Blog

In brief: The Bureau of Labor Statistics’ household survey shows unemployment at 8.6 percent, and the payroll survey shows 120,000 new jobs in November (140,000 from the private sector, and a loss of 20,000 in the public sector). BLS also revised upward its job numbers for September and October.

What does it mean? We’re not out of the woods but we might be seeing some daylight.

Maybe. Here’s what you need to worry about:

First, this rate of job growth is barely enough to keep up with the growth in the working-age population. So we’re not making progress on the backlog of more than 13 million jobless Americans, and another 11 million working part-time who’d rather have full-time jobs. (more…)

Employment was up 120,000 last month and the unemployment rate dropped significantly, to 8.6% in November down from 9% in October. Job growth in October and September was revised up by 72,000.

While the employment story has improved over the past few months, the decline in the November unemployment rate isn’t as good as it sounds. People who drop out of the labor force, like those who give up looking for work, are not counted in the jobless rate, and about half of the 0.4 percentage point decline was due to this factor. In fact, about 190,000 of the unemployed left the labor force last month.

Once again, the private sector added jobs — 140,000 last month — and the public sector cut them (down 20,000).

The report is consistent with slightly better economic performance over the past few months. It’s always useful to average over a few months to work out some of the monthly noise in the data and over the past three months, employment is up by an average of about 140,000 per month, compared to 84,000 over the prior three months. (more…)

Why, you may be wondering, do politicians refuse to take the necessary fiscal steps to dislodge the unemployment rate from its elevated perch of 9.1%? Why, to the contrary, do they seem if anything intent on austerity measure that will push it in the wrong direction?

I can think of three reasons:

1) They want the president to fail;

2) They don’t believe fiscal measures will work;

3) They irrationally fear a higher budget deficit, even temporarily.

Re 1, what can anyone say? If you’re willilling to throw the economy under the bus to gain political advantage, you — not the millions hurt by your actions — should be the one who loses his job.

Re 2, I’ve got more sympathy for you. Folks have a hard time accepting counterfactuals — the idea that things would have been worse absent the Recovery Act. But the evidence is at this point pretty plain to see: here, where the economy improved while the Recovery Act was in place and stumbled as fiscal stimulus come off too soon, in the UK, where austerity is clearly stifling growth, and in southern Europe as well. (more…)

Some 25 million Americans are unemployed, underemployed or have stopped looking for work, and wages are essentially flat. Workers are struggling to get the few jobs that are available–there are 4.7 unemployed people for every one job open.

As if those odds weren’t difficult enough, jobless workers face another obstacle: Many employers are discriminating against the jobless by prohibiting them from even applying for open positions. Their “Help wanted” signs come with a caveat — if you are unemployed, you need not apply.

American Rights at Work alerts to an action by the advocacy group USAction, which is taking a stand against this unfair policy. Click here to sign a petition and join USAction in asking the popular job search sites CareerBuilder and Monster.com to stop promoting ads for companies that discriminate against the unemployed.

(more…)

Stunning, just stunning. Nearly 17,000 people applied for jobs at a Ford plant in Kentucky, according to USA Today. The applications are now going into a lottery and Ford will determine who gets to proceed to be considered for the 1,800 jobs that pay $15.51 an hour.  No doubt not everyone who applied is unemployed, to be sure–but it’s likely a good number don’t have jobs.

So is this what it’s come to for America’s unemployed workers–they need to win a lottery to get work to support themselves and their families?

Derek Thompson nails it on the head in the Atlantic:

With every month’s employment survey, economists and journalists have to find new ways to write the headline “Job Report Surprises and Disappoints.” It’s getting difficult because the news is so dependably awful and the Thesaurus is only so thick. But it’s time to at least drop the word “surprises” and understand that the private sector does not work for workers the way it used to.

(more…)

By David Sirota
In These Times senior editor and syndicated columnist

In the name of curtailing deficits, politicians across the country are hacking away at programs that aim to make children healthier. In Congress, for example, House Republicans are spearheading a budget that eviscerates funding for food assistance and effectively defunds the wildly successful Children’s Health Insurance Program.

Similarly, from Texas to California, state lawmakers are chopping children’s health programs in the face of budget shortfalls. In all these initiatives, the rhetorical leitmotif is “fiscal responsibility.” (more…)

By Tula Connell
AFL-CIO Managing Editor

While 25 million unemployed and underemployed U.S. workers are drowning, CEO pay skyrocketed by 23 percent, for an average salary of $11.4 million in 2010, according to the AFL-CIO Executive PayWatch. Released today, data compiled at PayWatch also show CEOs have done little to create badly-needed jobs, instead sitting on a record $1.93 trillion in cash on their balance sheets.

