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The Real Unemployment Scandal?
Discussing the latest US jobs report, Greg Ip of The Economist comments on jobless agonistes:
Hopes
had risen in the past week that America’s economic soft patch was
ending. They have just been doused with a bucket of cold water. The job
market showed further deterioration
in June from May, the government reported today. The number of
non-farm jobs rose a meager 18,000, lower even than May’s 25,000 number
(itself revised down from the original estimate). The two months
together mark a dramatic deceleration from the previous three when
payroll growth averaged 215,000 per month.
The unemployment rate,
meanwhile, rose for the fourth consecutive month to 9.2%, from 9.1% in
May. It was 8.8% in March. The economic recovery celebrated (if you
could call it that) its second anniversary on July 1st, and in that
time the unemployment rate has moved a lot while ending up almost
exactly where it began. America has made almost no progress closing the
output gap opened up by the recession. The
U-6 unemployment rate, which includes people who have given up looking
for jobs and part timers who want full time work, shot up to 16.2%
from 15.8% and the average duration of unemployment hit a new high of
39.9 weeks. More women than men lost jobs. Indeed, since the recovery began, women have fared worse than men, a reversal of the pattern during the recession, as a new Pew study documents. Still, the male unemployment rate rose more last month than the female rate.
Digging
deeper, the details grow worse. Hourly wages failed to rise and the
average work week shrank slightly—bad news for income and thus
purchasing power. The survey of households, from which the unemployment
rate is drawn, shows a much bigger plunge in employment, at 445,000,
than the payroll survey. The household survey is less reliable but is
still a useful check. It tells us the payroll report is not understating
the strength of the job market.
There is no good news in this
report; in the category of "could have been worse," private sector job
growth was better than the overall total, at 57,000 last month. Public
employment fell, for the eighth consecutive month, led by more layoffs
by state and local governments.
The best explanation for the sharp
slowdown in the jobs market is the confluence of bad luck that hit the
economy this spring: a sharp increase in petrol prices, a series of
natural disasters, and the Japanese tsunami and earthquake that
interrupted supply chains in electronics, automobiles and other
industries. Most of these temporary restraints have begun to lift. The
weather is back to normal, petrol prices are down 10% (nearly 40 cents
per gallon) from their peak, and Japan’s disruptions are ending.
Automobile production schedules are ramping up and the Institute of
Supply Management found that factory activity improved from May to June.
Manufacturing employment rose last month, albeit by only 6,000. Even
Greece seems, yet again, to have muddled through its latest confidence
crisis (but keep your eyes on much bigger Italy).
In all
likelihood, the employment data will improve in coming months as
consumer purchasing power and business spirits recover from the fuel
price surge. Yet as we argue in an article
in this week’s issue of The Economist, there is more to the
disappointing trajectory of the recovery than these temporary
restraints. America has only just begun
to deleverage and a McKinsey study has found that comparable episodes
in history have been accompanied by anemic growth and often a return to
recession. While America probably won’t fall back into
recession absent some new shock, its workers should get used to
stop-start growth punctuated with disappointments and soft patches.
Americans are not alone in this; Britain has experienced similar
disappointments and Spain’s outlook is even more anemic. Both share
America’s pre-existing condition of vastly overstretched household
balance sheets and the opportunistic infection of exploding government
debt.
While most of Europe is ahead of America in implementing
plans to arrest the rise in government debt as a share of GDP, America
is just beginning. In Washington, the mood surrounding negotiations
over an increase in the statutory debt limit took a turn for the better
this week as Republicans signaled flexibility on taxes and the
Democrats did likewise on entitlements. This may be good news
politically but it is ambiguous, and possibly bad, economically, if the
final deal front-loads, rather than back-loads, the pain. The steady
bleed of public sector jobs shows state and local government austerity
is already weighing heavily. Federal fiscal policy is scheduled to
tighten in January when a temporary investment tax credit and payroll
tax cut expire. Layering on more austerity would pummel an economy
still struggling to achieve a virtuous circle of jobs, income and
spending. Mr Obama is reportedly pushing to extend the payroll tax cut
for another year. That would be good, but that would not represent new
stimulus, merely a softening of the fiscal restraint already in train.
