The Situation is Bleak. As Economy Still Bleeds Jobs, Experts Predict Another Jobless Recovery
By Susie Madrak Thursday Jul 02, 2009 2:00pm
First, the bad news:
WASHINGTON (AP) — Employers cut a larger-than-expected 467,000 jobs in June, driving the unemployment rate up to a 26-year high of 9.5 percent, suggesting that the economy's road to recovery will be bumpy.
The Labor Department report, released Thursday, showed that even as the recession flashes signs of easing, companies likely will want to keep a lid on costs and be wary of hiring until they feel certain the economy is on a solid ground.
June's payroll reductions were deeper than the 363,000 that economists expected.
However, the rise in the unemployment rate from 9.4 percent in May wasn't as sharp as the expected 9.6 percent. Still, many economists predict the jobless rate will hit 10 percent this year, and keep rising into next year, before falling back.
All told, 14.7 million people were unemployed in June.
If laid-off workers who have given up looking for new jobs or have settled for part-time work are included, the unemployment rate would have been 16.5 percent in June, the highest on records dating to 1994.
Since the recession began in December 2007, the economy has lost a net total of 6.5 million jobs.
As the downturn bites into sales and profits, companies have turned to layoffs and other cost-cutting measures to survive. Those include holding down workers' hours and freezing or cutting pay.
The average work week in June fell to 33 hours, the lowest on records dating to 1964.
The worse news: as some economists predicted, the stimulus package was too small to affect the "real" economy - you know, the one you and I live in? - in any significant way. Sounds like those who urged Obama to think large and visionary (a la FDR's Public Works Administration) really did have the right idea:
Reporting from Washington -- Even as the nation's economy begins clawing its way out of the worst recession in 60 years, there are growing signs that this recovery could come with an unsettling twist: The wheels of commerce may begin to turn again without any substantial boost in jobs.
Not only is the national unemployment rate, now 9.4%, likely to climb into double digits later this year, but it is also expected to remain there well into 2010, economists say. That would prolong the misery of the unemployed, squeeze retailers and other businesses, and add millions of dollars in government costs and lost productivity. It could even threaten the recovery itself.
Though it's common for the jobless rate to keep climbing for a time after economic output turns positive, the aftermath of the last two downturns, in 1990-91 and 2001, introduced the idea of a "jobless recovery." Even though the economy improved, many unemployed workers discovered that jobs as good as the ones they'd lost were almost impossible to find.
This time, many economists say, there are new factors that could make the problem worse. Many more layoffs in this recession have been permanent, not temporary.
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And if health care reform is reduced to an expensive stop gap plan that fails, it may be awhile before we get another chance.
Things are bound to get worse and come 2011, it will all have been Obama's fault.
Remember letting the foxes in to the hen house? Specter, Collins & Snowe "Helped" reduce the Stimulus Bill's job creation's ability to the extent it was never going to work. Obama compromised with a party that has one goal as always: Screw Main St. Sell-out to Wall St. Sadly, many Democrats support the Republican agenda.
Two repugs and a democrat?
Remember.... Specter is a defector.
the bankers and Wall Street.
Canada's recession losses to be long term
OTTAWA (Reuters) - More Canadians will be out of work in 2014 than prior to the recession, even if the economy recovers quickly and expands at a healthy clip for the next five years, a prominent economist forecast on Thursday.
http://finance.sympatico.msn.ca/investing/new...
Great news!!!!!!
and took all the appropriate actions to be ready for "The End".
Which is upon us. Life as we knew it anyway.
...My God....I shudder to think what we'd be doing right now if Palin and stroker McCain had stole the election.....brrrrrrrr......Heart attack and the bitch...Oh My God....
... but we were already shot to begin with. Luckily we have Obama who will get us out of this mess one amazing speech at a time.
After watching the "town hall" on health care the other day... all I can say is that Obama and I have very diverging definitions to what the term "change" means. It is going to take a loooooong time to recover, alas thing have been a tad stabilized. And at this point I'll take what I can get...
The financial system is crashing and action must be taken by the US government to convert debt into equity to produce a more stable environment, Nassim Taleb, author of "The Black Swan," told CNBC Thursday http://www.cnbc.com/id/31706523
inflated values and prices and doing next to nothing to raise wages and lower prices.
would help out common everyday people. Government isn't overly concerned about helping those people out. But they sure handed billions over lickity-split to the bankers!!
granted some people thought they could float the high life on credit cards and such, and fictitious values but . .well you know what I mean.
Isn't that an oxymoron - "jobless recovery?"
If there are no jobs created, just how much of a "recovery" is it?!
a banker and corporate profit recovery. That is all any of the governments are worried about.
is what the market is doing. I have friends who point at the Asian markets and ask "what recession?" as if the millions of unemployed were a figment of our imagination.
