Posts Tagged ‘unemployment’
Thanks to Wikicommons
Are You about to become EXTINCT?!? If you are a member of the Middle Class, we are talking to YOU!
That’s right there are some pretty smart people out there saying the American middle may go the way of the DoDo bird and be found only in museums.
The rich are getting richer and the poor are getting poorer at a staggering rate. Once upon a time, the United States had the largest and most prosperous middle class in the history of the world, but now that is changing at a blinding pace.
This is the dark projection Michael Snyder provides via Yahoo! Finance. The article provides a number of shocking statistics to support this view.
Brother, can you spare some unemployment benefits? (Courtesy of NYPL.)
You’re not trying to be a journalist when you grow up, are you? This article from the NYT might change your mind…:
Such is the state of the media business these days: frantic and fatigued. Young journalists who once dreamed of trotting the globe in pursuit of a story are instead shackled to their computers, where they try to eke out a fresh thought or be first to report even the smallest nugget of news.
The new GOP campaign slogan: “Ahhh, remember those sunny days when G.W. Bush was in the Oval Office?”
Courtesy of Minnesota Public Radio.
Extending unemployment benefits: Making people lazy or helping out down-and-out folks? You’ll never guess what President Obama thinks.
Thanks to Wikicommons.
We have some bad news for you. Brace yourself here it comes:
US payrolls GREW by 431,000 in May.
Bad news? that sounds like good news!?! Well it’s not good news… as economists expected 540,000 new jobs.
But wait, there is more. Free Exhange, a blog brought to you by The Economist, notes: …read more.
VP JB (Biden’s stage name) in Israel… Unveiling plans to construct new settlements in Jerusalem.
Oh, I’m between jobs… You know, permanently. “Are Unemployment Benefits No Longer Temporary?”
You can take my home, but not my bird! Oh, you took the bird too?!
A Pittsburgh-area woman is suing Bank of America, claiming it wrongfully repossessed her home and saying that a bank contractor trashed the house and took her parrot.
Image via tech.spreadit.org
In Line for Gifts: Were you standing in a line at the mall at 3AM this past Friday? Statistics show that despite an 8% decrease in the average Black-Friday purchase, sales were greater than last year’s.
In Line for Stamps: As a result of rough economic times, one in eight Americans relies on food stamps. Because of this, the stigma on federal aid is starting to go away.
In Line for the Ax?: Some people believe that the new GOP “Purity Test” will have some unintended consequences.
A New line of work: With the legalization of medicinal marijuana, many are turning towards its cultivation as a source of wealth in jobless markets. One Michigan 24-year-old has opened the first “School of Pot” to teach how to grow and administer this “new” medicine.
Thanks to the AP and Philly.com
We at US Democrazy partied hard this weekend. No, we weren’t indulging in festive Halloween high-jinx! We learned THE RECESSION IS OVER! Yeah BABY!
Just check out these headlines:
- Ford Posts an Unexpected Profit of $997 Million (New York Times)
- 3 strong economic reports lift recovery hopes (The Associated Press)
- Manufacturing boosts global recovery (The Financial Times)
Everything is looking great, right? Time to Party!
But, then today… we woke up with a pounding headache. It wasn’t a hangover, it was some gloomy economists who ruined our party mood.
DON’T PANIC (unless you have read the graph above, brought to you by Calculated Risk).
In that case you can follow suit with us at US Democrazy and PANIC!!!!!!
New job data for the US show that unemployment has hit a staggering 9.5%.
Rest assured President Obama is taking note. He said the new number is “sobering” but reminded folks that fewer jobs were lost in June than earlier in the year.
Republicans have jumped on the rise in unemployment to target Obama’s earlier stimulus. As reported by the Wall Street Journal, RNC Chairman Michael Steele remarked,
With the unemployment rate now at 9.5% and continuing to rise, Americans need real solutions that help them find work – not bigger government, higher taxes, increased federal spending and an unsustainable national debt.
So hold on tight because this wild ride has not finished. Any wagers on what the next unemployment graph will look like?
