In lieu of sausage…
In his speech on the jobs crisis last week, President Obama called the mass unemployment caused by the Great Recession “a continuing human tragedy.” Today’s front page of The New York Times reports on a Times/CBS News poll of unemployed Americans in a story headlined “Poll Reveals Depth and Trauma of Joblessness in U.S.”
A major new Work Trends Survey by the John J. Heldrich Center for Workforce Development at Rutgers finds declining job satisfaction and severe loss of confidence in the economy (pdf) among workers in the last decade.
Seth Michaels at AFL-CIO NOW BLOG provides all the links needed to tune-in to AFL-CIO President Richard Trumka’s live online conversation and jobs crisis Q&A at 4pm EST today.
After giving the heads of some of the biggest U.S. banks a talking to designed to press them to help spur recovery through more lending, President Obama today plans to bring the entire Senate Democratic caucus to the White House to address the need for health care reform.
If you’re not quite sure whether you ever want to see the words “Joe Lieberman” again, check out this continuously-updating Lieberman Google search page.
Will Senator Byron Dorgan (D-ND) ever get a vote on his drug importation amendment?
John Walker at Firedoglake looks at the drug importation issue and what he calls the “Double-Double-Cross”.
Senator Tom Harkin (D-IA) thinks it may be high time to scrap the whole 60-vote thing in the Senate and put an end to the filibuster, noting with some irony that his last attempt to do so, in 1995, was co-sponsored by Sen. Joe Lieberman.
Tags: filibuster, health care reform, unemployed
When President Obama addressed the AFL-CIO convention this week, calling on labor to help the country rebuild our middle class, the millions of unemployed and underemployed Americans were, in a sense, also in the room.
And as we know, and Bob Herbert reported in his column the same day, those millions of Americans are in “A World of Hurt”.
While the Wall Street Journal was touting Federal Reserve Chairman Ben Bernanke’s view that the recession was “very likely over”, Mr. Herbert wrote:
“this is no time to lose sight of the wreckage all around us. This recession, a full-blown economic horror, has left a gaping hole in the heart of working America that is unlikely to heal for years, if not decades.
Fifteen million Americans are locked in the nightmare of unemployment, nearly 10 percent of the work force. A third have been jobless for more than six months. Thirteen percent of Latinos and 15 percent of blacks are out of work. (Those are some of the official statistics. The reality is much worse.)”
Herbert reports on a devastating survey by Rutgers University professors Carl Van Horn and Cliff Zukin for the Heldrich Center for Workforce Development titled “The Anguish of Unemployment” (pdf).
To get beyond the usual reporting of numbers and statistics, the study sought to address the human toll of the recession on unemployed Americans. They surveyed 1,200 Americans nationwide who have been unemployed and looking for work in the last 12 months, and found 894 still jobless. They say their study
“portrays a shaken, traumatized people coping with serious financial and psychological effects from an economic downturn of epic proportions.”
Describing the overall results of the survey, co-author Van Horn said:
“Millions of unemployed Americans are suffering economic and personal catastrophes. This is not your ordinary dip in the business cycle. Americans believe that this is the Katrina of recessions. Folks are on their rooftops without a boat. The water is rising, and many see no way out.”
Summarizing some of what the survey found:
60% of the recently unemployed lost their jobs suddenly, without advance warning; more than half the unemployed lost their jobs for the very first time; more than half have borrowed money from friends or relatives; 25% have skipped mortgage or rent payments; two-thirds report being depressed; three-quarters feel stress and anxiety; three-fifths report feeling helpless; only 40% of those currently unemployed received unemployment insurance; 83% of those who did receive aid worry that their benefits will run out before they find a job
The survey’s full 27-page report (pdf) also contains personal stories and quotes from respondents. Here are several:
After 38 years…the co[mpany] I worked for let six people go — three in billing where I worked. My seniority should have counted at that time. I wasn’t mad — more shocked than anything. I gave 110% every day I worked there. I put my job before my husband — now “ex” — and before my kids.
I have been unemployed so long that I can no longer put off my student loan payments, which are twice the amount of all my other bills combined.
Even low-paying jobs are hard to find. My age (57) is hurting me.
There was no warning at all. He said we’d work something out with the hours. Then I’m gone. I will be trying to start my own business, but there is no credit available. All the banks reduced credit lines without warning, even though all bills [were] paid on time. It makes it even hard to get by.
My age (59) leaves me feeling worthless, very old, and isolated from the workforce — with little chance of finding employment.
Very few employers are willing to hire someone at my age because they are afraid of possible health concerns down the road, and that I may decide to retire too soon to make me a good risk.
I don’t want to move back home with my parents. Right before I became unemployed, I had moved out on my own for the first time.
The lack of income and loss of health benefits hurts greatly, but losing the ability to provide for my wife and myself is killing me emotionally.