The disconnect between the markets and reality is astounding. The fact that we use the market as the main barometer for our economy is just nuts.
Then again, we're at the mercy of "industries" like the financial and HMO sectors, which provide no actual product and demand an insane markup just for the privilege.
What did we expect when GWB charged in to Iraq at a cost of 11 billion PER WEEK? War is hell alright... especially when it comes to the economy. Sure, the war profiteers were slapping each other on their backs while the nation was bled at a staggering rate. Just review the economic comments made by bush, it was always about how great things were going (for the industries that fed his war)... this is EXACTLY why the GOP are so pro military. The only way that lot know to make money is by bleeding us of our sons and daughters and national honor in exchange for the military industrial complex that is destroying this nation.
Dumbya and the corrupt Reslugs sure fucked up this country real good and then just handed it over to President Obama, to try to clean up their dirty, rotten mess.
what most people can afford?
I remember when the Real Estate Industry doubled rents during the Bush How to get rich in real estate racket.
Non-economic expert that I am, I have to wonder if the recovery is due to the joblessness. Lot of employers were looking for reasons to shed staff. Now they did and they're recovering.
are you talking about?
they're referring to when they say jobless recovery.
usually find their value on the markets increased. Remember the "restructuring" recession during Clinton's Presidency? Everyone was restructuring..ie...laying off staff and forcing the leftovers to do more, for no more cashola.
...I might think that this whole thing if not done actually done on purpose has certainly been taken advantage of.
Ya, last fall, all the rich and corporations woke up one day and screeched "Oh my Gawd, the end of the financial world is here" and it's been downhill ever since. Go figure.
But that 700 billion went somewhere. I'm telling you this whole economic collapse is playing out like a looong term scam ala-Ocean's 11.
until the middle class is vaporized and we're all slaves to our corporate overlords.
As long as there's cable, beer and internet porn in our shacks, it'll be ok.
it doesn't sound so bad.
I always wondered what the 700 club was and now you answered it. Thanks
Read Naomi Klein's book "The Shock Doctrine".
There's the blueprint for what's happening in this country right now.
Yeah right Dubya sure they do. In China.
Those of us who were saying all along that the stim package was way too small (and that was before the ConservaDems got their grubby hands on it and made it that much worse), and that far, far more agressive and progressive policies would be needed to get through this depression...well, we are being vindicated.
And thanks to Obama's and the Democrats' wet nursing of the Gethner/Goldman Sachs/financial/industrial complex with blank checks while throwing his working class base under the tank, it's certainly going to get nothing but worse.
Once again, half-a** political policies lead to half-a** results.
The Democrats have better grow a spine and some balls rather quickly, or they will lose it all come 2012, if not 2010, in the ensuing bloodbath.
Maybe now we can talk about growing a REAL progressive party???
Anthony
I'm not sure the stimulus package is "too small," more that's it's been extremely poorly directed. What happened to all those infrastructure projects? Green jobs? As noted above, the billionaires sure got stimulated, us unemployed folks, not so much.
I wonder how many H1B visas got granted last month? You know, for those jobs that 'Mericans don't want to do.
Can we scare me a little more? I've been out of work since december. Will i ever get a job?
It's always darkest just before dawn. Stick in there!
been going on three years for me.....I've given up any hope.
So I enrolled in law school (living on loans), and started doing some independent paralegal subcontracting to keep the house. Paychecks are sporadic, and some are hardly enough to buy dinner for a family of 6, but at least its some money I won't have to repay.
What's that?
A nice steaming bowl of Hope soup to help wash down a heaping helping of Audacity on toast!
What?
You want more soup?
America finds itself in something like the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina, when the federal government proves comically impotent and the cold reality hits that we're now all on our own.
In Katrina, the Bush admin was tragically incompetent, mostly due to their lack of interest. Where as if the Obama admin suffers from the same problems it'll be because events are beyond control, not because he doesn't care or isn't trying.
the roaring 90's is going to come back while they watch Americans all over the place symbolically floating face down or emerging from Astrodome's choking from the wretch and stench.
Yes, you're right, thats not going to happen. Bush did too much damage. He's crippled us too much.
And because of partisanship even if Obama could fix it, (and given the many abuses of the Bush admin he seems willing to embrace I don't think that he can) he'll be fought all the way.
Off Topic but still a WTF Moment:
Kurtz: Can African-American women objectively cover Michelle Obama?
In his column today, Washington Post media reporter Howard Kurtz devotes his column today to the question of: “Does Race Play a Role in Coverage?” He readily admits that “no one raises questions when an Irish American male reporter covers a pol named Murphy,” but that doesn’t stop him from writing a 1,600-word article raising questions about black women:
http://thinkprogress.org/2009/07/02/kurtz-rac...
