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More Than 101 Million Working Age Americans Do Not Have A Job
Submitted by Michael Snyder of The Economic Collapse blog,
The jobs recovery is a complete and total myth. The percentage of the working age population in the United States that had a job in March 2013 was exactly the same as it was all the way back in March 2010. In addition, as you will see below, there are now more than 101 million working age Americans that do not have a job. But even though the employment level in the United States has consistently remained very low over the past three years, the Obama administration keeps telling us that unemployment is actually going down.
In fact, they tell us that the unemployment rate has declined from a peak of 10.0% all the way down to 7.6%. And they tell us that in March the unemployment rate fell by 0.1% even though only 88,000 jobs were added to the U.S. economy. But it takes at least 125,000 new jobs a month just to keep up with population growth. So how in the world are they coming up with these numbers? Well, the reality is that the entire decline in the unemployment rate over the past three years can be accounted for by the reduction in size of the labor force.
In other words, the Obama administration is getting unemployment to go down by pretending that millions upon millions of unemployed Americans simply do not want jobs anymore. We saw this once again in March. According to the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics, more than 600,000 Americans dropped out of the labor market during that month alone. That pushed the labor force participation rate down to 63.3%, which is the lowest it has been in more than 30 years. So please don't believe the hype. The sad truth is that there has been no jobs recovery whatsoever.
If things were getting better, there would not be more than 101 million working age Americans without a job.
So exactly where does that statistic come from? Well, the following explains where I got that number...
According to the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics, there are 11,742,000 working age Americans that are officially unemployed.
In addition, the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics says that there are 89,967,000 working age Americans that are "not in the labor force". That is a new all-time record, and that number increased by a whopping 663,000 during the month of March alone.
When you add 11,742,000 working age Americans that are officially unemployed to the 89,967,000 working age Americans that are "not in the labor force", you come up with a grand total of 101,709,000 working age Americans that do not have a job.
When you stop and think about it, that is an absolutely staggering statistic.
And anyone that tells you that "a higher percentage of Americans are working today" is telling you a complete and total lie. During the last recession the percentage of working age Americans with a job fell dramatically, and since then we have not seen that number bounce back at all. In fact, this is the very first time in the post-World War II era that we have not seen the employment-population ratio bounce back after a recession. At this point, the employment-population ratio has been under 60 percent for 49 months in a row...
Since the end of 2009, the employment-population ratio has been remarkably steady. Just check out these numbers...
March 2008: 62.7 percent
March 2009: 59.9 percent
March 2010: 58.5 percent
March 2011: 58.4 percent
March 2012: 58.5 percent
March 2013: 58.5 percent
We should be thankful that the percentage of working age Americans with a job did not continue to decline, but we should also be quite alarmed that it has not bounced back at all.
If there was going to be a recovery, there would have been one by now. The next major economic downturn is rapidly approaching, and that is going to push the employment-population ratio down even farther.
So why is the U.S. economy not producing as many jobs as it used to? Well, certainly the overall decline of the economy has a lot to do with it. We are a nation that is drowning in debt and that is getting poorer by the day.
But since the end of the last recession, corporate profits have bounced back in a big way and are now at an all-time high. So you would figure that the big corporations should be able to hire a lot more workers by now.
Unfortunately, that is not the way things work anymore. Big corporations are trying to minimize the number of expensive American workers that they have on their payrolls as much as possible these days.
One way that they are doing this is through the use of technology. Thanks to robots, computers and other forms of technology, big corporations simply do not need as many human workers as they used to. In future years, this trend is only going to accelerate. I wrote about how this is changing the world of employment in one of my previous articles entitled "Rise Of The Droids: Will Robots Eventually Steal All Of Our Jobs?"
Another way that big corporations are replacing expensive American workers is by shipping their jobs off to the other side of the globe. Big corporations know that they can make bigger profits by making stuff in foreign countries where they can pay workers less than a dollar an hour with no benefits. How in the world are American workers supposed to compete with that?
