Hard times for workers on Labor Day 2010

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2010/09/05/AR2010090502815.html

By Harold Meyerson
Monday, September 6, 2010

On Labor Day 2010, the state of America's workers is appalling.

Millions have lost their jobs. Millions have had their lives put on hold or thrown into reverse.

Granted, it's a global recession. The state of the world's workers -- at least in the advanced democracies -- should be equivalently appalling. But it's not. The Great Recession has taken a far greater toll on our nation's workers than on workers in similar countries, even those whose economies have dipped more steeply than ours.

Consider: As of this year, U.S. gross domestic product is about 1 percent beneath its 2008 peak, compared to a drop of roughly 2 percent in France and Germany and 5 percent in Britain and Japan. But U.S. unemployment has increased roughly 5 percentage points since 2007, compared to just 1 point in France and Japan and 2 in Britain. In Germany, unemployment has actually dropped a point since the recession began.

No wonder Christina Romer confessed bewilderment at the scope of American job losses in her valedictory speech as head of the president's Council of Economic Advisers last week. American employers have responded to recession with far more layoffs than their counterparts in comparable or even worse situations in other nations.

One reason for this anomaly is that productivity has surged in the United States, enabling employers to maintain output with far fewer workers. For those workers still on the job, though, this story seemingly should have a happy ending: Sustained production with fewer workers should equal higher wages, should it not?

FULL story at link.