Can Kurtz withdraw his head from his ass?
Can an asshole cover his own asshole?
in one of our top newspapers no less... makes me cry inside a little.
Unf*ckingbelieveable...
Where are the 94% marginal tax rates? Why do corporations pay little or no taxes? We don't have to let them sell their made in China crap in our country.
Why does 2% of the population have more money than the bottom 50%?
This IS the problem with the U.S. economy today. Until these ultra rich greedheads are stopped from stealing America blind, and take away from them the 25% of total wealth they stole from the rest of us - nothing is gonna change.
Nobody has any money to do anything, because the Bush family crime syndicate and all their cronies stole it all!
Marginal tax rates would also negate the idiots on Wall Street from stealing their billions, because most of it would just be recycled back into the economy.
Unfortunately, the teabagger idiots are out protesting to protect this very status quo, because they don't want to see their taxes raised $50. Thus, the billionaires have an army of chumps working on their behalf. Not only are these people incredibly stupid and shortsighted, they are also nuts! Try explaining who really destroyed the working class with them, and they totally lose it. Complete morons.
I see are those ever shrinking rolls of change I buy food with , or gas etc.
can you believe in it?
no , maybe , not sure .
Maybe when Santa visits me , or the tooth fairy .
Understanding of some basic terms needs to be in place.
A recovery occurs when those people that are still employed decide to be consumers again.
However we have had a massive loss of personal wealth. $6 trillion in home values lost, $8 trillion in stock market values lost. According to Dean Baker here.
On top of this we have a colossal amount of personal debt. Credit card debt, mortgage debt 25% of which is under water.
Michael Hudson describes this as the arrival of debt deflation. here
So when will the folks who still can spend start to do so again.
Probably not for a while, the lack of which will continue to push us down the down ramp.
There is a basic fault in the capitalist system, it requires constant growth.
We have a finite system on this earth, we now have peak oil, probably peak water and I suspect we have peak capitalism because the earth is going to break.
We have the added impending catastrophe of climate change.
This all means peak humanity. I see no political leadership saying that we must undertake immediate massive conservation.
Too bad. Jimmy Carter said it thirty two years ago. If we had listened to him things might be very different.
The economic meltdown today is the result of a decade of colossal government malfeasance in co-ordination with the Bankster's massive fraud.
The present government continues the malfeasance. The Banksters have been made whole with trillions in largesse, they are planning their next escapade at our expense as I write this. You can bet on it.
Reminiscent of David Suzuki.
Thank you, I have long admired David Suzuki.
To add to the gloom there is Chalmers Johnson at TomDispatch here.
The added sorrows of empire.
Especially when it comes to stock pricing. So can something that never existed in physical form really be "lost." I understand that certain aspects of "value" have a physical realization, but that is via proxy.
The placebo characteristics of certain aspects of capitalism have always fascinated me...
...PANIC !!!!!!
The stimulus is barely in effect (90% unspent) and already we're freaking out.
When every economist you can trust said 6 months ago that a recovery was 18 months or more away, was anyone listening?
Six months into the Obama admin. and the media has even Diehard Dems proclaiming that Obama is a bust.
It's right-wing loons that got us into this mess, and it's right-wing loons that want Obama to fail ASAP. And now the hand-wringing left is helping them by literally expecting miracles. And that's what it would be if unemployment stabilized this soon; a miracle.
People really need to get a grasp on the ugly reality of what Bush did to us. It's going to take a long, long, time to get back to any measure of prosperity, and blaming Obama at every turn is just what the rethugs want. They want us to eat our own and get nothing accomplished. Infighting and selfish squabbling is the way to put the republiscum back in power.
As a Progressive, I'm using the Obama admin. as a chance to give progressive ideas a foot-in-the-door. And I'll be damned if I'll let petty nonsense derail that chance. If you really think that the Dems and Pubs are the same, ask yourself what would be happening right now if McLame and Caribou Barbie were occupying the White House.
the communes of the 60's , been a socialist every since .
sounds good
It's Bill Clinton and Obama's fault!!
(Not the guy who was in office the 8 years in between)
If the GOP "strengthened" America any more we'd be a banana republic.
we aren't?
60sfurther.com
...this is just the weeds left in the garden.
We outsourced good paying manufacturing jobs during the 90s (Yes, it pains me to admit it but, it was on Bill Clinton's watch). Of course, repukes think NOTHING is more important than people making a profit so, they were all in his jock when we did this.
Now, we are reaping the "benefits" of opening up "free trade" with 3rd world countries. You know where "middle class" is defined as having to share a hut with 2 other families..lol. Guess what happens when you do that? Your middle class goes down to the level of THEIR middle class.