For much more on how U.S. jobs are being killed by offshoring, please see this article: "55 Reasons Why You Should Buy Products That Are Made In America".
And of course immigration is having a dramatic impact on the labor market in some areas of the country as well. Cheap labor has dramatically driven down wages in a lot of professions. For example, once upon a time you could live a very nice middle class lifestyle as a roofer. But now many roofers really struggle to make a living.
When you add everything up, it paints a very bleak picture for the future of the American worker.
The cost of living keeps rising much faster than wages do, and the competition for good jobs has become incredibly fierce.
Meanwhile, the government continues to make things even easier for those that are not working. This has caused some Americans to give up completely and to be content with letting the government take care of them. The following is from a recent article by Monty Pelerin...
As we make it easier to get unemployment benefits for longer time periods, more people take advantage of the system. So too with food stamps and disability. All programs are at or near record levels in what is supposed to be four years into an economic recovery. For many, the benefits of becoming a government dependent exceed what they can earn. One study reported that a family of four, collecting all the benefits for which they were entitled, would have to earn $65,000 per annum to have the same after-tax purchasing power.
If you are a product of the government schools and are legal to work (i.e., have skills enough that you are affordable at the minimum wage or higher), at what point do you realize that there is no need to go through the hassle of actual work. You can live pretty well by staying home and taking advantage of the entitlements available to you. That is exactly what a larger and larger percentage of the population are realizing. In many cases, it is economically irrational to work.
This behavior creates a social pathology that only worsens over time. Kids learn from their parents that work is not necessary and the many ways to game the system. In this regard, look for this problem to become worse over time unless these programs are cut back.
In some areas of the country, it actually pays not to work very hard. According to Gary Alexander, the Secretary of Public Welfare for the state of Pennsylvania, a "single mom is better off earnings gross income of $29,000 with $57,327 in net income & benefits than to earn gross income of $69,000 with net income and benefits of $57,045."
But the truth is that most Americans still want to work hard and would gladly take a good job if they could just find one. The following is one example that was featured in a recent Fox News article...
After a full year of fruitless job hunting, Natasha Baebler just gave up.
She'd already abandoned hope of getting work in her field, working with the disabled. But she couldn't land anything else, either — not even a job interview at a telephone call center.
Until she feels confident enough to send out resumes again, she'll get by on food stamps and disability checks from Social Security and live with her parents in St. Louis.
"I'm not proud of it," says Baebler, who is in her mid-30s and is blind. "The only way I'm able to sustain any semblance of self-preservation is to rely on government programs that I have no desire to be on."
And that is how most Americans feel.
Most Americans do not want to be dependent on the government.
Most Americans want to work hard and take care of themselves.
Unfortunately, our economy is not producing nearly enough jobs for everyone and it never will again.
So there will continue to be millions upon millions of Americans that find that they cannot take care of themselves and their families without government assistance no matter how hard they try.
And this is just the beginning - things are going to get much worse during the next major wave of the economic collapse.
Yes, at the moment there are more than 101 million working age Americans that do not have a job, but that number is actually going to go much higher in the years ahead. The anger and frustration caused by a lack of employment opportunities is going to shake this nation.
That is why it is important to try to become less dependent on your own job. In this economic environment, a job can disappear at literally any moment. Anything that you can do to become less dependent on the system would be a good thing.
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does he buy your drinks? :)
Why can't we just kill the poor?
