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Good editorial on the deteriorating jobs situation in today’s Times:
September was the 21st straight month of job loss — the longest unbroken stretch of losses since record-keeping began in 1939 — bringing to 7.2 million the number of positions that have been axed since December 2007. And that understates the damage. During the recession, the economy has failed to create another 2.7 million jobs that were needed simply to employ new workers — like high school and college graduates, immigrants and stay-at-home parents who want to go back to work.
The unemployment rate for September — 9.8 percent — also understates the damage. It would have been higher but for the fact that 571,000 people dropped out of the work force last month — in general, it’s assumed, because they’ve despaired of finding work. If they had kept looking, they would have been counted as unemployed.
The combination of a rising unemployment rate and a quickening pace of labor-force dropouts is especially worrisome. In September, the employment rate for all workers — defined as the share of the population with a job — fell to 58.8 percent, its lowest level in more than 25 years. For adult men, who have been particularly hard hit by job loss in this recession, the employment rate fell to 67 percent, its lowest level since the government began keeping track in 1948. Before this recession, that rate had never dropped below 70.5 percent.
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The real work, however, lies ahead. Economic recovery will not automatically replace the jobs that have been lost so far in this recession. Nor will higher levels of learning and skill — necessary as they are — magically create jobs, especially in the numbers that are needed.
If successful, ambitious goals like health care reform and energy legislation may generate jobs, but officials have not persuasively linked them to job growth. Congress and the administration also have not done enough to directly create jobs. That could be done with more stimulus to spur job creation, or a large federal jobs program, or tax credits for hiring, or all three. Or surprise us. Just don’t pretend that the deteriorating jobs picture will self-correct, or act as if it is tolerable.
According to the Times blog, the IOC gave the nod to Brazil because everyone hates getting through U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement.
Here’s what I said in this comment (awaiting moderation):
Coming back from Europe last year really underscored how scary and unfriendly US security has become compared to the rest of the world.
At Charles DeGaulle Airport, we waited to go through security in a modern, dimly lit carpeted corridor, with the screening happening at the end of the corridor behind a frosted glass partition. When we came to the head of the line, there was an attractive female Air France agent seated at a table asking passengers whether they had any questions or concerns about security procedures; there were brochures on the table.
JFK couldn’t be more different. We waited with our carryons to go through customs and immigration screening, in a dingy holding area with dirty windows and yellowing linoleum that looked like it had not seen a paint job since the airport was named Idlewild. A large not-attractive woman stood behind a podium barking out orders in a military fashion to each person waiting to put stuff on the screening device belt. “NO. I said DON’T put the laptop in a bin, PUT IT ON THE BELT!”.
At least when we got to passport control, the agent was friendly. I’m not so sure it was the same in the longer lines for Non-US citizen lines, but customs/immigration is often harrowing, even for us citizens whose “papers are in order” and who are not committing any legal violations (that we know of).
Part of this is problem is the hideous physical condition of our ports and custom facilities: they just aren’t physically welcoming. Part of the problem is the personnel: most of them seem to come from a military, prison, law enforcement or security background where shouting orders at people expecting knowtowing in return seems to be the norm.
I’m really not surprised if this cost us Chicago’s Olympics bid. Perhaps money should be spent not on PR and fluff but hiring Air France to tell us how to do security and make it charming and attractive rather than scary and off-putting.
— GrumpyBoomer(dot)com
Did anyone catch photos of Captain Sullenberger’s return to the skies this week with First Officer Skiles at their press conference. Particularly this photo:
Related Times blog post here.
Another month and another quarter have ended this week, and the jobs report is again bad and worse than expected, reports the Times this morning.
After several months in which the American economy flashed tentative signs of improvement, a sobering report on the national job market released on Friday amplified worries that a lengthy period of lean times lay ahead.
The economy shed 263,000 jobs in September, and the unemployment rate edged up to 9.8 percent from 9.7 percent in August, according to the Labor Department’s monthly snapshot of the employment picture.
Though the job market worsened, the pace of deterioration remained markedly slower than during the early months of the year, when roughly 700,000 jobs a month were disappearing. That improvement seems consistent with the widespread belief that the recession has given way to economic growth. Yet the report also buttressed fears that economic expansion would be weak and hesitant, with scarce paychecks and economic anxiety remaining prominent features of American life well into next year.
Meanwhile, over at Salon, former Labor Secretary Robert Reich opines without some massive government intervention, there will be no recovery and politics is likely to get ugly, a la 1930s Europe as the usual scapegoats get blamed and things get increasingly edgy in the economy’s downward spiral:
Continue reading
I often don’t know whether to laugh or cry when doing my daily read of the Times.
This article on the Times blog has already scrolled off the Times’ front page (together with reports of today’s stock market decline, owing apparently to scant signs of recovery apart from the irrational exuberance and animal spirits emanating from Wall Street itself). According to a report by two Rutgers economists, employment will not recover to its pre-recession levels until 2017.
Yes, you read that correctly: twenty-seventeen, approximately eight years from now.
Welcome to WordPress. This is your first post. Edit or delete it, then start blogging!
Is this thing on?
Hello, random site visitor who has stumbled upon this blog. Those of you who are familiar with WordPress and blogging know that I have just navigated the daunting instructions of starting a blog. These included more than I wanted to know about the mechanics of administering a *NIX server, themes, CSS, etc.
So just the fact that you can read this seems like a major accomplishment, to me anyway.
WordPress estimates there are over 9,000,000 blogs, and those are just the ones that use WordPress publishing software. Many of my favorite blogs set the bar pretty high in terms of adding great content at an astonishing rate. So why do I want to add my admittedly modest contributions to the fray?
Like the soldier’s proverbial rifle, there are many blogs, but this blog is mine. The motivating idea was pretty simple. For years, friends had been urging me to commit some of my better raves that I had inflicted on them to the blogosphere for the general consumption of my Fellow Americans. It had remained one of those “someday” projects for a long time. But a little over one year ago, on Monday, September 15, 2009, we awoke on a cruise ship in the port of Rome to CNN International reporting the bankruptcy of Lehman Brothers and the eastward -spreading collapse of the global stock markets that day. With that shocking news of the financial meltdown reverberating in the air, we took a surreal ’shore excursion’ to tour the ruins of the Roman Forum and Coliseum with our veteran tour guide Rita (below). The decline of empire and the comparisons to our perilous condition seemed inescapable.
 Rita, our Rome tour guide Continue reading
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