minefield. I hope I'm wrong, but I think we are in the early part of the 21st Century's Great Depression.
October 2, 2009 1:17 PM | Reply | Permalink
Yes, I think it's a slow-motion process. In retrospect it will seem so obvious. But right now there is so much denial that everybody is just happy to think that things are going to go back to "normal". Normal is over. This is a new century.
-- ARG
October 2, 2009 9:01 PM | Reply | Permalink
I have this feeling too. Nobody in Washington seems be able to explain where the growth and jobs are going to come from. Nor do they seem to feel particular urgency about creating them. I think Obama needs to let some heads roll in this administration, and bring in a new team with a more pro-active position on providing jobs and spending power to the American people.
And he needs to start taking no prisoners in his war with Republicans whose goal is to deprive, starve and strangle Americans economically, and ride the carnage to electoral victory.
October 2, 2009 10:47 PM | Reply | Permalink
The Republicans tell us that the loss of manufacturing jobs can be made up by giving "small business" a tax-free ride. They will then generate jobs to replace the old ones.
The Dems tell us that we simply need to retrain the workers for the jobs that will surely appear in this new economy.
Never mind the obvious particulars that call into mind the old adage about the relative worth of a "bird in the hand" or the obvious demand/supply problems that both approaches generate.
What is obvious here is that both Repubs and Dems are telling the American worker that it is necessary to trash the old system and start over. Sounds like a pretty good definition of the Great Depression to me, and a pretty cavalier way in which to explain that the suffering needs to be placed upon the shoulders of the working class while we do everything possible to feather the nest of our owners.
October 3, 2009 2:42 AM | Reply | Permalink
You are not wrong. I'm in the very same boat, with millions of others. We are not in a great recession, or even a new depression. We are in a breakdown crisis. The world's monetary system died last year. Instead of burying the corpse, Wall Street doctors have tried to resusitate it with an infusion of trillions of dollars to "stabilize" the patient, but the patient is still utterly dead. It was killed by hundreds of trillions in toxic debt instruments, which haven't disappeared, only been swept under the rug with fraudulent accounting schemes.
We (Obama) must recognize reality and act before its too late. Bring back a Glass Steagal standard, put the banking system thru orderly bankruptcy proceedings, write down all the worthless derivatives and related unpayable toxic debt.
The September jobs report is bad economic news in every detail, and also shows businesses—many of them hit by a new and intensifying bank credit crunch—going back to layoffs to reduce the fixed costs on their books at the end of the fiscal year. According to the official, understated figures, the combined number of Americans either completely and officially unemployed, forced to work part-time, or dropped out of the labor force in the last 21 months, reached over 32 million, or over 20%. Discouraged drop-outs made the labor force shrink by somewhere between 600,000 and 800,000; average weekly wages fell again and the average work week fell to a record low 33 hours. States cut 10,000 jobs; cities cut 37,000 as budget blowouts worsened across the country. Manufacturers cut 51,000 jobs; construction companies, 64,000. The number of Americans officially unemployed more than six months jumped by 8% to 5.4 million.
And the huge -824,000 jobs "downward revision" for the year, exposed the fact that BLS has been using dubious "seasonal adjustments" and "virtual job creation" measures to mask how bad the Obama Administration employment collapse has been.
We have to use a Glass-Steagall standard, and put the entire banking system through bankruptcy reorganization, according to a Glass-Steagall standard. If we were to do that, we would wipe out most of the useless overhanging debt, and we'd create a situation in which the Federal government could generate credit, to get jobs moving. But, what they have to be, is predominantly blue-collar jobs, in agriculture, industry and infrastructure. Including special government projects which are needed, such as the river maintenance project, all these kinds of things. And concentrate on the blue-collar unemployment first, because that's where you're going to get the growth in actual wealth. As opposed merely to jobs and income, we have to look at the factor of increase of produced wealth. In other words, produced and consumed wealth, must be the emphasis in the jobs program.
October 3, 2009 12:00 PM | Reply | Permalink
Ha! The Zombie Economy! I have to agree with you. I think that the disconnect amongst those whose money makes money should disqualify them for leadership positions unless they prove a high aptitude for governing. That cognitive dissonance is fatal for a nation's sustainability.
October 3, 2009 2:13 PM | Reply | Permalink
I'm no economist, but my guess is we could use another huge spending package to prime the pump. If the package could be combined with our need for more teachers and health care workers, maybe combine it with the push for a public option, we'd be killing two birds with one stone. We also need to get out of Afghanistan and Iraq, and spend that money on something that feed back into the economy. I agree that we're living on the cusp of a Depression right now.