/snark
Competition for IT jobs is not fierce--there aren't enough qualified people to fill all the available jobs. Also, a lot of working-age people not in the workforce are not working by choice. The stay-at-home mother is back, not all women and career-driven fools who dump their kids off in germ factory daycare facilities.
we are a heartbeat away from a 5 year plan in the true traditions of the USSR pre Berlin wall
now that the federal government has proven so inept over so many years by stealing tax dollars from overly kind hearted americans, it will now embark on a "better" plan than pumping trillios of dollars into banks
the better plan will involve something like a trillion a year, and shovel ready will arrive in the next three months. this will not affect the deficit since it is capital spending and the government will take a share of revenues directly (tax) or indirectly (errr tax). maybe coming up with a five year plan in three months is ambitious, and it will certainly take congress at least two years to understand how it would work..but the key point..is it better to sponsor a banking cartel that it too big to jail or an infrastructure cartel that is a (sort of in america) untried experiment? the list is endless..im sure we can borrow japans
'The Wicky-Wacky World of Professor Benji's MAD|MOU? FRB Keynesian Math Department': ` 'The Theoretical [hypothesis?] Multiplier Effect?' `
(negative deficits / Qe infinity )(negative job-growth/ Real U6 unemployment ) = positive Economic Depression
Dr. Who...
paul krugman's wet dream ....
.
What the world needs now, is war, sweet war,
It's the only thing which we need, a little more,
What the world needs now, is war, sweet war,
No not just for now, but for ever morrrrrrre.
Lord, we dont need ... more hopium,
there's hope-humpers, and dumbfucks, enough to last.
They do nothing, but bitch, 'bout their plight in life,
as they scream "yes we can" out of their assssss!
What the world needs now, is war, sweet war,
It's the only thing which we need, a little more,
What the world needs now, is war, sweet war,
No not just for now, but for ever morrrrrrre.
Jobs - what are they good for?
Printing press and war......problem solved ;)
How exactly are those 101 million supporting themselves? How is the consumer able to keep on spending to support the economy? Oh, I guess they all are using their government checks to play the stock market. Thanks, Benny, you really know how to spark the economy.
Stockman was on Bloomie Radio this morning making this point, more succinctly of course ("unemployment rate with a constant employment participation rate is 13%). The hosts responded by badgering him, then suddenly ended the interview.
In my long life the truth has always been in short supply, but never has there been a drought of it like now.
Having a job is such a medieval concept. Nobody should have to work. People should be able to get things they need for free. I don't want a "recovery". I want evolution for this pathetic species. If everyone volunteered for what theyy wanted to do in life, in return for getting what they need for free, this would be a much better planet on which to live... annd it would put Burger King and MacDonalds out of business... along with a bunch of other useless, medieval practices. Idealistic maybe, but I'm tired of all this BS about how we need "jobs". What kind of jobs do we need again? Oh, right, manufacturing jobs... the ones that spit out filth and toxins and waste... yeah we need moar cars and petroleum-based products.... and salad shooters. Right... another industrial revolution. Uh huh... China's got one, but dead animals are floating around everywhere, and no one can breathe in Beijing. Thanks for your jobs, great leader!
extremely well said - it's no accident that the Book Of Job in the bible is about a dude getting tormented by Satan
fuck work
couldn't agree more, with both of you.
jobs = kept within a system that taxes a percentage of everything you do, jobs are used as an excuse for spending, including cars/fuel/job "clothes"/fast fud/coffee drinks/insurance/I could go on. . .
leaving behind the uni-form of being an employee® re-training your mind to think outside the box'd, gettin' creative, lean, focused - it's not for everyone, but it's preferable to having to behave for a boss-y.
Fuck working for others benefit.
Coming attraction!
Complete Ready-made All-American Holocaust Country.
Never did understand the USA.
On the one hand, you have a series of financial and politcal elites who rape and pillage the system so bad there are now apparently 100 million Americans without jobs.
Those same elites continue to develop laws to ensure that everyone in America can get an AR-15 with a big ole 30 round clip.
I don't wonder about the 100 milliion unemployed, but I wonder what the elites are thinking.
well, if you ponder long enough, you might arrive at an idea of consumer spending into the eCONoMe, whilst simultaneously exploiting the ignorance of many amrkns, couple with the tendency to, shall we say, hate certain cross-factions. . .
nice pot of stewing they've set on the back burner, for now. . .