And
what about the Federal Reserve? Its second round of quantitative
easing (QE) was completed at the end of June. The consensus is that it
would have to see deflation looming to implement more. I think the bar
is lower than that. Ben Bernanke, the
Fed chairman, has always worried that rising unemployment could spark a
pernicious cycle of declining confidence and spending. If its recent
rise continues into the third quarter, expect to see Wall Street raise
the odds on QE3. It’s too soon to write the recovery off, but not too soon for contingency planning.
I'd
say the odds of another QE3 were slim prior to the latest jobs report
and they now stand at 50-50. If employment growth doesn't pick up
significantly over the next few months, QE3 is a done deal, and Wall
Street will celebrate by bidding up risk assets.
The real
structural problem in the US labor market is that there are really two
economies since the early 80s: the financial economy made up of bankers,
traders and money managers on Wall Street and the real economy made of
manufacturers but mostly of small businesses. The latter are struggling
while the former keep enjoying record bonuses. Nothing is trickling
down, and even if it is, it's so minute that it doesn't make a
difference. Even cash rich corporations are in no hurry to hire because
they're producing more with less and they've got no confidence that this
is a sustainable recovery.
And as TomDispatch associate editor Andy Kroll
points out, for all the verbiage about jobs that will be coming your
way, there’s one part of the American jobs crisis deserving screaming
headlines that the politicians won’t be talking about, the 60-year unemployment scandal:
Live in Washington long enough and you'll hear someone mention "east of the river." That's
D.C.'s version of "the other side of the tracks," the place friends
warn against visiting late at night or on your own. It's home to
District Wards 7 and 8, neighborhoods with a long, rich history. Once
known as Uniontown, Anacostia was one of the District's first suburbs;
Frederick Douglass, nicknamed the "Sage of Anacostia," once lived there, as did the poet Ezra Pound and singer Marvin Gaye. Today the area's unemployment rate is officially nearly 20%. District-wide, it’s 9.8%, a figure that drops as low as 3.6% in the whiter, more affluent northwestern suburbs.
D.C.'s divide is America's writ large. Nationwide, the unemployment rate for black workers at 16.2% is almost double the 9.1% rate for the rest of the population. And it's twice the 8% white jobless rate.
The
size of those numbers can, in part, be chalked up to the current jobs
crisis in which black workers are being decimated. According to Duke
University public policy expert William Darity, that means blacks are
"the last to be hired in a good economy, and when there's a downturn,
they're the first to be released."
That may account for the
soaring numbers of unemployed African Americans, but not the yawning
chasm between the black and white employment rates, which is no
artifact of the present moment. It's a problem that spans generations,
goes remarkably unnoticed, and condemns millions of black Americans to a
life of scraping by. That unerring, unchanging gap between white and
black employment figures goes back at least 60 years. It should be a
scandal, but whether on Capitol Hill or in the media it gets remarkably
little attention. Ever.
Indeed, nobody wants
to talk about the shockingly high unemployment rate among black
Americans because they've been largely written off. I'll tell you about
another scandal that nobody talks about, the unemployment rate of
disabled persons which is closer to 85%, and that's being generous.
I
take the rights of disabled people very seriously partly because I have
MS and it makes me extremely angry at how prejudiced employers are
towards disabled persons. One trader recently sent me an email telling
me the following:
no
offense, but that MS will likely be the preventing factor to your
being hired (large orgs fear large disability expense, small orgs can
ill afford any absence) - I know two guys with health issues (a guy who
is a cancer survivor with diabetes, another had a liver transplant)
and group benefits/life-insurance are a factor in them staying in
sub-optimal jobs....plus they save/invest like fiends since they are
parents with abbreviated life/mortality expectations
I wasn't offended at all and told him he's right, most organizations --
private corporations, federally chartered banks and even government Crown
corporations and government departments -- will treat people with a
serious preexisting condition as a liability (one day, I will expose
these organizations and their discriminatory practices). This is why I
decided to teach myself to be completely self-sufficient, focusing on
trading stocks, consulting and business ventures where I control my own destiny. No more sucking up to
anyone for a job! If you don't want to hire me because I have MS, that's your problem and I don't want to work for you!
