These are some comments from The PJ Tattler online, at Pajamas Media: "How Bad Will the Job Picture Get?" How BAD? In the future? As the comments below from the article show, We are in a depression right now.
…which Obama’s economic policies, spending, and legislation have visited upon the country.
So do not look for this figure to get worse any time soon; it is the agreed-upon fiction that will be maintained by persistent Procrustes activity, and will remain largely the same, regardless of reality, unless and until the unlikely event that there is a major improvement that can be credibly trumpeted.
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It is far, far, far worse than this, Buzz.
Since the entire real estate sector has essentially collapsed, there are those who are living in the world of “virtual unemployment”.
Sole proprietors attached to the real estate and financial services industry (including insurance)are holding onto “virtual” jobs. As independent contractors or owners of sole proprietorships…they can’t file for unemployment in most, almost all…cases.
The Obama assault on insurance, financial services and real estate has put the “hidden jobless” into the stratosphere.
The 9.1% number is staggering, but it is a hoax. It counts 9-5 folks well, but it can’t count the virtual unemployed worth a plug nickel. In states where real estate, insurance and financial services are a large part of the internal economy…people are falling like October leaves. Silently and piling up in mounds.
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It is far far worse than that, cf.
The 3 million or so people who have reached maturity since Feb 2009 aren’t included in the stats, even though many of them need jobs.
And there are millions of Americans who need jobs now because they have exhausted their savings or a family member is unemployed; seniors, stay-at-home moms, students, etc. They are excluded from the stats.
And people with part-time jobs aren’t included in the 9.1% either. Many of them are just hanging on.
And many formerly self-employed people don’t hit the stats either.
And the “workforce” has shrunk by 1.2M during Obama’s term. These are people who had jobs or were looking for jobs but have now stopped looking. That alone reduces 10% to 9.1%.
Moreover, of the people who do have jobs, 20 million are government jobs, whichhave INCREASED while all other jobs have DECREASED substantially. I’ll leave it to the reader to say what % of those 20 million are useful to society, and what % are a drain on society. In any event, it’s fair to say that only about 35% of the population is engaged full-time in jobs that provide goods and services to the country. Another 6.5% is engaged in providing government services. It’s stunning.
Donald Trump on Gretta a couple of days ago said true unemployment is 21%. It’s probably higher.
http://www.bls.gov/news.release/empsit.t08.htm
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Based on my experience working in the workman’s compensation field in California, I would say unemployment here is at least 20% and probably quite a bit higher. The state fund that is insurer of last resort is closing offices and laying off doctors who work for them. Those of us, mostly retired, who review these claims see our income from this work down 75% to 90%. Ten years ago, the volume of claims and coverage was increasing rapidly.
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Since 1948, the oldest data BLS has, there have been 46 months in which the unemployment rate has been 9% or higher. Twenty six of them have occurred during the 31 months of the Obama administration.
Instead of running on the theme of Hope and Change, Obama can run on the theme of More in 2012: More unemployment, More government, More debt, and More guns for the Mexican drug cartels.
The unemployment figure of “9.1%” is the media-agreed-upon figure from the Procrustes Economics Institute™. Procrustes, you will recall, is the ogre-innkeeper in the story of Theseus who had a remarkable bed that fit everyone—because if any of his guest hung over the edge of the bed, he lopped it off.
The “9.1%” figure has remained reasonably constant because, like Procrustes, those reporting on unemployment constantly lop off from the unemployment figures those who have totally dropped out of the work force, and those who are no longer unemployed because they are underemployed, i.e., cannot find jobs comparable to the ones they lost and so have taken lower-level jobs simply to have some vestige of income.
The “9.1%” is bad enough so that the media look as if they are reporting something with a nexus to reality—they are admitting the economy is bad—but nevertheless conceals the true magnitude of the disaster….