OUR CURRENT UNEMPLOYMENT CRISIS IS HUGE

+ DailyKos offers "Official Unemployment Hits 9.5%" by Meteor Blades. Excerpts:

• "The official count – known as U3 and dutifully reported by most of the media – fails to show the true extent of the wreckage."
• "In late May, 74% of economists surveyed by the National Association of Business Economists said the economy would begin expanding this quarter although they expected unemployment to continue rising into 2010 before beginning its recovery. One disturbing trend can be found in how long it took in the four previous recessions before the number of workers with jobs equaled the number employed at the beginning of those recessions. In 1974, the job recovery took 19 months; in 1981, 28 months; in 1991, 32 months; in 2001, 47 months."
• "'There are going to be massive, massive numbers of people who are out of work for long periods of time,' said Andrew Stettner, deputy director for the National Employment Law Project. 'It’s one of the most important aspects of where the economy is right now.'"
• "(A) pair of scary charts (in the article) compare the past 40 years. The first shows a huge rise in the current recession over past years of workers who have permanently lost their jobs instead of being temporarily laid off. The second shows that for every job opening there are now nearly six people queued for it."

GO TO ARTICLE