Importantly,
my MS doesn't control me; I am feeling better than ever and will beat
this bloody disease because I'm the toughest SOB you'll ever meet. MS or no MS, I'll take on the world!
But that's not the case for many who are much worse off than I am and
can't fend for themselves. Many disabled are stuck collecting disability
insurance, living in poverty, all because they are ostracized
from a shallow society who only sees them as a liability. That's the
real unemployment scandal and anyone who thinks otherwise is an utter
fool who's never walked in their shoes and felt the stinging pain of
blatant discrimination.
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I'd like to sympathize, but can't. Things are bad for everyone. See that picture at the top. That's "me"...second from left. In this job market, "short and fat" is enough to keep you from a job or even decent medical coverage. Your complaints are one drop in the bucket when a nation starts to implode. And unfortunately, when people start to suffer, your group is one of the first on line. Don't worry, you'll have even more company soon.
But I do like your "can do" spirit and "go to hell" attitude...you're going to need them.
.
Indeed. Everyone does have his or her cross to bear. Well, not everyone it seems...some don't appear to have any burdens. But the fact is, life is not fair, and discrimination is not a sin. I'm sure you teach your children to discriminate between the people who offer them rides in a car.
What you are asking for, (if your MS does indeed impose some extra burden on an employer), is charity. Forced charity, i.e. transfer payments, affirmative action, etc. is not true charity. It is not accrued as a virtuous act to those from whom value was taken, and it does not produce humble gratitude in those to whom value was given. It is a perversion of the voluntary charity, true charity that was called for by Christ in the gospels.
"What you are asking for, (if your MS does indeed impose some extra burden on an employer), is charity. Forced charity, i.e. transfer payments, affirmative action, etc. is not true charity."
Raymond,
Persons with disabilities are not asking for charity, just an equal opportunity to work and prove to closed-minded idiots like you that we can do the job much better than persons with no disability. As I've written above, I'm feeling better than ever, and unless my employer wants me to run a marathon, I can do anything a "healthy" individual can do and do it better (just look at the success of my blog!). I don't need to prove jack shit to you or anyone; I'm confident and ready to take on the world. I feel sorry for peole like you and akak, it's truly pathetic that people think this way. It gets me very angry and persons with disabilities (much more disabled than I will ever be) deserve better. But you can't teach prejudiced idiots to think differently. Would love to see how you would handle sitting on the other side of the table if you were disabled and unemployed.
unless my employer wants me to run a marathon,
vs.
I can do anything a "healthy" individual can do and do it better
Does not compute.
And it could happen...never discount lady luck.....!
Would you like some cheese and crackers with that whine?
Spin it all you want, you statist piece of filth, but what you want is special consideration and privledges, and you know it. You want Big Daddy Government to step in and MAKE others take action that they otherwise freely would not. You are pathetic and disgusting, and I am glad you are sick ---- but your suffering, as much as you deserve it, will never come close to the suffering that you statist bastards have inflicted on society in your self-serving hypocritical pleas for "fairness" and "equality" at the point of a gun.
Would you like some cheese and crackers with that whine?
Cute! May I borrow it sometime? Like next time I rake that whining crybaby (G)utless (W)imp over the coals?
Hmmmmm... 21 junks. I'm jealous. Most I ever get is like 10.
So Leo wants to cut the bullshit ...then posts another load of it.
And speaking of whining crybabies, read my lips Leo, nobody fucking cares what you think is fair.
Sorry,Akak, but I have to jump in here.
While I personally incline toward a "libertarian" view of things and deplore an all-encompassing, suffocating "statism", some balance has to be called for.
To rejoice in the misfortune of someone whose disability had nothing to do with free will or life choice (no one chooses to have MS, hypertension, diabetes or any other life-threatening or debilitating chronic condition) is beyond the pale - regardless of the perceived rightness of your views - SHAME ON YOU.
