Now we know: The jobs situation is bleak, and it will continue to be bleak until we face up to the fact that we need more stimulus spending - lots more - and we have to relieve millions of homeowners from their indentured servitude to Wall Street so that they can help restore the economy too.

In other words spend, spend, spend - and provide some principal reduction for underwater homeowners.

Bad News

We won't recap all the employment figures in today's jobs report, since they're available elsewhere. We'll stick to the highlights:

A key figure is essentially unchanged: There are 12.7 million unemployed people in this country.

Also unchanged, or only slightly changed: Unemployment rate for adult men is 7.6 percent, for when it's 7.4 percent, for teenagers it's 25 percent, for white people it's 7.3 percent, and for Asian it's 6.2 percent. Hispanics are still suffering with 10.3 percent unemployment, and for African Americans the rate remains a stunningly high 14 percent.

But then, all of these figures are stunningly high.

The crisis in long-term unemployment persists, with 5.3 million people among the long-term jobless. There was a drop in the number of people who want full-time work but can't get it, but it remains extremely high at 8.1 million.

Wait. It Gets Worse

And unemployment isn't our only national burden. Income gains have been very weak, and that segment of the workforce that actually is working is increasingly finding itself in low-paying jobs. And analysts are expect low earnings reports for corporate America, starting next week, as the sluggish economy takes its toll on publicly-traded companies.

Meanwhile banks, high off the settlement deal that protects them from criminal prosecution for illegal foreclosures, are expected to begin another wave of foreclosures that will send housing prices plummeting even further and costing local communities even more in lost revenue.

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