Labor Day: Your Economic Scorecard

Monday, September 7th, 2009 @ 10:22 am | We Think

In order to keep up with this game of continually downward spiraling economic indicators, YouThinkWhat provides this report on the numbers as prepared by the Economic Policy Institute, EPI, a think-tank whose mission it is to expand the public debate on ways to achieve a balanced and prosperous economy.According to EPI,

“the Bureau of Labor Statistics released the employment situation report for August, which is the 20th month of the economic downturn. The report showed an additional 216,000 jobs lost in August for a total of 6.9 million jobs lost this recession.

The good news is that the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act (ARRA) is providing a significant boost to the labor market. Over the last three months, the labor market has shed an average of 318,000 jobs per month.”

Basically the unemployed are not finding gigs; the speed of job loss has slowed.

14.9 million workers are unemployed with about 5 million having been without employment for more than six months. That is more than the record set in 1983.

In July 2009 there was a slight decline in the unemployment rate. An unusually large number of workers dropped out of the labor force causing the numbers to ratchet back up during August.

EPI reports:

” …unemployment reestablished its steady upward climb in August, rising from 9.4% to 9.7%. Unemployment has more than doubled since its pre-recession low of 4.4% in March 2007, and has nearly doubled from 4.9% at the start of the recession in December 2007. While the unemployment rate has not reached its post-WWII peak of 10.8% at the end of 1982, the increase in unemployment over this recession — 4.8 percentage points — has far surpassed the overall increase of 3.6 percentage points in the recession of 1981.”

What they’re saying is we’re going for the record in this installment of capitalism it’s an adventure.

And as usual we can count on our government to tell us their version of the truth. EPI found this fact:

“… the official unemployment count understates the slack in the labor market by counting neither those who want a job but have given up looking for work (‘marginally attached’), nor workers who are working but can’t get the full-time hours they want (‘involuntary part-time workers’).

There are currently 14.9 million unemployed workers in the United States, but if the marginally attached and involuntary part-time workers are included, the number swells to 26.4 million. Currently one in six U.S. workers (16.8%) is either un- or underemployed.”

Always during these times as in the past certain groups are typically more affected than others. Those groups are racial and ethnic minorities, men, workers with lower levels of schooling, and younger workers.

Last month, August 2009 among Blacks and Hispanics the jobless rate was
about 28 %–15% and 13% respectively; while the rate among whites was 8.9%

More men were unemployed than women; and workers with high school education was more than twice that of those with college degrees.

For workers 16 to 24 the rate of joblessness was more than 18% and for those 25 to 54 the rate was about half; in the 55 plus age group the rate of unemployment was nearly 7%.

But wait…that’s not all…6.9 million jobs lost since December 2007, which is when the government says this recession officially began. Let’s not forget the population continues to grow. To keep pace with population growth the economy requires two and a half million jobs for the period December 2007 through August 2009, 20 months of economic decline; that would be about 127,000 jobs each month.

The bottom line here is that when the Congress meets again next week the first order of business should be to extend the benefits for about 500,000 unemployed workers whose benefits will end September 30, 2009