The US today: economic stagnation, political paralysis

[CHIMO]

The monthly employment report for September, released Friday, shows how far America remains from an economic recovery that might feel different from a recession to most of the public, nearly four years after the Great Recession began. Unemployment remained at 9.1% in the household survey. With a jump of 342,000 thousand additional people involuntarily working part-time, the labor department's broadest measure of unemployment (which includes these workers and others who have quit looking for work because they can't find it) rose to a record 16.5% of the labor force.

As my colleague Dean Baker pointed out, the 103,000 jobs gained in September brought the total jobs added over the last three months to just enough to keep pace with the growth of the labor force. If present trends continue, we are going to be looking at intolerably high levels of unemployment for years to come.

The distribution of unemployment is also breaking records for ugliness. Some 44.6% of the unemployed have been out of work for more than six months. This kind of long-term unemployment is unprecedented in the post second world war era, and it causes permanent damage, as many of the long-term unemployed never get jobs again. Their children suffer as well, with damage to their education.

No wonder people are taking to the streets, in a phenomenon not seen since the Great Depression: mass protests targeting economic policy. As in Europe, where the 15-M movement in Spain, the general strikes in Greece, and mass protests in other countries have attracted widespread popular support, the movement of "the 99%" targeting Wall Street is a response to the failure of our political class to do what is obviously necessary for even the immediate future. There is a chance, at least, that it will be joined by increasing numbers of "the 16.5%" (unemployed or underemployed); the "15.1%" (below the poverty line); and "the 88%" (of the labor force without union representation) – and all the other effectively disenfranchised Americans that make up the 99%.

http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/cifamerica/2011/oct/07/usemployment-useconomy

[raccoon]

1. Bookmarked to read later. nt

[mother earth]

2. Familes/households are barely holding on. FDR emergency

measures need to be put in place. How long can the masses deal with paying more and more for the basics? There was a time when people were taxed fairly and the average household lived well with one breadwinner working...today you have a hard go with two breadwinners. This is far from sustainable, the tipping point has been reached. Time for the president to act. The situation is growing worst day by day.