Posts Tagged ‘unemployment’
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!