Are you an out-of-work lawyer? We can’t help you, but you can help others!
The government wants in on Bernie’s loot. Wait, so do we!!!!!
“I guess Rush Limbaugh was busy.” Dick Cheney speaks out.
How good is your aim? It could help you with your finances.
Remember the good old days ? By that we, US Democrazy, mean the good ole days of the Great Depression. Well, not “great” for anyone (except shanty contractors and bindle factories), but you get the idea.
So… how does this new-fangled economic turmoil stand up to the Big Bozo of Financial Fiascoes?
Poorly. But before y’all get up in arms about how bad it is now, let’s compare some numbers.
Currently unemployment is around 8.1%. If you add in people who are working part time but want to work full time you get about 14.8%.
This seems bad until you compare it to the 29% unemployment rate in 1932. Based on this factor alone the current hiccup does not seem so bad.
BUT WAIT! There are some nasty similarities between our financial crunch and the Greatest of all Depressions.
Christina Romer, head of the White House Council of Economic Advisors, (who is also a Great Authority on the Great Depression) provided some valuable insights.
In her words “the worldwide nature of the decline” today is similar to the Great Depression.
But don’t panic; Romer points out people during the Great Depression had “painfully few of the social safety nets that today help families.” Phew! But painfully few still sounds kind of painful.
So put a smile on! With a little luck (okay… maybe a lot of luck) we won’t have any stories for our children about the good ole Great Depression of ’09.
Remember the ’80s? That was the era of Pac Man, punk rock, and boom boxes. It was also the time of YUPs (now called “yuppies,” because it sounds cuter). YUPs were a whole class of Young Urban Professionals, making their own successful ways in the job market. (Ah, the good ol’ days.)
But, since the ’80s everything has changed. Now that we are in a recession, we at USDemocrazy would like to reclassify the YUP acronym and instead refer to them now as: Young and Universally Poor.
That’s right folks, as of now we are all poor — including those aformentioned yuppies.
And it is not just contemporary yuppies who are under seige… current college students (aka: AYUPs… aspiring yuppies) are also in trouble.
Morgan Oliver, who was featured on NPR’s “All Things Considered,” is a recent graduate of Columbia College. Like so many of her peers, Oliver just can’t find a job! Are we surprised? No. But what does one do with mountains of student loans with no substantial income to pay them off? (Ignoring them doesn’t work… we’ve tried.)
Anyone looking to enter the workforce now may want to run and hide… or consider getting another degree. Hibernating in academia for another few years (or decades) looks increasingly attractive. (Many a college senior could tell you this is a great idea!)
Other would-be yuppies are finding themselves in soup kitchen lines. Nick Turse at Mother Jones discusses the changing face of the working poor in America… a face that is getting younger. (Does this remind anyone else of The Curious Case of Benjamin Button?)
So much attention is being paid to those who have been laid-off (and rightly so!). But let us not forget the youth of today (and yuppies of tomorrow) who can’t even break into the job market to build up some savings. These kids might listen to Notorious B.I.G.’s “Mo’ Money, Mo’ Problems” and beg to differ.
Image courtesy of crunchgear.com.
… but we at USDemocrazy are fairly certain the that does not apply to our US economy.
A few weeks ago, we posted a blog that basically said: if you talk about too much about recession, you could end up with a depression . Well, apparently no one has learned their lesson!
This article in the New York Times tells us how upset we should be about the loss of our jobs. And this article from the Wall Street Journal is especially nice and perky. It gives us the odds of the United States stumbling into a deep dark depression!
We at USDemocrazy kinda prefer stories like NPR’s story on “Laid Off Camp”. This is about unemployed or furloughed people who seek out others in the same bind. One guy said he just wants to meet someone who can go to museums in the middle of the day with him. The Laid Off Camp counselors say that you should embrace unemployment, not stress about it! If you’re going to be out of work… be happy out of work.
In these tough times stories of optimism are great (and hard) to find. As all of us who have been jobless know… being happy and unemployed is easier said than done!
