Our first chart comes via Greg Mankiw, Harvard economics professor and former GWB chief economic advisor. It shows how long the unemployed have been unemployed:
Punch number two comes via Ezra Klein at The Washington Post (and a guest on tonight's show) showing how long different jobs growth rates would have to be maintained in order to return us to pre-recession levels.
Video: Gruesome attack in London eyed as act of terror
Video: Suspect killed in murder case tied to Boston bombing
Video: Revelations of Americans killed by US drones raise new questions
Video: Drone revelations a sign of 'inflection point' US counterterror policy
Video: Pentagon computer change a move toward VA backlog fix
Video: Congressional groups line up to scrutinize IRS
Video: Will 'weather weapon' theory end GOP indulgence of conspiracy fringe?
Video: A look ahead
A need to know: What has happened to David Schuster who was on MSNBC around noon and we miss not hearing what he has to say. We watch and enjoy you every day and sone time twice a day. Looking forward to responses.
Rumor is he auditioned for a slot on CNN and the MSNBC exec's got wind and have placed him on "indefinite suspension".... ;-(
That is what I heard too.
I lost a $50k job back in '91. It took me well over a year to find a decent job during that recession. In the meantime, I took a couple of very low-level jobs when my unemployment ran out. They hardy paid more than unemployment and about all they did was prevent me from continuing a full-time job search - not too many $5/hr jobs will let you off to interview. These people out of work need unemployment benefits while they look. Sure some will lie down, but most don't want to stay down. They just want a job that will fit their skills AND financial needs. In most cases, a laid off skilled worker taking an entry level does neither - and it can sure put the brakes on serious job hunting.
as an RN trying to get a job and has been at it for 8 months, this does not surprise me but it is still scary
Can we have this the new tatoo for all congressional members that deny extended benefits?
I can't believe our representatives are willing to prop up business with continued tax cuts, but don't understand they cannot function without the common worker.
Ford understood he had to pay his workers enough to buy his product- Where did those kinds of entrepreneurs go?
My father and i both come from specialized trades that pretty much depend on the economy, himself as a collections manager, and myself in the mortgage field. he has been laid off for over a year now and myself 4 mos. its very hard to find any work with the skill set we have outside of the industries that trained us. i, myself applied for over 50 jobs just last week alone, my father applied for over 20 in one day. Both with little results to show for it. not surprised at all by these reports
What's scary is the part of the story the chart doesn't tell: the older you are the longer your duration of joblessness.
Joblessness for 40 - 50 somethings is horrendously frightening.
My husband's company folded in the recession of Bush I, back in 1991. Because my husband was 60 years old, he never could find anyone who would hire him. "He was overeducated and too old" was the common excuse. He never did get another job. Of course, it was 2 years before he could apply for Social Security benefits...very thin years for us. I worked and made just enough to cover bare necessities.
I'm an unemployed owner of a PhD in communication. I've been on contract work for the last two years, but there was no renewal this year. So now I'm job hunting. Watching the rhetoric coming from the right-wingers our unemployment is caused due to the laziness of the jobless or all these illegal immigrants and can be solved by either looking harder for a job or sending all those 'wetbacks' back to Mexico.
I've applied for hundreds of jobs over the last year. I've gotten close, but no cigar. So it isn't hard work, its a lack of jobs. Meanwhile, business is holding onto a lot of cash and not hiring.
As for the immigrants - well, I don't see anyone hiring me to do their jobs, because they know I'd slide right out after I had a new opportunity. Shoot, employers do this now when they tell me I'm overqualified.
Meanwhile Republican office holders say that giving money to the rich is an incentive, but giving it to the needy is a disincentive. Nicely illogical.
So if I am reading this second chart right it is saying that a "best case scenario" would take us about 36 months (3 years) to recover all the jobs, "worst case scenario" would be 136 months (11+ years) & the most likely number would be about 58 months (about 5 years)???
Amazing how corporate America can lose all those jobs in less than 2 years, but can't bring them back...too much money to be made while the country is in a recession. Don't let a good crisis go to waste!
Amazing to me how out of touch ALL representatives are. Don't forget, our elected leaders (the majority, for the most part) are all Richie Rich's. They DON'T know what it is like for middle America struggling from paycheck to paycheck (if you are lucky enough to still have a job).
Corporate American didn't lose those jobs. They outsourced them. That is the fact that continues to be downplayed if not plain ignored in all this mess. When you ship off entire industries to other countries and create competitors where there weren't any before, of course you're going to put yourself in a bind.
It will take at least three years to even begin to get back on our feet if we continue as we are. It's time to infuse some new revenue into the system. There isn't any fat left to cut with the Baby Boomers aging.
The Teabaggers are fooling themselves thinking they can make Grandpa work till he's 80 and his children will somehow have enough money from their minimum wage jobs to pick up the rest of the slack. The Top 2% has the means and the opportunity to fuel a full recovery if they wanted. They are dragging their feet when they know it's inevitable at some point.
