It might just be about to get worse.

[Stinky The Clown]

I had a meeting with a federal client today. We're helping them with a new project that had been funded. With the shift in the House, they're suddenly very anxious. They've accelerated our schedule in an effort to get the funding that has been promised and budgeted to actually be secured. We got word that work for another agency we're doing has now only been funded through 35% completion.

Our work is such that contracts (of which we are a tiny, minuscule part) are milti-millions of dollars and cycle over many years.

In my conversations this morning, it seems clear that most federal agencies are quite nervous about seeing their full funding continue. In past recessions, the feds have always continued to buy, keeping their suppliers at least minimally solvent and busy. That seems not to be the case these days.

That does not bode well, unless the private sector starts buying. We have a remarkable number of private sector irons in our fire, but not one of them has gotten hot enough to move.

I have become a glass half empty guy of late. I see this as simply more evidence that, technical definitions be damned, we are in nearly as bad a shape as we were during The Great Depression.

Job numbers were announced today, as I'm sure most everyone knows. And while they're better than they've been in more than 18 months, and while the trend is in the right direction, and while job growth was quite positive, we are still at a pace that will take maybe 7 or more years to get back to "normal." The latest job growth rate, as a percentage and not as actual numbers, is still in negative territory as our population is creating more workers each month than the economy is creating new jobs. Add in those not being counted anymore and we're really in deep shit.

[Name removed]

1. Deleted message

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[mike_c]

2. "Add in those not being counted anymore...."

That really is the crux of the matter, IMO. The folks who have fallen through the safety net are accumulating, and I suspect that they're accumulating faster than the safety net is catching new additions, especially among the youngest and oldest unemployed. Once they drop off the gov't radar, they don't stop breathing-- or suffering. We just stop paying attention. As that demographic grows, we're going to HAVE to begin paying more attention to them.

[EFerrari]

4. I doubt I'll be able to get a teaching job or any fulltime job again

unless I create one for myself. It's been three years and I'm not really looking any more. Get occasional p/t work and don't qualify for anything. Advanced degree, exp in multiple fields, bilingual, good cv. It's unreal and demoralizing.

All three of us here out of work. I worry about the animals.

[w8liftinglady]

11. my partner sees the same thing here

teachers in their 50's don't dare change jobs...there aren't any.
He belongs to the AFL/CIO here in Tx...which is like having leprosy.
The young teachers are hired at much lower wages and higher student /teacher classes...because they don't know better.

[Quantess]

12. My sister said she offered 3 young people a ride.

They were out walking late at night. It turns out they were homeless and had no place to go, not for sure, anyway. She drove them to some place they thought they might be able to stay for the night.

Young and able bodied, but how are they supposed to find jobs in today's economy?

[galileoreloaded]

3. Its much worse than that....the only money in the system is government money....

and they can't keep up...They literally cant inject it quickly enough through the primary dealer network.

See below:

(any number below 1.0 = money being pulled out of the system by dollar destruction)

[EFerrari]

5. Yep. No one is doing much of anything. n/t

[Poboy]

6. Recommend.

[DeadEyeDyck]

7. I will be walking this Spring with my Masters

in International Comms. Have not had a bit of luck in the job market. Maybe I will just go on for my PhD.

[old mark]

8. K&R...Government spending to buy from private suppliers is keeping

a lot of people employed and mush money in circulation. I believe the GOP will try to kill the economy while blaming it all on Obama and the Democrats as a means for one of their insane candidates to win the presidency in 2012.

The GOP has NO interest in the good of the American people who are not rich contributers to them.

mark

[Laelth]

9. A recession is when the poor and middle class suffer.

A depression is when the rich suffer too.

And that might be what needs to happen in order to get their attention and make them do something about the mess they've gotten us into. That's certainly how we got FDR.

As I further explore here: http://laelth.blogspot.com

-Laelth

[EV_Ares]

10. Out of all those numbers, how many jobs that were lost also will never come back?

[Shagbark Hickory]

13. People need to stop breeding for a while.

There's just not enough burgers for everyone to flip.

[eridani]

14. We'd be exactly as badly off as the Great Depression, except for the New Deal

--safety nets which protect us from the worst effects. Naturally the Repukes (only weakly opposed by Obama) want to trash those as well.