October 3, 2009 6:41 AM | Reply | Permalink
Very sensible. My suspicion is that most jobs are make-work jobs, and they will not return. I think that's a good thing. Now if only our nation would invest in real jobs such as those you mention.
Do you agree it's time to nationalize education -at least through 4 years of college?
October 3, 2009 2:08 PM | Reply | Permalink
"Normal" is over is right. But Washington is caught in the past. Obama and Congress' approach is backwards and cynical. They have only given out 10% of the stimulus money, right? The Democrats are saving the big bucks for the election year. Meanwhile the Republicans job is to stop any spending so as to cause even more misery thus assuring wins in 2012. That's the cynical part.
The backwards part (if my cynical analysis is wrong) is giving money to contractors. In France and I believe Germany, the stimulus money was given to companies with the stipulation that it be used to keep workers in their jobs. Keep workers working and they will buy things with their pay checks. They will pay their rent and mortgages.
Why did the President tell Congress to give the money to keep the teachers in their jobs? Why is he not pushing for more doctors and nurses by giving scholarships or free tuition for them?
We need strong tariffs especially on American companies making stuff with cheap labor. Can we open the textile mills again or did we sell all the machinery already to the Chinese? If not, let's open them.
I was in Washington this week and people there seem to be living in the past.
October 3, 2009 11:25 AM | Reply | Permalink
Very large numbers of middle and lower class citizens have little or no credit or assets and their jobs can be done as well or better by their counterparts in low-wage countries. Technology is working against them too. These trends are inexorable and unstoppable.
For at least 20 years bubbles have been used to try to cushion the shock. Those days are over. Now Washington has acted to prevent a complete meltdown...but the stimulus is only a stopgap, a temporary halt. Soon General Motors will fail again, and this time it will be liquidated. Who knows what then will follow?
October 3, 2009 1:07 PM | Reply | Permalink
We are the richest country in the history of the world. We have all the food we need, plenty of natural resources, plenty of labor, an excellent up and running educational system, an in-place superstructure, etc. Yet, are economy is freezing up. The ENTIRE problem is the money changers. This problem is only man-made. The exceedingly wealthy are owed trillions of dollars by the rest of us.
ALL we have to do is take over the printing presses and pay them off. That does not systematically have to cause "rampant inflation." It would simply put trillions of dollars in cash into the hands of the wealthy. They won't go out and buy more bread and milk or chevrolets. They will buy more yachts and Picassos, and yachts and Picassos will "suffer" the ravages of inflation, but bread and milk should be relatively unaffected.
October 4, 2009 4:51 PM | Reply | Permalink
Pretty funny for Reich to use stats from an institute he founded to back up his claims! Tell me Robert, how do you determine how many jobs are saved? How is that calculated? And how is the stimulus, which is still largely unspent, doing all this magic?
October 4, 2009 3:44 PM | Reply | Permalink
Would and or does Michael Moore consider you and your comments, writings and/or teachings as a whole somewhat nonesenseical or completely bogus?
Are your comments, teachings and/or writings as a whole completely bogus, deceptional or completely avoiding the seriousness that would be expected to be noted, considered and spoken about with true intent to the resolves, thereof?
October 5, 2009 9:47 AM | Reply | Permalink
Since the shedding of manufacturing jobs began 35 years ago the promise that economic growth, new industries and technology would be the jobs growth engine has been a snare and a delusion. A snare in that it delivers just enough that you believe it's working and a delusion because it doesn't quite.
It seems that in each succeeding iteration of the US economy one of two things are evident, jobs for the masses pay less with lower/no benefits and the life cycle of well paying jobs is shorter and shorter. Leaving the worker obsolete long before they are ready or able to retire.
For a moment, lets assume another fantasy is real, free trade. As we come out of this recession the drivers of global economic growth will be the developing nations who will have an insatiable need for goods, but the US won't be in a position to take advantage of it since we no longer have a manufacturing base.
And the outlook doesn't improve. When you think about it, any job that can be described as a process can either be off shored or automated. So if you're just starting a career better to be a tradesman, primary health care worker, teacher etc. than a computer analyst, radiologist, accountant, stock analyst etc. If you need to touch something to fix or construct something you might have career security.
October 5, 2009 3:21 PM | Reply | Permalink