The unfortunate part is that BOTH sides (in all fairness and objectivity) have been pinning this on each other. Right now, OUr side is in complete control, so ANY bad national news is immediately pounced upon by the 'CONs as being the fault if inept leadership by us. Of course, at least at this moment, most reasonable people (even some GOP'ers) knows that to expect some sort of miracle in 5 months is beyond ridiculous. However, that will not stop the loons on the radio and at Faux from pouncing. (As, Shammity did when the DJIA dropped below 6K in late Feb/early March...Now, what is it PUG boy?)
Needless to say though, yours, mine and their lifestyles are gonna change and the fault lyes at the feet of BOTH parties. BOTH parties paid too much attention to wall street analysts and so-called "business leaders" and not enough attention to the conservative/liberal/black/white/gay/straight middle class american on Main st.
They traded long term security for short term gain and, now, we are paying for it.
First it takes MONTHS for this money to come through, even the "shovel ready" projects. So if the policy is the way we still will not know for atleast 1 more quarters.
Second if the first $700 Billion did not work what makes you think a second $700 billion will?
THe money is mis spent, going to places that don't need it, etc, the government should not be in the economy business.
Let the markets work themselves out and stop wasting my money!
We challenge you to find a better summary of gloabalisation and its discontents in this 30 min interview with Prof Michael Hudson. He defines why the US economy is beholden to the banks. Check last weeks interview too
Download Hudson on Grand Theft Monopoly
Read show notes
This pissed me of the last 'jobless recovery' we had. Why the fuck do 99% of Americans work their asses off for pennies, live in shitholes cause they can't afford housing, eat shit fast food or nothing and die cause they can't afford health care? And some douche bag news model giggle's inanely while telling us everything's OK now, commerce is recovering . . . except for jobs for the proles. Millions are out of work, losing their homes, going hungry, dieing . . . but Whew! the 1%'ers won't be losing that 9th house in the Hamptons, so everything's fine.
a recovery without jobs? If "the wheels of commerce start to turn again" who will be the customers? Corporations? Well, if said corporations start to invest and grow again, won't they need people? Or will robots do everything this time?
Sure, the stock market will go up and since the mass media tell us the stock market _is_ the economy, by definition the economy will go up. GM will just build their cars in China. I guess the Chinese will buy them. Problem solved. Congress will have served their constituent corporations.
According to the G-NO-P, it's all their own fault anyway. If they are unemployed, it's ONLY because of their OWN bad choices. They are lazy, don't UNDERSTAND the NEED TO WORK, they are drug addicts, they are alcoholics, (Not the John Boehner or George Bush kind of alcoholics though). These kind of alcoholics live in boxes instead of mansions and don't have any LOBBYISTS handing THEM million dollar CHECKS to write those laws to increase the fleecing of the "little guy".
What we really need to do is PRIVATIZE CONGRESS. Then maybe we'd find some REAL AMERICANS with NO party affiliation who would really put America First instead of the highest campaign donors. OH and at the first mention of "GOD", they would be instantly disqualified. Let them go Proselytize in the GUTTER they crawled out of. Proselytize to the RATS AND THE LEMMINGS.
The worse news: as some economists predicted, the stimulus package was too small to affect the "real" economy - you know, the one you and I live in?
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That is the BIG lie. It is stimulous that got us to where we are.
The boom comes before the bust.
The day of reckoning ALWAYS arrives. Thus, the stimulous package was not too small. Once a credit bubble bursts, it deflates.
The gold bubble deflated for 20 years.
The Nikkei bubble burst in 1989. The Nikkei made a new post 1989 low in the current bear market.
The Nasdaq has come nowhere near its all time high since 2000.
No, the stimulous package was not too small. A secular change has occurred. For one, the savings rate just hit 6.9%. People have been living beyond their means and are now paying down debt, rather than spending borrowed money, in addition to their income. Car companies sold 17 million cars because demand was artificially pulled forward. Now they can't even muster 10 million.
The stimulous package was more debt and a second stimulous package is just even more debt. More debt is not going to solve a problem caused by debt.
...this is just the weeds left in the garden.
We outsourced good paying manufacturing jobs during the 90s (Yes, it pains me to admit it but, it was on Bill Clinton's watch).
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It doesn't matter who's watch it happened on.
D E F L A T I O N
Nothing is static. A cycle moves up, peaks, and moves down to a trough. Then a new cycle begins. It can't be stopped from happening.
China left the world economy in 1949. 1.3 billion people rejoined the world economy decades later. China became a vacuum, sucking in jobs at lower wages. Deflation. Clinton could not prevent that from happening.
The cycle does not care about politics. The cycle will inexorably complete itself. Inflation to deflation.
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