Whoops, despite the confident predictions of Wall Street, employers still aren’t adding jobs, they’re just cutting back less!
Hooray, say our politicians, the unemployment rate is down to 9.7%!
The reason unemployment’s down is because more people are giving up on looking for work.
While employers only cut another 20,000 jobs, the number of people who’ve given up looking is now 400,000 higher than it was a year ago (when unemployment was just over 7%).
More than 8 million jobs have been lost since the recession started in 2007. At best, the woefully inadequate stimulus programs have saved 2-3 million jobs. Do the math.
Conclusion: the economy’s marginally better at the moment than it has been, but not growing sufficiently to make a dent in unemployment. It’s a disaster for the country that no one’s doing anything about.
Gorilla says: “Jobs for the future? It would be nice if we had as many jobs now as we did 10 years ago!”
Tags: unemployment