Unemployed—and Staying That Way
OPS_admin | May 10, 2009 | Comments 0
Unemployed—and Staying That Way
The pace of job losses has leveled off but the unemployment rate continued to rise rapidly in April. While employers have stopped shedding workers at an accelerating rate, the sheer number of unemployed workers continues to accelerate and the overall jobs picture remains grim. Long-term unemployment is at an all-time high and nominal wage growth has come to a halt. For those unlucky enough to have lost their job, a new one appears to be increasingly difficult to find.
Employers shed 539,000 jobs in April, and while this is down from the past few months, it remains the ninth-largest one-month fall in employment since the end of World War II, indicating that the troubles in the labor market are far from over. The economy has shed 5.7 million jobs since the recession began in December 2007; nearly half of those (2.7 million) occurred in the past four months.
The unemployment rate is now 8.9 percent, a 26-year high and an increase of 0.4 percentage points in April alone. Six million additional people became unemployed over the past year—more than any other year since the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics began tabulating this data just after World War II—and there are now a total of 13.7 million people unemployed—more than at any other time on record.
via Unemployed—and Staying That Way.
Filed Under: Economy - Labor
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If we don't change our ways soon...
A new report by the Royal Society, chaired by Nobel prize-winning biologist Sir John Sulston warns that world population must be stabilized and consumption in wealthy nations must be reduced or the entire planet is in big trouble. As the report reads: "The number of people living on the planet has never been higher, their levels of consumption are unprecedented and vast changes are taking place in the environment. We can choose to rebalance the use of resources to a more egalitarian pattern of consumption... or we can choose to do nothing and to drift into a downward spiral of economic and environmental ills leading to a more unequal and inhospitable future."This is the same warning that President Jimmy Carter gave Americans back in the 1970's - but it was ignored when Ronald Reagan came to power with a "more positive" message basically telling Americans we can do whatever we want. And then after 9/11 - Bush told us all we should go shopping and consume ever more.And now with corporations calling the shots in Washington - long-term sustainability of the planet takes a back seat to short-term profits. If we don't change our ways soon - and embrace clean, alternative energy and educate women around the plant - then we all could be headed for a rough century.-Thom(Is there any chance we will learn in time? Tell us here.) -
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The modern conservative is engaged in one of man's oldest exercises in moral philosophy; that is, the search for a superior moral justification for selfishness. 
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