The Long Grind Down
Unemployment statistics typically depend on multiple meanings of "unemployment," but in this nebulous domain, non-farm payrolls are endowed with a certain je ne sais quoi of relative solidity, and the story they told in October was more or less exactly the same as August and September, according to the Bureau Of Labor Statistics' monthly report.
Total nonfarm payroll employment declined by 190,000 in October. In the most recent 3 months, job losses have averaged 188,000 per month, compared with losses averaging 357,000 during the prior 3 months. In contrast, losses averaged 645,000 per month from November 2008 to April 2009. Since December 2007, payroll employment has fallen by 7.3 million.
Perceptive readers will notice that jobs are not disappearing as fast as they disappeared earlier this year, and that's the good news.
The bad news is that there are fewer and fewer jobs, month after month after month.
Meanwhile, back in the cloud of dubious definitions, the flagship unemployment statistic surged past 10.2%, as 558,000 people became "unemployed" in October, either by losing their jobs or unsuccessfully entering the workforce.
Obama and his playmates are claiming that their stimulus has created or saved about 640,000 jobs, but more than half those jobs were in education, and that statistic is even more nebulous than "unemployment."
Indiana, for example, reported saving or creating 13,232 education jobs with its stimulus money, but Cris Johnston, the director of the government efficiency division of the state budget office, said that it was difficult to say whether the state would have actually lost those jobs without the money."We can't make the statement that they were created or retained," Mr. Johnston said. Indiana, he said had followed federal guidelines in reporting how many full-time jobs were paid for with the stimulus money, which also paid for education supplies and other expenses. And while New York City officials have said the stimulus helped them save thousands of teaching jobs, it would have been politically difficult for Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg to actually lay off that many teachers while running for re-election.
So 558,000 people became "unemployed" in October alone, and meanwhile Obama's feeble stimulus has conceivably created or saved a grand total of 640,000 jobs, or about the same as the last five weeks of the long grind down.
The Hindery Report estimates that 'true unemployment is at 19.2%, factoring in those who are no longer looking for work, or who are employed part-time (in crap jobs, I assume they mean.) The unemployed and under-employed I never see factored in are the self-employed who have less work or no work. Builders are jobless; I know a local backhoe operator who hasn't had work for seven months, and there are probably millions like him. His unemployment has run out, and the recent round of extensions won't apply to him or many others. Think if there were massive infrastructure projects how many folks could work. Against conventional wisdom, I people WANT to have jobs.
The 'entrepenurial spirit' it lionized constantly, especially by Republicans: 'Don't have work? Create yourself a job!' (bootstraps, WTF?)
Yet, we unemployed get no unemployment benefits, pay all of our own Social Security taxes, and got absolutely NUTTIN' from the last stimulus, which was extra money in PAYCHECKS. I wrote legislators galore about that issue, and have yet to receive one reply after six months.
I'm pissed.
But agri-businesses keep on getting billions in subsidies, etc. We are so fucked.
November 11, 2009 10:18 AM | Reply | Permalink
I'm sorry to hear that you're unemployed, wendy. This thing is looking more and more like an L-shaped recession, with many people out of work for years, and Obama's stimulus is a joke, just as you say.
I'm doing okay, by my minimalist standards, meaning very cheap rent in a shed in Malibu, when I'm there, instead of chasing the occasional commission from art-consumers, who are now more inclined to patronize down-market artists like me instead of investing in whatever "minor masters" show up on the market from bygone eras. This puts me in a weird situation of not really sharing the hardship, but still unable to help anybody except with the kind of money that only matters in the Third World, as with Save the Children.
So I blog, and a fat lot of good it does!
November 11, 2009 12:00 PM | Reply | Permalink
It does some good, Rootie. You get under the skin of the over-educated eggheads here, and even though they don't like to be made uncomfortable, they still read you because you're smart and morally consistent. You goad them in your OP, you trash them when they make lazy comments, and yet they can't resist trying to think of an intelligent comeback to justify their comfortable and inert existence (Hey, I voted for a black man! My job's done!) while the country is coming apart at the seams.
You do what artists are supposed to do: You challenge the status quo.
In this interview, Anna Deavere Smith says essentially what I just said, only she says it much better, of course. (Interesting interview when you get past the freakishly stiff and robotic David Brancaccio.)
