US workplace suicides jump 28 percent

from Agence France Press, via AlterNet:



US workplace suicides jump 28 percent
Agence France Presse


The financial meltdown is taking its toll on the workplace, where the US Labor Department found a record 28 percent rise in suicide rates last year amid widespread layoffs and overall belt-tightening.

"The financial meltdown is taking its toll on the workplace, where the US Labor Department (USDL) found a record 28 percent rise in suicide rates last year amid widespread layoffs and overall belt-tightening." Amid the economic fallout, 251 people committed suicide at the workplace in 2008, the highest figure since the agency's Bureau of Labor Statistics began reporting.

The startling number came as the agency reported Thursday a 10 percent drop in the total number of people who died on the job, from 5,657 in 2008 to 5,071 last year, the lowest number since it first began recording the figures in 1992.

Labor Department officials did not explain the rise in suicides but pointed to the economic downturn as contributing to the lower overall death rate, with the housing crash leading the construction industry, which usually accounts for most workplace deaths, to record major employment and work hour reductions.

Workers on average worked one percent less hours nationwide, the agency said. .........(more)

The complete piece is at: http://www.alternet.org/rss/breaking_news/84057/us_workplace_suicides_jump_28_percent/

The manufacturing jobs have left the country.
The Blue Collar jobs have been devalued by cheap (often 'undocumented')foreign labor.
The tech jobs have been outsourced and H1B'd to death.

All that's left is "Welcome to the border, can I take your order?" or "Welcome to walmart." Of course, 10 job openings receive 34535624356245762345 applications, so you might have better chances playing the lottery. If you ARE lucky enough to get one of these 'swell' service sector jobs, you're making poverty level wages with no (real) health benefits.
We get platitudes about being 'competitive'. Wages have fallen off a cliff, but our mortgages haven't gone down. All of our other bills are going UP. We cannot compete with 3rd world wages while paying 1st world bills.

It's easy to see how someone could feel that there is 'no hope' after being laid off.

Thank you NAFTA and 'Free Traders'.

its keeping the cops busy retrieving bodies.

in the face of the ruination of our nation! j/k