But this more than goes also for those liberal-socialist dreamers who in the name of "fairness" and "compassion" would reduce EVERYONE - the able-bodied and the handicapped alike - to the most meagre of existences'; in most cases, an existence more bleak and meagre than many "challenged or "handicapped" now face.
Of course, in both Libertarian Utopia and Socialist Dystopia the top 1% of Libertarians and top 1% of Socialists will come together, clink champagne flutes, nibble brie and elegant crackers, and conspire to to squeeze more from those less exalted than they.
In any Animal Farm, libertarian or socialist, some animals are always more "equal", "virtuous", or "able" than others.
"In any Animal Farm, libertarian or socialist, some animals are always more "equal", "virtuous", or "able" than others."
True enough- but why should the horses be sent to the glue factory so that the PIIGS can sleep on human beds?
The main difference being that in the Libertarian Utopia they will have less influence over your daily life making it harder to squeeze anything out of anyone regardless of whom they choose to clink champagne flutes with.
If we as a society demand that leaders lead a shitty life that focuses on truth and service instead of perks and distinction, we may get somewhere. What's the worst that could happen? It isn't as if all the geniuses are lining up for office anyway.
You are pathetic and disgusting, and I am glad you are sick...
I enjoy a lot of your contributions, akak, but delighting in someone illness, even if you don't believe in karma, is a pretty ugly thing to do.
Leo's not a concentration camp bully, or a child strangler, or a sex trafficker - he's just another statist who's been taught he deserves the good things in life and has yet to understand that expecting everyone else to surrender them via the State is tantamount to theft.
Reserve your hatred for those who really deserve it; Leo's no different than 85% of the population.
I agree it is a very harsh sentiment to state, Jim, and I have rarely if ever before expressed such a sentiment, but in this case I make no apologies for it. Yes, leo and his power-pandering ilk do deserve to die, for inflicting, condoning and abetting the abomination of statism upon our societies, and putting civilization itself in jeopardy thereby. But I am especially harsh with leo because he has not done so ignorantly, as you point out most of the population has, but he openly advocates such policies, and our moral and physical surrender to corrupt authority, with open eyes and with with full knowledge of just what it is he is REALLY advocating: an enslaved and downtrodden population governed by an unaccountable and self-perpetuating elite. leo is a Quisling, pure and simple --- a traitor and a collaborator. leo has openly and knowingly chosen sides, and it is the side of corruption, statism and evil that he has clearly chosen. It is for that reason that I condemn him, and find him as bad as, if not worse, than the power elite who continue to destroy our prosperity and our freedoms for their own narrow, sociopathic ends.
Yes, I know it is a terrible thing to be blind to, or to mock, a person's disabilities or illness. But in this particular case, given leo's long and remarkably sordid history here on ZeroHedge --- a disgusting and vile history, incidentally, which many latecomers are utterly ignorant of ---- I simply otherwise lack the words to express the depths of my disgust, contempt and loathing for leo and his craven, cowardly admonitions of financial and ethical surrender to a society-destroying and power-mad elite, as well as leo's kneejerk support of the perverse and self-destructive statist policies and political fantasies which buttress and perpetuate that elite.
Leo is Greek and lives in Canada. What did you expect him to be? A bastion of Freedom?
"But I am especially harsh with leo because he has not done so ignorantly, as you point out most of the population has, but he openly advocates such policies, and our moral and physical surrender to corrupt authority, with open eyes and with with full knowledge of just what it is he is REALLY advocating: an enslaved and downtrodden population governed by an unaccountable and self-perpetuating elite. leo is a Quisling, pure and simple --- a traitor and a collaborator. leo has openly and knowingly chosen sides, and it is the side of corruption, statism and evil that he has clearly chosen. It is for that reason that I condemn him, and find him as bad as, if not worse,than the power elite who continue to destroy our prosperity and our freedoms for their own narrow, sociopathic ends."
I support this view as well.
Leo's hypocrisy knows no bounds.