November 12, 2009 10:13 AM | Reply | Permalink
The 'entrepreunerial spirit' is going to die, when young people know that after graduating from high school or college, there will be no jobs for them, no niches to create them.
The incentive structure of capitalism is not going to work with them- any guesses as to what will take its place?
November 11, 2009 1:24 PM | Reply | Permalink
From the late 60s into the Reagan years . . .
Out of the feeling of being disenfranchised, millions of the young people in the 60s directed themselves into to what is basically known as local communal business entrepreneurship.
You know, the ol' saw, "Think globally, act locally."
I know, I know... Today that sounds so archaic in this high-tech, fast-paced global world of ours, but it did work for millions for over two decades and it's actually still working today.
Big box stores aren't all they're cut out to be.
~OGD~
November 12, 2009 7:33 AM | Reply | Permalink
Oh, dear, I must have said all this wrong again. We are doing so much better than so many people. My husband is a carpenter, and has work four days a week. I haven't worked for quite some time due to some physical problems. I see an occasional client (I do corrective massage therapy) at home now that I've had to close my office. We built a small, efficient house for ourselves, but you know how the monthly bills have increased beyond belief. We used to joke that our retirement plan was a shopping cart and Glad bags, but hell, that won't even work any more for me, drunken-moose-walker that I am now! ;-} I know we'll be in great company, though.
I go to our local thrift store to shop, and it is also the local food bank, of a sort. I'm hoping to have a little to put into their kitty for Thanksgiving. The woman who runs it keeps telling me that there don't seem to be increased numbers coming in for food, but I did find out that the county seat is chock full of hungry people, and their food banks are always low.
Jump, you fuckers.
I'm glad you are doing fairly well, too, Mr. Blue-veg.
November 11, 2009 1:10 PM | Reply | Permalink
The real economy is still in the toilet because there is no demand because people are laid off, afraid of being laid off, taking wage cuts or losing hours and overtime, etc. Corporations (some of them) are maintaining profits by cutting employees and otherwise cutting costs, taking on more debt, but not through growth. The banks have kept their doors open because the Federal Reserve has printed up some $24 trillion out of thin air and essentially given it to the banks as no-interest loans. The causes of the collapse have not been addressed. The monetary system died, but is being kept in stasis by massive infusions of taxpayer money, or future obligations of the taxpayer. So, a massive looting operation is ongoing where the financial oligarchy is stealing trillions to keep their dead system afloat a while longer, while the productive potential of the population is being further eroded. Does this seem to be a sustainable policy to you?
China, which holds trillions of dollars of US debt, recently signed development deals with Russia to build high-speed rail lines in Russia, and associated infrastructure. This is the germ of a solution. If the US, India and some other major economies would join together to recognize that the casino-gambling, Free Trade economics of the last 30-40 years is dead and threatens a world systemic collapse, we could put the financial oligarchy through bankruptcy proceedings (akin to what FDR did in the early 30's), put the speculators and con men out of business by outlawing derivatives and the various forms of usury they employ (which used to be illegal, by the way). Reinstate the Glass-Steagall Act, which was overturned in 1999, for example, which prevented commercial banks from owning investment banking operations (like Bank of America owning Merrill Lynch as one example). You break up these massive centers of financial power which control our policy makers, and make banking once again a necessary adjunct to the real physical economy, not a parasite sucking all the blood (capital) out of it. Therein lies the political rub. There is no political will or leadership to do this in either party.
The only solution that works is to put the whole system through bankruptcy proceedings, write down the hundreds of trillions of unpayable debts, and start issuing credit targeted to massive infrastructure investments in high-speed rail links, energy systems, water systems (rebuilding levees, locks, water treatment, water transport systems), agricultural production, education. This needs to be done on a world basis, as the carrying capacity of the earth has fallen below break-even due to the decades-long looting of the productive infrastructure that supports human life on a global scale. Instead of saving the zombie banks, which in any case cannot be saved because they are too far gone, we have to invest in humanity, or the process by which Africa and the third world have been looted in the post-war era will be extended to the "advanced" sector, and literally billions of people will die because civilization itself will collapse.
November 11, 2009 3:09 PM | Reply | Permalink