Tag-Archive for » Unemployment «
There’s relatively good news on the jobs front.
The U.S. economy created 216,000 jobs in March, the government reported Friday, continuing the recent rebound in hiring that has helped strengthen the recovery.
The unemployment rate dropped a tenth of a point to 8.8%, the lowest since early 2009.
The unemployment rate has now dropped a full percentage point since November.
Not exactly great news, but it’s good enough. U.S. unemployment dropped to 9.4 percent in December, its lowest level in 19 months, the Department of Labor announced Friday.
The economy added 103,000 new jobs, up from November’s revised estimate of 71,000, but less than analysts had predicted.
The drop in the unemployment rate came during retailers’ best holiday season in four years, but was also bolstered by people who stopped looking for work.
Once someone has stopped hunting for a job, the government no longer counts them in unemployment numbers.
Not knowing the future, we look to the past. What is this thing called the Great Recession and what can we expect from a recovery? Unfortunately, as much as economists and others try to find comparisons, they’re ultimately unsatisfying. As Mark Twain would put it, history doesn’t repeat itself but it rhymes. Let’s look at a few.
Recent history: The 2001 downturn shared a burst bubble, in that case the dot-com, as well as corporate criminality with the likes of Enron. But it was short-lived and saw nowhere near the damage of the Great Recession. It did see a “jobless” recovery, however — an ominous portent. Only 1 million net new jobs would be created in the expansion that followed. And the big money moved out of dot-coms and into real estate, beginning the mania that would help being on our current calamity.
The S&L downturn: Like the Great Recession, this 1991 event grew out of a financial collapse and one where regulators were forced to look the other way by politicians and ideology. It was also the first sign of the increasing financialization of the economy that had begun in the 1980s. But it’s small potatoes compared with today’s mess and was contained to a small portion of the economy. It was followed by the most robust rebound of the post-World War II era. Today’s globalization and China’s entry as a major economic competitor were years away.
The 1980-82 recessions. These are often compared in severity with the Great Recession, but the differences are important. They began with high interest rates and high inflation and ended with the worst post-World War II downturn to date as Paul Volcker’s Federal Reserve vanquished inflation. It was a Fed-induced recession, rather than the result of a financial or housing bubble. The American industrial base was largely intact and the middle class still strong. The U.S. trade balance was healthy. None of this is the case in the Great Recession. Most significantly, our latest downturn saw far faster job losses and has yet to even begin to see the rebound in employment chalked up after the end of the ’82 recession.
The Great Depression. This is the most similar modern event we have to the Great Recession. A decade of wild speculation, laissez-faire policies and rising income inequality ended in the near collapse of the world economic system. Still, the contrasts are critical. America was much poorer then, more rural, with a small federal government. The financial system was more decentralized. Policymakers were confounded by the crash and tried to fight it by tightening credit and focusing on balancing the budget. This helped turn a severe recession into a depression.
Two other interesting differences: In 1929, when the crash hit, America was the world’s largest creditor nation. Through the Depression, it had a large, state-of-the-art productive base and skilled workers waiting for a rebound. That began in the mid-1930s — until FDR, an instinctive budget hawk who didn’t like John Maynard Keynes (who returned the sentiment) cut back the New Deal in 1937, causing a severe recession. Full recovery came with the ramp-up to World War II. Even so, the stock market didn’t recover its old highs until the 1950s and Depression survivors were always suspicious of it.
Finally, in the Depression, this mysterious thing called “the market,” meaning the collection of powerful bankers, investors and the shadow banking industry, didn’t hold the fate of nations hostage. That era’s version of this group had been swept away by the crash. Not so this time.
One common denominator is unemployment. Both the Great Depression and Great Recession mowed down jobs at levels not seen in other downturns of the past century. Depression joblessness was much worse, perhaps 25 percent in 1932. Contrary to the dreams of revisionists, the rate did improve through the New Deal. But it never fully recovered until the early 1940s.
