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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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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