Today’s Unemployment Crisis by the Numbers
OPS_admin | Jun 30, 2010 | Comments 0
Report from Alon Cohen and Andrew Jakabovics examines current state-based foreclosure mediation programs and offers proposals for how to bring them to scale.
Our nation today is mired in one of the worst labor markets since the Great Depression. There are currently nearly 15 million Americans unemployed, with the unemployment rate hovering at or just under 10 percent for nearly a year. At the end of May, nearly half of those unemployed (46 percent) have been out of work and actively seeking a job for at least six months, a post-World War II record high. Currently, there are nearly five workers actively searching for work for every job available, compared to just one and a half job searchers per job opening before the Great Recession began.
Worse still, the labor market problems we see right now will be with us for some time. The massive employment hole left by the Great Recession will take years to fill. If we added 218,000 private-sector jobs each month from now on—the highest monthly payroll increase seen so far this year in the private sector—it would still take almost five years to fill the hole. That’s why ensuring that unemployment insurance reaches the unemployed remains a critical component of any serious effort to help stem the harmful effects of this recession and to help the American economy recover.
Unemployment insurance is the primary mechanism to provide financial assistance to workers who are unemployed through no fault of their own. Yet in early June, Congress allowed unemployment benefits to expire for 1.2 million workers over the course of the month and has repeatedly been unable to pass legislation to fix this problem. This has serious implications for the unemployed, as well as every one of us who still has a job. Allowing benefits to the long-term unemployed to expire threatens our nascent economic recovery. Economists across the board agree that unemployment benefits are one of the most important counter-cyclical economic policies we have.
Full Story: Today’s Unemployment Crisis by the Numbers.
Filed Under: Economy - Labor
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Who will you vote for this year: Big Oil, Big Casinos, or Wall Street?
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" We the corporations" On January 21, 2010, with its ruling in Citizens United v. Federal Election Commission, the Supreme Court ruled that corporations are persons, entitled by the U.S. Constitution to buy elections and run our government. __________
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