You're right akak. Leo is a selfish narcistic whining pig. I might also add that most auto-immune disorders, including MS, are brought on by horrendously bad eating habits, and can be greatly mitigated by a diet void of sugar and starch. I know that personally. But some people prefer special attention, to diet restrictions. Sorry Leo, but i think Job you are not.
Raymond, you're an idiot. I'm probably in better shape than you and definitely eat better than you or 99% of the population. I know all about diet and autoimmune diseases and take high dose vitamin D (nothing else). The only thing I have not tried yet because it's not easy is a gluten free diet. But after 14 years of MS, I am in excellent shape. Go to the gym religiously now and have the right attitude to beat this disease.
You know what Akak, shove it.
How is it possible for you to take such a lofty position based on hate and anger? Nothing more than the dirt encrusted squeals of a orphan left to fend for self in a gutter between people going to work and those who are looking for work.
I think that if you don't soften your position, you too may be sick enough not to be able to support the so called Aryan Master Race where the weak must perish.
HungrySeagull, it doesn't take a genius to figure out akak has serious mental issues going on. His shrink needs to increase the dosage before it's too late. Try to ignore this cockroach, he'll eventually crawl back under his rock or move onto the Yahoo boards where he fits in perfectly.
Akak is a beautiful example of the Right Wing Authoritarian mentality. They have a more pronounced amygdala or primitive fear center in their feeble brains. When not wetting their panties they enjoy denigrating others and collecting guns. They are usually underachievers and sexually impotent. They are extremely bellicose and dismissive but their apparent elitism masks a deep and well deserved self loathing. Fuck him.
Many great points. Undeniable logic! > sarc off
Perfect example, really. Fucker should be in a jar of formaldehyde.
No. "Serious mental issues" is a smoke screan. "God hardened Pharoah's heart" God is the potter, throwing some clay into the fire, preparing some for glory. "Isaac I loved, Esau I hated" Believers are spiritual Israel. God, through his agents the Roman army, permanently destroyed physical Israel (the temple) in 70AD. Withouth a physical temple, there is no such thing as physical Israel (OT Israelites had to visit the temple twice annually). Rev. 2:9, Rev. 3:9 The letters spelling "Nero Ceasar" add up to "666" in the Aramiac alphabet. Jesus' second coming and all prophecy is already fulfilled.
Ah yes, however I cannot resist taking shots for my amusement as one teases monkeys in the cage at the zoo.
The laughably low intellectual level of your discourse, little leo, would be insulting even to the yahoo boards. One usually has to go to a staged, so-called "town hall" meet-the-officeholder event to hear such mindlessly and self-contradictory statist blather.
Oh, and by the way asswipe leo, you used the word "issue" incorrectly, as so many of your sheepish brethren do lately. The word merely means "a subject" or "a topic of discussion" --- it is NOT in any way synonymous with "problem". Once again, leo the idiot.
You better let thesaurus.com know about this before they keep making fools of themselves.
issue
Part of Speech: noun
Definition: point in question
Synonyms: affair, argument, concern, contention, controversy, matter, matter of contention, point, point of departure, problem, puzzle, question, subject, topic
Statist blah blah blah blah, blah blah blah I love statism blah blah blah blah blah ....
I am.
Exactly!
But you will have to forgive leo his selfish statist delusions, as he is a ragingly narcissistic sociopath who believes the world can, does and should revolve around him.
Yeah, I'm in that line, too, just off camera. I actually had an in-person interview last week, the first in a year, and as soon as the interview team began talking about how the previous person had worked there for 27 years before retiring and how long each team member had been with the company (29 years was the top in the room, 10 the lowest), I knew they were looking for someone a lot younger who would be around for a long time and didn't have a potbelly, gray hair, and hearing aids.
Being laid off gave me religion, because now I can believe that certain people really will go to Hell.
And one who did not have the courage or experience to self audit, question every thing and double check the work. They are expected to clock in, sit down at the cubicle and shut up.
I too say they can go to hell. And the great church of the Media that broadcasts the 9.2% number as well. It's far worse than that and they know damn well too.
By the way Mr Potbelly with Hearing aids, if I had something that needs done I would want to add you to the workforce, not some young know nothing who does not have any self decision making.