The Unemployed Finally Get Their Due

Finally! Economists finally come clean and admit the unemployment figures do not reflect reality. It's long been obvious to me that the unemployment figures couldn't possibly be accurate. Once your 26 weeks are done, you don't count any more, literally and figuratively.

Shockingly the DOL (Dept. of Labor) figures do not include the long term unemployed, or discouraged workers who have given up finding a job. Nor the self-employed/transitional or temp workers. Nor young people who never had their first job. Nor immigrants, farm workers, people with disabilities, or the homeless... whose jobs are irregular.

Unemployment is grossly understated by at least 100%. It's not 9.8% or 15 million people as the Feds would have us believe. It's approaching 20% -- or at least 30 million (or more) Americans who are not working, not by choice. They are the real victims of the Wall Street Debacle and the greed of the last decades and the bubble economy that went bust.

Now we are faced with a jobless recovery, for the first time in our history. So it will only get worse in the next 2-3 years. Moreover, the longer folks remain out of work, their skills stagnate or become a mismatch. It could take until 2015 before there are enough new jobs created, for a declining working-age population. This loss of jobs and loss of income creates a trickle-down effect that reduces -- and permanently removes a portion of the United State's GDP capacity. Most of the new jobs will be in increasingly lower skill and lower pay jobs that do not require a 4-year college education -- like service or health care or home health or energy efficiency -- so our standard of living will also have to shift.

Too much effort is being spent on bailing out Wall Street and not enough on bailing out Main Street. What do lawmakers think will happen when most Americans have no livelihood, no money, no home, no dignity, and no hope left?

For more insights on the needs for education, energy, and infrastructure spending to create jobs that will kick-start the economy and help the next generation, visit the New America Foundation's website. You can view videos and presentations on the Job Deficit from 3 top-knotch panels of experts. Search for the Bernard Scwartz Symposium on October 20, 2009 at www.newamerica.net