'Recovery-less' Recovery: Unemployment Duration Exploding
In fact, as has been widely reported, the median and average stay on unemployment has simply exploded far surpassing the highest levels seen since records have been regularly kept.
today’s sorry situation far exceeds even the conditions seen during the double-dip recessionary period of the early 1980s, long considered by economists to be the worst period of unemployment since the Great Depression.
Currently, there are some 6.13 million civilian workers that have been unemployed for 27 weeks or more with the average stay on unemployment standing at a whopping 29.1 weeks and the median stay reaching 20.5 weeks
In fact, the most recent two completed cycles (90s S&L crisis and dot-com bust contractions) saw duration of unemployment continue to grow for some two to four years after the technical end of their respective recessions… a solemn notion indeed.Well one might consider it. But most ones probably won't. Unless of course they are one of the unemployed, underemployed or having to eat a ration of doo doo daily from unforgiving bosses who know they have anyone who has a job over a barrel.
One might consider, with such stark examples of epic structural unemployment, whether the future negative feedback functions associated to this brutal bout of joblessness are currently being underestimated.
But hey what the hell, if there ain't no jobs out there, well then the "illegal aliens" may as well stay on there side of the border right? Think again "esse" cause this is how it works ok?
The big corporations have been shipping jobs overseas for years at an ever increasing rate.
No one knows for sure how many jobs are being shipped overseas, primarily because the government neither collects this information nor requires companies to disclose it. According to most estimates, American workers have lost hundreds of thousands of white-collar jobs to outsourcing over the past few years and millions of jobs will be shipped overseas in the next five to ten years.
In professional and information technology sectors, jobs lost overseas account for a significant portion of the total net job loss since 2001. Job creation continues to stagnate in these industries even though investment and demand have recovered. Overseas outsourcing is an important component of the continued jobs crisis in these important sectors.And if they can't ship them out they ship them in via:
- Goldman Sachs estimates 400,000–600,000 professional services and information sector jobs moved overseas in the past few years—accounting for about half of the total net job loss in the sector since January 2001.
- The pro-outsourcing consulting firm Global Insight estimates 104,000 information technology jobs were lost to offshore outsourcing between 2000 and 2003, more than a quarter of the 372,000 jobs lost in the sector overall during the period.
- The Economic Policy Institute found employment in U.S. software-producing industries fell by 128,000 jobs from 2000 to early 2004, while about 100,000 new jobs producing software for export to the U.S. were created in India over the same period of time. AFL-CIO
BANKS SOUGHT FOREIGN WORKERS AS SYSTEM CRASHEDOther industries have been just as guilty. But what has to be the most egregious violation of American
Major U.S. banks sought government permission to bring thousands of foreign workers into the country for high-paying jobs even as the system was melting down last year and Americans were getting laid off, according to an Associated Press review of visa applications. The dozen banks now receiving the biggest rescue packages, totaling more than $150 billion, requested visas for more than 21,800 foreign workers over the past six years for positions that included senior vice presidents, corporate lawyers, junior investment analysts and human resources specialists.
principle many of these corporations, Including, but not limited to, Disney, the Gap, Wal-Mart, Nike, Nestle (ok not American), the clothing industry have been guilty of using child slave labor in overseas sweat shops from China to Haiti (consider the irony).
WE LIKE LAMBS TO THE SLAUGHTER have been spoiled and fattened for the slaughter! It is no wonder the word "sheeple" crops up more and more now days. We see a Mexican worker in a field doing a job we would not do point the finger and blame all our problems on some one making barely enough money to survive.
All of this anger, hate and blame directed at a people unable to defend themselves when all along it has been the American Bankers, the American Corporate/Governance alliance that has been setting us up for the kill.
A dyed in the wool conservative friend of mine (he thinks I'm Libertarian but I claim no party) were driving to Sarasota a couple of weeks ago. We disagree on a few things. We did agree on one thing,
What will be the true cause of America's downfall will be "stupid". It's a virus, there are not enough laboratories working on a vaccination for "stupid".
“The banks -- hard to believe in a time when we’re facing a banking crisis that many of the banks created -- are still the most powerful lobby on Capitol Hill. They frankly own the place.”
-- U.S. Senator Dick Durbin, Democratic Party Whip, April 30, 2009
Jim Rogers is an expatriate American investor and financial commentator based in Singapore. He wrote in a 2004 article titled “The Rise of Red Capitalism”:
“Some of the best capitalists in the world live and work in Communist China. . . . No matter how long China’s leaders persist in calling themselves Communists, they seem quite intent on creating the world’s dominant capitalist economy.”
Meanwhile, the U.S. has sunk into what Rogers calls “socialism for the rich.” When ordinary U.S. businesses go bankrupt, they are left to deal with the asphalt jungle on their own; but when banks considered “too big to fail” go bankrupt, we the taxpayers pay the losses while the banks’ owners keep the profits and are allowed to continue speculating with them. The bailout of Wall Street with taxpayer money represents a radical departure from capitalist principles, one that has changed the face of the American economy. The capitalism we were taught in school involved Mom and Pop stores, single-family farms, and small entrepreneurs competing on a level playing field. The government’s role was to set the rules and make sure everyone played fair. But that is not the sort of capitalism we have today. The Mom and Pop stores have been squeezed out by giant chain stores and mega-industries; the small private farms have been bought up by multinational agribusinesses; and Wall Street banks have gotten so powerful that Congressmen are complaining that the banks now own Congress. Giant banks and corporations have rewritten the rules for their own ends. Healthy competition has been replaced by a form of predator capitalism in which small fish are systematically swallowed up by sharks. The result has been an ever-widening gap between rich and poor that represents the greatest transfer of wealth in history.
This country was born in what was referred to as the age of enlightenment. We need another one!Add to Technorati Favorites
