Posted on 10/26/2009 2:56:03 PM PDT by blam
America's Jobs Disaster
Economics / Recession 2008 - 2010
Oct 26, 2009 - 09:54 AM
By: Christopher_Westley
Is the Great Recession about to end? This has been the dominant meme at least since June, when my local paper, the Anniston Star, ran a front page story by McClatchy's Kevin Hall with the headline, "Economists: Recession Nearing End as Unemployment Dips."
Sad to say, though, that if such news is the basis for optimism, in June or today, then we are in trouble.
Before I explain why, let's review Hall's article. The July job figures turned out to be much less bad than predicted. Job losses for the month were reported at a mere 247,000, which was about 25 percent less than the figure anticipated by forecasters.
That, coupled with optimistic labor market revisions for May and June, led some economists to declare that happy days may finally, if slowly, be getting here again. In this spirit, the British investment bank, Barclays Capital Research, concluded in a report, "June is likely to have been the last month of the US recession."
Looking back, though, this was a case of celebrating short-term shifts in the data without checking to see if the fundamentals have changed. These economists, reacting to a monthly unemployment figure of 9.4 percent, were speaking too soon. One month's unemployment report is not very much to base such declarations on. There are many below-the-surface factors that should give us pause.
First, the unemployment figures were released the first month that unemployment benefits ran out for a significant portion of the unemployed. Many of these workers simply stopped looking for work, which erases them (in a statistical sense) from the labor force. These "discouraged workers" were counted in the labor force until the early 1980s, and if they were counted today the unemployment rate would be well into the double digit range, like it was then.
[snip]
my husband has simply been cut back by 40%.....try living without 40% of your prime income...its not easy nor pretty....
Didn’t we all get the chance to bag Soros-style profits?
“Stock picks from Soros, other hedge-fund pros
Four investors who prospered while the markets were in free fall see fresh opportunities as the economy begins to inch its way back to normal.”
The last accurate jobs forecast this nation has seen was Perot’s “giant sucking sound”.
We are down by 100%. Hubby lost job of 27 years to plant moving to Brazil and industrial insurance crapped out when industry crapped out.
So we are students now. Student loans and odd jobs.
Cosign your post #4.
I made 10% this year and headed for the exits, leaving a lot on the table.
Fear trumps greed for me these days being retired.
(luckily I missed the 08/09 collapse - the tech bubble was a good lesson)
I think a lot of the world will recover nicely, the US has big trouble due to the Baraqqis, but some US companies with a lot of overseas business can do just fine.
Who said irony is dead? Driving from work(grateful to have a job, thank God) listening to Hannity and the news comes on and the lead story is, “The White House announced the stimulus is working and the recession is over’’. Without missing a beat, without a tinge of irony or even a commercial break in between the next story is “Today the Electrolux Corporation announced it is closing two of its plants in Ohio and laying off 850 workers’’. And I though, “My God, who wrote that, Joe Biden”?
Jay Yarow
Oct. 26, 2009, 4:25 PM
Forbes had layoffs this morning according to a source at the company, and more cuts will be coming later this week.
It's not clear where the cuts will come--from the business side or the editorial side. Reading the memo sent by Steve Forbes to the staff, it appears the cuts will fall more on the business side of operations.
On the editorial side, we will maintain the essential strengths of Forbes while also deepening our relationships with our community. On the advertising side, we are making shifts to fully meet marketers' evolving needs. These current difficulties are a more intense version of what we underwent eight years ago, particularly after 9/11. Then, print advertising plummeted, and our Web efforts, like those of other publishers, were in the red.
[snip]
It looks like an trend which started May 2001 on the graph.
Obama was supposed to turn this around.
Where are the green jobs?
Where is the WPA? TVA? Hoover Dam? Highway expansion?
Moon program?
Look on the bright side, at least Obama’s golf game is getting better.
I wonder how much of this is structural? Technology has a way of eliminating many, many jobs. Marx used to howl about this and China purposely keeps technology at bay to keep people digging and shoveling by hand. Keep them working or they revolt. We may have a mess on our hands!
Similar situation here. Husband laid off over 6 months ago. Finally found job making about 2/3 of what he was making. Now they are talking about cuts at his current place of employment. It’s very discouraging.
I used to joke that we would all end up working the drive thru at the KFC in Bejing. Now I don’t think it’s too far-fetched.
This decade may go down in history as "The Free Traitor Reign of Terror".
China and India both have had more than a decade to create a first-world sustainable economy, with the help of trillions of US wealth.
China put their trillions into their military build-up.
India put their trillions into the pockets of a few corrupt people.
The US is now broke, much worse than broke, and we will be demonized for not continuing to send trillions more to our enemies.
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