From the Drudge Report: The Economy is Even Worse Than You Think by Mortimer Zuckerman
By Daniel at 14 July, 2009, 9:48 am
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The average length of unemployment is higher than it has been since government began tracking the data in 1948. Here are 10 reasons we are in even more trouble than the 9.5% unemployment rate indicates:
1. June’s total assumed 185,000 people at work who probably were not. The government could not identify them; it made an assumption about trends.
2. More companies are asking employees to take unpaid leave. These people don’t count on the unemployment roll.
3. No fewer than 1.4 million people wanted or were available for work in the last 12 months but were not counted. Why? Because they hadn’t searched for work in the four weeks preceding the survey.
4. The number of workers taking part-time jobs due to the slack in the economy, a kind of stealth underemployment, has doubled in this recession to about 9 million or 5.8% of the workforce.
5. The average work week for rank and file employees in the private sector, roughly 80% of the workforce, slipped to 33 hours.
6. The number of long term unemployed (for 27 weeks or more) has now jumped to 4.4 million, an all time high.
7. The average worker saw no wage gains in June.
8. The prospects for job creation are equally distressing. The likelihood is when economic activity picks up, employers will first choose to increase hours for existing workers and bring part-time workers back to full-time.
9. The goods producing sector is losing the most jobs–223,000 in the last report alone.
10. Job losses may well last into 2010 to hit an unemployment peak close to 11%. That unemployment rate may be sustained for an extended period.
Not in keeping with the centrifugal motion the media likes to apply to the condition of the economy, Mr. Zuckerman is clearly stating that our economy is in dire circumstances. Nothing is truly going to improve until people in our country have family sustaining income and that is not likely to happen anytime soon, if ever.
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