Why not just do it now and get it over with? It will only be more painful if they wait to admit they haven't been pulling their fair share.
It's time to force Corporate American and the rich to contribute to the common welfare again. They must be made to invest in this country again instead of us allowing them to bet against us. Their taxes must cover their loses and pay us interest as well for the trouble they caused.
I'd be interested to know what job creation rates have been during past recoveries. When the economy has turned around in the past what sorts of job creation rates have accompanied those turnarounds?
It's obvious that we need more than the usual help after a normal economic downturn.
We need to raise taxes rates on the wealthy to the levels Eisenhower had them after WW II. He created the biggest economic expansion in the history of the country and maybe the history of the world. Adopting a similar tax structure now would pay off all the Republicans' deficit from the last decade, their bank failures, their bailouts, and their Wall Street gambling debts.
Once we fix the credit markets, we could then fully modernize our infrastructure, increase R & D spending, develop new energy sources, and let start up companies put enough competition in the economy that existing businesses would have to increase investments here at home, too.
It's time to make these greedy bastards re- invest in America instead of letting them waste money speculating in derivatives, creating bubbles and Ponzi schemes, and outsource American capital overseas. They obviously don't realize that there is not enough revenue coming in from the underemployed middle class any longer to finance their bad conservative habits.
Voters don't know what progressives are? It's been almost 60 years since Eisenhower demonstrated how it well it works. Let's sell ourselves as Eisenhower Democrats this fall because that's who we really are. We believe in investing in America and not being afraid to demand that the rich sacrifice so we can all can succeed.
Those charts demonstrate that we cannot sustain a recovery using the half-measures President Obama has been stuck with because of Republican obstruction in the Senate.
Thank you well said. This is the first logical explanation I have heard in 2 years! Maybe you should make the first move!
Ever considered running for public office?
This is what should be done. Instead of paying massive interest to China, we should be using the tax revenues from the rich to rebuild the country's intrastructure, which would be needed for sewer, highway, water, dam, electrical projects, etc. in all states and really work well to begin refuelling job growth locally. It would be nice to have an infrastructure in this country that can compete for attracting new businesses again, not to mention preventing us from seeing collapsing bridges and failed dams on the news.
I too am one of the many unemployed. With a recent Ph.D., I have entered into the worst job market in a very very long time. I've tried without success to find a job in anything remotely near my field, and I am now contemplating working at Starbucks because they have benefits. Thankfully, I can at least say that I don't have children or a mortgage, and this means I'm in a much better position than many people out there.
I am trying to look at this as an opportunity though, rather than the soul-crushing, rejection-filled pain that it can be. Since I don't have a job anyway, I might as well write that book I've been thinking about for a long time. So while it may or may not pay off in the long run, it's all I can do right now. Well, that and hope that an agent likes my idea about a book on obesity, binge eating, IBS, food allergies, and relationship between mind and body.
From one unemployed person to the rest - good luck with your hunting and I hope you find something before I do if you have kids. You need it far more than I do. And Bravo to Sandyh - well said! The wealthy can do without a few trinkets. And if I get wealthy, I will remember I said that!
Hi Dr. Barlow...this is Dr. Herrmann. I'm right there with you.
The rich didn't get rich by luck... and they don't stay rich by luck either. They do it by beng the sharpest knives in the drawer. That means employing the best lawyers and economists and lobbyists in the world to help them avoid taxes and responsibilities of any kind. You don't see these people in in the scandal rags unless their plans go completely awry, only their more stupid children. Good luck trying to tax them - you need all the luck you can get. And I am afraid that no amount of luck will be enough to make them feel morally obliged to create jobs just to help people out. The only exception is people like Bill Gates, for whom money no longer has any meaning.
Sorry to spread the malice around here, but it's been a while since I had any kind of faith in the heart of the rich. If anyone will turn things around by intention it's the government. Unfortunately, those who can turn work into large scale money only want to work for themselves.
Unfortunately, what you say is all too true. It's the result of a selection effect that's been at work for a long time: the powerful (equivalently, the wealthy) are now largely composed of sociopaths who happen to be extremely greedy.
I'm not middle class and probably never will be. I was getting $250 a week when my unemployment ran out about a month ago. My mother watches Fox News and agrees with everything they and the rebups say on there. Until she found out the were blocking the unemployment extention bill. Why? Because if I'm not working or getting unemployment she can't buy her meds! Don't get me wrong, I love my mom. But isn't it intresting how those "Conservitive ideals" fly out the window when it's something that effcts them directly?!? I just don't get it. I hope they pass the extention soon and it is retro-active! Like thy said it would be!