The 2011 Executive PayWatch features the compensation of 299 S&P 500 company CEOs and provides direct comparisons between those CEOs and the median pay of nurses, teachers, firefighters and others. For instance, while a secretary makes a median annual salary of $29,980, someone like Wells Fargo CEO John Stumpf rakes in $18,973,722 million—632 times the secretary’s salary. The pay gap between Wall Street and Main Street has widened egregiously—as recently as 1980, CEOs made 42 times that of blue-collar workers.

Maybe CEOs can’t focus on job creation because they have more pressing issues—like lobbying to repeal key provisions of a financial disclosure reform bill Congress passed last year. The Dodd-Frank Wall Street Reform and Consumer Protection Act requires corporations to reveal the CEO-to-worker pay gap—and the Wall Street rulers don’t want to do that. (Click here to urge your member of Congress not to weaken Wall Street reform in any way.)

AFL-CIO President Richard Trumka says the AFL-CIO will work hard to defend this historic reform. The brazen attacks by Wall Street lobbyists to undermine reform “surprise and offend me,” Trumka says, “and I think they will surprise and offend most Americans.” (more…)

By Robert Reich
Former U.S. Secretary of Labor, Professor at Berkeley

Are we making progress on the jobs front? The Bureau of Labor Statistics reports 192,000 new jobs in February (220,000 new jobs in the private sector and a drop in government employment), and a drop in the overall unemployment rate from 9 to 8.9 percent.

We’re heading in the right direction but far too slowly to make a real dent in unemployment. To get the unemployment rate down to 6 percent by 2014 we’d need over 300,000 new jobs a month, every month, between now and then.

Overall, the number of unemployed Americans — 13.7 million — is about the same as it was last month. The number working part time who’d rather be working full time — 8.3 million — is also about the same.

But to get to the most important trend you have to dig under the job numbers and look at what kind of new jobs are being created. That’s where the big problem lies. (more…)

Robert Reich

By Robert Reich
Former U.S. Secretary of Labor, Professor at Berkeley

At a time when corporate profits are through the roof, the Dow is flirting with 12,000, Wall Street paychecks are fat again, and big corporations are sitting on more than $1 trillion in cash, you’d expect jobs be coming back. But you’d be wrong.

The U.S. economy added just 36,000 jobs in January, according to today’s report from the Bureau of Labor Statistics. Remember, 125,000 are needed just to keep up with the increase in the population of Americans wanting and needing work. And 300,000 a month are needed — continuously, for five years — if we’re to get back to anything like the employment we had before the Great Recession.

In other words, today’s employment report should be sending alarm bells all over official Washington. Granted, unusually bad weather may have accounted for some of the reluctance of employers to hire in January. But even considering the weather, the economy is still terribly sick. (Technical note: The official rate of unemployment fell to 9 percent from 9.4 percent, but that’s because more workers have left the labor market, too discouraged to continue looking for work. The official rate reflects how many people are actively looking for work.)

We have two economies. The first is in recovery. The second remains in a continuous depression. (more…)

By Robert Reich
Former U.S. Secretary of Labor, Professor at Berkeley

America’s long-term unemployed — an estimated 4 million or more — constitute the single newest and biggest social problem facing America.

Now their unemployment benefits are about to run out, and the lame-duck Congress may not have the votes to extend them. (You can forget about the next Congress.)

The long-term unemployed can’t get work because there are still five people needing work for every job opening. And the long-term jobless are often at the end of the job line: Either they don’t have the right skills or enough eduction, or have been out of work so long prospective employers are nervous about hiring them.

They’re also a big problem for the economy. Without enough money in their pockets, they and their families can’t pay their mortgages, which keeps fueling the mortgage crisis. Nor can they replace worn-out cars and clothing, or buy much of anything else, which is a drag on the economy.

Republicans and many blue-dog Democrats say we can’t afford another extension.

But these are many of the same people who say we should extend the Bush tax cuts for the wealthy for at least another two years.

Extending the Bush tax cuts for the top 1 percent would cost an estimated $120 billion over the next two years. That’s more than another unemployment benefit extension would cost.

The unemployed need the money. The rich don’t. (more…)