Being unemployed is frustrating, demeaning and, at this point, frightening. Articles in the paper say we “baby boomers” will have to work for a few more years especially since so many of us have lost half if not more in retirement “funds”. Now, you tell me, how can I work for a few more years if I can’t even get a job interview?!
If these comments ring true with you and you’re one of the 15 million unemployed, one of the best resources anywhere is Working America’s Unemployment Lifeline where you’ll find links to community, government and online resources in your area. You can connect with other people there too, and take action to call on Congress to extend unemployment benefits.
In his speech to the AFL-CIO Convention President Obama said, in part:
For over half a century, the success of America has been built on the success of our middle class. It was the creation of the middle class that lifted this nation up in the wake of a great depression.
…
And the fundamental test of our time is whether we will heed this lesson; whether we will let America become a nation of the very rich and the very poor, of the haves and the have-nots; or whether we will remain true to the promise of this country and build a future where the success of all of us is built on the success of each of us.
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We cannot afford to go back – we must move forward. That’s why we need to build a new foundation for lasting prosperity. By creating the jobs of the future.
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We’ll grow our middle class by creating jobs for Americans who want one – not just any jobs, but jobs with good wages, jobs with good benefits. Jobs that give a person the satisfaction of knowing they’ll meet their responsibilities to themselves and their families. Jobs that are not just a source of income, but a source of self-respect. Every American deserves that much.
True enough. So let’s get started on a scale adequate to the task of creating the millions of new jobs we need.
As Bob Herbert concludes in his column “At some point the unemployment crisis in America will have to be confronted head-on.”
I’d say if ever there was a fierce urgency, it’s now.
Tags: Barack Obama, Jobs, unemployed, unemployment
The unemployment crisis continues to deepen. Another 466,000 Americans joined the ranks of the unemployed last month. Right now more Americans are unemployed than ever before, even more than in 1933 at the depths of the Great Depression.
Yet, where is the uproar? Robert Reich, former Labor Secretary, asks “why isn’t the media screaming?” New York Times columnist Bob Herbert has been asking that question and more for months.
According to the August employment report from the Bureau of Labor Statistics “the number of unemployed persons increased by 466,000 to 14.9 million, and the unemployment rate rose by 0.3 percentage point to 9.7 percent.”
Another 2.3 million Americans are unemployed but aren’t counted because they hadn’t sought work in the last four weeks. Add this group to both the labor force and unemployment totals, and the number of unemployed Americans is actually 17.2 million — with the actual unemployment rate at 11 percent.
Another 9.1 million Americans are underemployed, reports the BLS, “working part time because their hours had been cut back or because they were unable to find a full-time job.” Add this group and the unemployed and underemployed number 26.3 million Americans — nearly 17 percent of the work force.
In an interview last Friday on The Ed Show on MSNBC, Nobel prize economist Joseph Stiglitz, professor at Columbia University, said:
“There’s absolutely no reason why we need to accept a situation where people who want to look for a job can’t get it. We have so many needs in our country. And this situation where we have people looking for jobs, and we have so many needs — I think we should view as unacceptable.”
Prof. Stiglitz is one of an impressive list of leading economists, compiled by the Center for Economic and Policy Research, who’ve said the February 2009 stimulus was too small, or have since called for another round to fuel job-creating recovery.
And that is exactly what the AFL-CIO Executive Council called for July 28 in a major policy statement.
It is crystal clear that urgent action from the federal government is needed to boost economic growth and jobs, and invest in America’s future: we need a second installment on the Obama Administration’s economic recovery program, and this second installment must focus like a laser beam on job creation.
Our growth model in recent decades—debt-financed consumer spending and asset bubbles, combined with huge trade deficits—has failed. We cannot borrow and outsource our way to prosperity: without good jobs in America, there will be no sustainable economic recovery. As private demand pulls back and Americans rebuild their savings, the most effective path to sustainable growth is an ambitious public investment agenda.
There is no viable alternative to public investment right now.
The policy statement also calls for extending unemployment benefits immediately, increasing food stamp spending to help families in need, providing additional aid to state and local governments to offset budget cuts and stem more layoffs, and investing in additional transportation, clean energy and other infrastructure projects.
As the August jobs report shows, the unemployment crisis in America continues to deepen. The day after that report was issued The New York Times lead editorial “Where the Jobs Aren’t” asks:
The question, then, is how bad does it have to get before the Obama administration and Congress make job creation a priority.
Will administration officials and lawmakers fight for new laws to make it easier to form unions, which are especially important in elevating and protecting the jobs of low-income workers? How will professed support for green jobs be translated into a manufacturing policy that promotes good jobs? Will efforts to improve the educational system also include serious efforts to train and retrain people for new jobs?
Help is wanted for out of work Americans.
Tags: Jobs, recovery, stimulus, unemployed, unemployment
