Bob Herbert of NYT points to the Horror Show

"The employment situation in the United States is much worse than even the dismal numbers from last week’s jobless report would indicate. The nation is facing a full-blown employment crisis and policy makers are not responding with anything like the sense of urgency that is needed."

http://www.nytimes.com/2010/08/10/opinion/10herbert.html?_r=1

This is indeed a very scary situation. I am lucky I am not looking for a job,
since I am retired. But my heart goes out to all those millions who have given up looking
and all those on unemployment and looking.

all our current problems. And yet the congress just appropriated Billions
for the 2 wars. Pure madness since the money has to be borrowed or printed.

MUCH, MUCH better

It's going to be too late to save us from an all out major Depression.

When our hospital laid off several dozen workers a few weeks ago,
that was shocking news to me. My wife works for a large medical
practice and their business is also down. The lady who follows up
on late payments is working overtime.

Are people getting less sick? I doubt it. It is obvious people are
foregoing medical services.

She is a single mom, how the hell is anyone supposed to pay their own bills, when the boss can't pay salaries?

My sister can't quit because she needs the health benefits!

But don't worry, the Spainards are are getting a finacial boost with our First Lady on vacation!

and she each week has had to tell the employees at her job, there is no money to pay them...as other businesses haven't paid them and the banks have shut down their lines of credit for no damn reason at all!

I saw my sister cry this past weekend ..like I have never seen her cry.

I gave her money and bought her groceries,.but it is horribly humbling for anyone..to feel as she does.

And then she went into a tirade about the First Ladies vacations..and my sister is a lifelong democrat as I am..I just had to shut up and listen, and have compassion.
And it wasn't just my sister, I had a house full of people that were all incensed. All were democrats!

But it shook me to my core!

People are angry , some beyond words.

Or decides to means-test Medicare? How do you plan to budget your health care expenses if you have to spend yourself down to near poverty in order to be Medicare eligible?

Not trying to hijack your thread--just point out how the employment situation would look if massive numbers of retirees were forced back into the labor market.

farm and live off the land. I am sure it will not get that bad, though.
Even the Great Depression was subdued and conquered.

That's why I mentioned Medicare.

have found work.

article by Herbert that got no attention.

It was written a month ago. Now Congress is on recess. The program expires at the end of September. It works. It should be extended, and an expansion funded.

Government workers were walking the plank from coast to coast. About 143,000 temporary Census workers were let go, and another 48,000 government employees at the budget-strapped state and local levels lost their jobs. But the worst news, with the most ominous long-term implications, was that the reason the unemployment rate was not higher was because 181,000 workers left the labor force.

---------

Charles McMillion, the president and chief economist of MBG Information Services in Washington, is an expert on employment and has been looking closely for years at the issue of labor force participation. “Over the past three months,” he said, “1,155,000 unemployed people dropped out of the active labor force and were not counted as unemployed. Even ignoring population growth, if these unemployed had not dropped out of the labor force, simple arithmetic shows that the official unemployment rate would have risen from 9.9 percent in April to 10.2 percent in July, rather than — as it has — fallen to 9.5 percent.”

Because of normal growth in the working-age population, the labor force increases by roughly 150,000 to 200,000 people per month. If those folks were factored in, said Mr. McMillion, “unemployment now would be even higher than 10.2 percent.”

From an article printed on 8/2/10:



Day after day people are falling through the cracks with no immediate relief in site. How much longer can people last before emotions boil over?

;(