Everything sandyh posted is the truth. The top 1% of our population collected 75% of all profit generated by business in this country last year. Contrary to human nature, the republicans would have us believe in the trickle-down theory of economics. The only way to get the economy moving again is to make sure that the "working-poor" and the middle class have money to spend on their every day lives. All of the wealthy people, corporations, banks and wall street are hoarding cash. Furthermore, the destruction of our job base started with Reagan. This did not happen all of a sudden. American corporations have been destroying industry and jobs at home by relocating their manufacturing base overseas and taking advantage of tax loopholes that have allowed them to hide cash in offshore accounts and avoid paying taxes here at home. This system was set up under Reagan's watch. I live in a neighborhood full of families that live on SSI and pick up their monthly pain meds at the drugstore via the taxpayers of this country. I wonder if people understand the true magnitude of this epidemic and have given any thought to how these people will react when the country is bankrupt and they stop getting their checks and drugs. It is also true that those of us over 50 will continue to run into roadblocks for jobs going forward. I have been self-employed for over 25 years and am lucky to still have work three days a week. My net income dropped by half and according to govt. standards, I am now a member of the working poor. This made me eligible for the Pell Grant program so I am in college and given just enough extra money every six months to pay my small monthly bills(phone, cable, security alarm and utilities. I have the cheapest basic cable package for TV and have let my cell phone service lapse as I can't afford the $50.00 dollars a month it costs. I am lucky that I saw this coming about six months before wall street and the banks stole everyone's money and stashed enough emergency funds that I will be OK for a couple of years. I own five acres in the country. I plan on plotting out and selling a couple of acres and building a small, sustainable farm so that I can grow my own food, live off grid and survive the last part of my life. If I try to stay in the city as I age there is a chance I could eventually lose everything and end up homeless as I have no on but myself(no family).
Cheri--Good luck to you and congrats for your far-sightedness. I am unemployed in my 60s and can't even look for that job my age won't afford me right now as I must be available to care for family who needs me. I wanted to say only that when I hear the words "trickle down strategy" I think of an obscenely wealthy man standing at the edge of a high terrace with a bunch of middle/lower middle class job wanna-haves standing below looking up hopefully at this wealthy man who has just been notified that he has just had a huge amount of their income tax-sheltered, and now can invest in building new jobs for the nation. Instead, the wealthy man pockets the extra cash and relieives himself on all our heads. That is as far as the trickle down is going to get.
Jobs are not coming back
Capitalism is a system based on the extraction, refinement, and application of raw materials into products to be sold at a profit. Even agriculture falls comfortably into this definition but since it requires input at the front end of the process, it is more like recycling than mining. There are primarily two strengths of capitalism as a system; first, absent false influence, it results in the efficient allocation of resources, and second, it leads to an ever increasing concentration of wealth. Capitalists see both of these characteristics as positives while workers are less enthusiastic about the latter trait. There is also the major issue of externalities and other free market distortions, but I am not sure yet that they are unique to capitalism.
In the early stages, capitalism rewards invention, investment, and innovation. In its latter stages, it rewards entrenched power, exploitation, and corruption. As Americans attempt to respond to the abuses of our mature form of capitalism, the lament most often heard is “we need jobs,” but there simply are no jobs to be had. Capitalism dictates that jobs be performed where they can generate the most profit, not where they can satisfy social needs, therefore jobs seek equilibrium at the nadir of skills and cost. The result is a constant effort to de-skill manufacturing processes and eliminate human labor to the extent possible, leading to the much ballyhooed productivity gains, which is newspeak for jobs reduction.
In a sane world, decreasing the amount of labor required to produce the goods and services needed or desired by its people would be considered a good thing, but when all the benefit flows to the moneyed elite the result is economic collapse and eventual social upheaval. If capitalism were a sustainable system it would recognize and ameliorate this condition, but since it is consumptive by its nature it does not have that ability and ultimately will destroy itself. The question is whether that will be before or after it has rendered the planet inhospitable to our species.
For sheer fear impact, I'd go with Klein's chart. It's a bit harder to digest, but boy is it bleak!
I have been un-and underemployed since I lost my full-time job on Dec. 31, 2005. I am well educated with a masters' degree (MBA) but I am apparently either under- or overqualified for anything out there today. I cannot get unemployment insurance since I have been an independent contractor and those dollars don't count towards unemployment if they are on 1099s. I did work for the census this year but I didn't earn enough to qualify. (That was another joke.) I will continue to be underemployed for the foreseeable future unless something is done to bring jobs back to the US. I believe we must restart our manufacturing sector and pull jobs back that were outsourced. At least the filibuster was broken today on extended unemployment insurance for those who qualify. Maybe the law needs to be amended to include independent contractors as we do pay our own SS taxes.
I would LOVE someone to investigate all the Republicans families to see how many are on unemployment benefits. I'll bet good money they are just trying to get those kids of theirs to stop mooching off of them and get a job! You know, teach them a lesson!