The more people without job the higher the S&P goes.
Want higher markets and stock prices fire more people!!!
Corporations boot stock prices by cutting staff.
Bernanke, the fed and government can push people off the unemployment stats by lowering weeks of unemployment insurance.
Get to 200 million people unemployed and double the stock market!!!
Sounds like a plan!
William Dudly of the NY Fed says let them eat IPODs.
The 101 million number is meaningless. Labor participation isn't. But what I find disengenuous is the nonsence about American workers not being able to compete with workers over seas for less than a dollar an hour. This is bullshit. People who work for less than a buck an hour are very unproductive, the author doen't account for shipping costs and places no blame on 80,000 pages of tax code and 1.75 trillion in annual regulaton cost.
When oil hit 140 clams/bbl a few years ago, jobs started to tricle back. There IS a point where it's smarter to fo biz here.
With our nat gas advantage, low cost labor is not the bottom line on costs. But with our tax code, regs, debt and mispriced labor costs new jobs will surely be under pressure until we make what should be easy choices about reforming taxes and regs.
If we even get close to productivity parity, American biz would much rather be here.
So ah, this means the banksters are paying off the lazy American people to stay home and DO nothing to save their futures, while at the same time they deplete, rob, and destroy any kind of future there could ever be for the millions of collage grads that actually get out of collage and think they have a future. Right?
Kinda slick and nasty as is most of the babylonian bankster evil. How it goes on daily unabated is to be pondered. How does the blatant crime and corruption go on and on and on as America's jobs are sent overseas? With evil purpose, the infrastructure and manufacturing is decimated. What else can people do, but to take the bankster pay-off’s to survive
Who is it that is developing china and not America's future? America has no infrastructure to fight the planed coming world war, but china does. Who is destroying the last bastion of freedom and setting America up to fall?
Just who is paying off the unemployed to stay home, remain ignorant, and be nothing but lack-toast while the country's jobs continue to leave the coming wasteland? WHO IS CREATING MORE DRAFT BAIT THAN ANY IN HISTORY? The banksters of evil and death.
Babylon will fall and take the entire world down with it. Hedge accordingly.
Here is a good explanation of Quantitative Easing for our audience
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=j2AvU2cfXRk
Here is a good explanation of Quantitative Easing for our audience
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=j2AvU2cfXRk
Women need to be at home civilizing little barbarians instead of trying to do men's jobs and terrorizing men in the workplace.
RE:
"Who is a Jew" - I'll take, "Bitter Greedy Old Farts" for $600, Alex.
BTW, does anyone know where in America you can live "pretty well" on $13K/year?
Poor people are not the problem. This video shows that we're all poor compared with the top few percent.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=slTF_XXoKAQ
The problem is that all the wealth has gone to the very few at the top. They don't consume much of anything except invest in the stock market and housing. If austerity starts here like in Europe and the poorest people spend even less money, then production will go down even further and the jobloss spiral will go even faster downwards.
Debt slavery is the problem. If the bottom 50 percent weren't maxed out in debt slavery they may have had money to spend and production could increase and there would be more jobs. Our future problem may be that they may impose austerity, then take 401Ks and turn them into annuities, and then empty everyone's bank accounts all to save the system and the top 1%.
I am 72 years old and as far as I'm concerned I am still very much working age - which I suspect is probably true of a lot of other people my age and older. So the real figure is way north of 101 million.
any guess as to how many of the 90 million actually work, but say they don't, in order to stay off the radar of the tax man?
This "Dr Paul Krugman" troll is serious even more epic than MDB. Brilliant work.
If there are 240MM working age americans, how many of those are able to work? And, how many of those actually want work?
Tyler - would you please do an article on this?
http://economictimes.indiatimes.com/news/news-by-industry/jobs/canada-to-probe-report-that-rbc-outsourcing-work-to-igate/articleshow/19438379.cms
If these companys keep hiring H1B visas - while we continue to lose work, well - where is the 'recovery'?? it is out of control.
and this isn't 'outsourcing'. these people were given visas to come to canada and REPLACE cheaper employees.
the run around recently has been this. and i work in technology industry and have seen it.