Again, we’re a more affluent nation now and have a tattered but real social safety net. But it looks as if we face years of unemployment for millions of Americans. And that fact in the Depression led to political instability, particularly before 1932. Fascism, socialism and communism were all considered more viable than failed capitalism. To the real left’s eternal dismay, Franklin Roosevelt saved capitalism, even as he battled the “economic royalists.”
thank you Jon
While the unemployment rate for white men dropped for the fifth straight month in March to 8.9%, it hit 19% for black men. That’s a sizeable 1.2 percentage point jump in a single month. During this same time, unemployment for black women also grew from 12.1% to 12.4%, even as the jobless rate for white women held fast at 7.3%.
Reporting from Washington – U.S. workers and the Obama administration finally got some good news on the job front Friday as the unemployment rate unexpectedly tumbled out of double-digit terrain for the first time in four months.
In addition to the jobless rate’s drop to 9.7% in January from 10% in December, the Labor Department report offers a number of signs pointing to a turnaround in the employment market and a continuing, gradual recovery in the overall economy. Among those signs was the first increase in factory jobs in three years.
A sharp decline in the number of people working part time involuntarily was “the most promising news out of today’s report,” said John Challenger, chief executive of outplacement firm Challenger, Gray & Christmas. “Overall, we are definitely heading toward a job market recovery.”
The positive news was tempered by newly revised data showing the country lost a staggering 8.4 million jobs in the last two years — about four times the net job losses in the recession of the early 1980s and 1.2 million more than previously estimated.
The severe destruction of jobs since December 2007, when the latest recession officially began, means that it will take years for millions of distressed families — and the economy as a whole — to climb back from what is being called the Great Recession.
“The crater we have is just incredible,” said Heidi Shierholz, a labor economist at the Economic Policy Institute, a liberal think tank in Washington.
BUSINESS - PART I
Ponzi Scheme, banks here and across europe. The biggest Ponzi Scheme is our very own Federal Reserve, the biggest pimp of them all. This even was brought together to assist the sovereign States, and U.S. with money advantages. Like a short-term loan. Instead it turned into which USA is so good at, power, ego, greed. Now they tell us citizens what we can buy and how to spend it. Wake up folks. Madoff tried to tell the truth, after he got caught (to a certain degree). Federal Reserve contractor is the Illuminati, or updated SCAN or Element 15. Federal Reserve is run by the billionaires not millionaires. Same as the Vatican ok – one is religious, and one isn’t. Private hierarchy run to control the masses.
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I.R.S. is another illegal organization. There are folks living here in the USA and do not pay federal taxes – WHY? Because they know the sovereign laws of this nation. It may take several times in court to win the battle, but you will win, because the IRS is an illegal organization. USA government does NOT want their citizens to know which causes you to jump thru hoops, but worth it in the end if you can sustain. Never pay Federal Income Tax again, no matter how much you work or work less.
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In less than 10 years the Federal Reserve will no longer exist, which is a good thing. Run by the rich and famous. Was set up by the millionaires, then billionaires.
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The unemployment rate is more like 22% across the nation, not that B.S. 8.2% they are trying to get the public to believe and digest “really”? Why is this so high, glad you asked. a. Military – returning from Iraq, and Afghanistan. b. College Grads 2011 looking for employment. c. Citizens no longer eligible for unemployment, and it’s only going to get worse than better folks.
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This year we will feel a great depression. Unless we go to war with Iran to build our economy back up. Damn shame we must go into a depression, mentally, spiritually, and physically to turn this nation around. Thank you Congress for working with the President to make our nation better. Recession is just a thing of the past, we have surpass the ideology a long time ago.
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Sorry it sounds so gloom and doom, but these are things I’m seeing right now for the future. Hope the citizens of our nation rise up and see what is going on around them. Question your Senators, and Representatives what are they doing to insure a future we can live in harmony.
ALSO: Look for the BANKS TO HAVE ANOTHER HOLIDAY! Hope you have a safe at home to put some money away. Because access to what you have in the bank will be very limited, to what you can take out during the “holiday”.
OL777O