#1 - 'we brought in these people on H1B visas to this country because nobody else wanted to take the job'. (bs) this one is the one that is obviously the most illegal
#2 - 'we are no longer needing you to do the work here, the job has been 'outsourced' overseas' - i personally will not do business with them.
the fking indians have a billion people on a large land mass with huge natural resources. they can blame british rule - but the fact is,
if they are all still living in an open sewer - fix it. don't come here to steal my job.
while I understand your point of viewing, considered on a longer timeline, the west "colonised" many of the places that have permission to come and work - India definitely one on the list, but there are many others, depending on which "western" nationstate invaded the particular "immigrant" homeland. . .
this is globalisation folks. the western people are told they're superiour in order to keep their blind eyes turned away from the corporate nationstates pillaging other'd villages, always believing that's just "how things are" /shrug - well baby, that IS just how things are, as the corporates move freely about the globe, pit human against human, labeled by their birthplace, but few with any allegiance 'cept to the monies offered. . .
Once in you are never getting out because that would require 100% employment.
3 choices on this.
Inflating the system to provide for those who have nothing in the game of life anymore.
1. Inflate the system like the FED is with funny money and a government that borrows and spends. This method is limited until such time as neither are acceptable anymore. The number does matter here because the ABILTIY FOR PEOPLE TO SUPPORT ANYTHING IS NEGLIGIBLE. This point has already been reached.
2. Then move to cuts, doesn't matter where or how the cyclic effect of cut then contract over and over each new cut contracts the size of the economy. Size does matter because at some point the ABILITY FOR THE ECONOMY TO SUPPORT ANYTHING WILL BE NEGLIGIBLE. The EU "idiots" went straight for this and the UK is just starting.
3. Everybody will be sold war as a solution by the polticians trying to keep their lifestyles going in the end. ON THIS LAUGH OUT LOUD IT SOLVES NOTHING BECAUSE THE CAUSE IS A % EFFICIENCY OF THE SYSTEM. Human beings are too clever through ingenuity more production for less people. What is the horse power of a semi, that was people pulling carts once upon a time.
Then look at the 3, guess what? Likely 1. is the best option then just try to make it last forever. 2. Wipes out th economy so it can produce nothing and certainly not while costs are so much greater than say China and reducing the costs = income of people destroys the inflated value of assets.
Both too complicated, 3, it is then.
But we need more immigrants ...
the next world war is canceled due to lack of funds.
Surely if Bernanke prints more money and we import more immigrants, everything will turn out OK.
Just keep your head down, goyim peon, be thankful for what you have, and stop asking questions.
Phony Krugman is getting kinda stale.
How 'bout Phony Soros?
More Than 101 Million Working Americans Do Not Have A Job
Everything is going to plan.
What most of you refuse to recognize is that a higher rate of unemployment is beneficial to a capitalist economy. It counteracts the long term tendency of profit rates to fall. A larger reserve army of unemployed puts a break on higher wage demands of the workers and puts downward pressure on real wages. So, capitalists have a lot to gain from rising unemployment.
It only becomes a concern when social discontent becomes a threat to the rule of capital. But, it becomes a threat only if there is an organized working class. In 1930s the job creation programs and social programs were introduced because the working class was well organized at the time. So, FDR was able to go to the capitalists and explain them the necessity of these social programs because alternative for them was likely to be the loss of all power.
Those conditions no longer exist. The unions have been smashed and people are now conditioned to accepting minimum wages. As a result corporate profits have recovered nicely since the crash of 2008. The stock market is also up. So, why on earth would the capitalists and their bought-and-sold politicians in congress be at all concerned about the high unemployment rate?
LIke I said - everything is going to plan!