Excerpts from “The Book of Jobs,” Joseph E. Stiglitz, Vanity Fair:
“There are 6.6 million fewer jobs in the United States than there were four years ago. Some 23 million Americans who would like to work full-time cannot get a job. Almost half of those who are unemployed have been unemployed long-term. Wages are falling—the real income of a typical American household is now below the level it was in 1997.”
“The average person now spends 9.3 hours a day sitting. People who sit for six or more hours per day are 40 per cent more likely to die within 15 years compared to someone who sits less than three hours a day, even if they exercise. Obese people sit 2½ hours more each day than people of normal weight, according to data compiled by Medical Billing and Coding, a U.S.-based organization.”
“People who jog for half an hour in the morning and then sit at a desk all day may be no better off than those who don’t go running.”
More:
“Is your office chair killing you?” Dave McGinn, Globe and Mail
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In a regular monthly exercise in statistical flim-flam, the Bureau of Labor Statistics has released the jobless numbers for November 2011.
The meaningless unemployment rate in the headlines: 8.6%, down a whopping 0.4% from last month. The real unemployment rate: 15.6% (includes people who no longer get unemployment benefits, need work but have stopped looking because it’s futile, or have only found part-time work). Some even put that real rate at 18.8. Learn more here.
In a regular monthly exercise in statistical flim-flam, the Bureau of Labor Statistics has released the jobless numbers for October 2011.
The meaningless unemployment rate in the headlines: 9% , down a whopping 0.1%. The real unemployment rate: 16.2% (includes people who no longer get unemployment benefits, need work but have stopped looking because it’s futile, or have only found part-time work). Learn more here.
There was a net gain of 80,000 jobs in the past month, not all of them at McDonald’s (some were at Wendy’s). At that rate, all of America’s 13.9 million unemployed should be working by about 2030.
Related:
“Most unemployed Americans are no longer receiving unemployment benefits,” Christopher S. Rugaber, AP via New York Daily News
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“Policy makers struggling to understand the barrage of financial panics, protests and other ills afflicting the world would do well to study the works of a long-dead economist: Karl Marx.”
“The wily philosopher’s analysis of capitalism had a lot of flaws, but today’s global economy bears some uncanny resemblances to the conditions he foresaw.”
“As he wrote in ‘Das Kapital,’ companies’ pursuit of profits and productivity would naturally lead them to need fewer and fewer workers, creating an ‘industrial reserve army’ of the poor and unemployed: ‘Accumulation of wealth at one pole is, therefore, at the same time accumulation of misery.’
The process he describes is visible throughout the developed world, particularly in the U.S. Companies’ efforts to cut costs and avoid hiring have boosted U.S. corporate profits as a share of total economic output to the highest level in more than six decades, while the unemployment rate stands at 9.1 percent and real wages are stagnant.
U.S. income inequality, meanwhile, is by some measures close to its highest level since the 1920s. Before 2008, the income disparity was obscured by factors such as easy credit, which allowed poor households to enjoy a more affluent lifestyle. Now the problem is coming home to roost.”
Who wrote that? The Senior Economic Adviser at UBS, the Swiss bank. Read it all:
“Give Karl Marx a Chance to Save the World Economy,” George Magnus, Bloomberg
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The Bureau of Labor Statistics has released the jobless numbers for August 2011.
The official unemployment rate, the one in the headlines, is 9.1%. The real unemployment rate: 16.2% (includes people who no longer get unemployment benefits, need work but have stopped looking because it’s futile, or have only found part-time work). The official rate hasn’t changed from last month, the real rate has grown by a tenth of a percent. Learn more here.
45,000 jobs were temporarily lost in the Verizon strike, and those workers are back on the payroll this month, but the 17,000 government jobs eliminated last month are permanently gone. While 62,000 private sector jobs were added in August, this is no comfort to America’s 14 million unemployed. More that 6 million of them have been out of work for over six months.
Governor Rick Perry thinks he got hisself a big ol’ “Texas Economic Miracle,” and he’s aimin’ to bring it to the rest of the country as U.S. President. How’s he gonna do it? Simple: discover oil and gas in the other 49 states, open more military plants and bases everywhere, encourage more US investments by drug lords, and increase public sector employment by 19%, just like he did in Texas.
But just why does the Governor think there is a “Texas Miracle,” anyway, when unemployment in his state is about the same as that of, oh, New York? Maybe because economic genius Rick Perry got a “D” in Economics at Texas A&M.
The Bureau of Labor Statistics has released the jobless numbers for June 2011. Observers expected 100,000 new jobs; only 18,000 were created. 25,000 state and local government workers were laid off. 6.3 million Americans have been unemployed for 27 weeks or longer.
The official unemployment rate, the one in the headlines, is 9.2%. The real unemployment rate: 16.2% (includes people who no longer get unemployment benefits, need work but have stopped looking because it’s futile, or have only found part-time work). Learn more here.
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“At the rate of last month’s dismal job creation, it will take more than 15 years for America to replace the 7 million jobs that vanished in this Great Recession. The awful new job numbers — just 38,000 in May when economists say the country needs at least 244,000 new jobs per month if the United States is to ever climb out of its hole — are the latest sign America is beginning a new brutal phase of the endless crisis.”
– “Nation Needs To Replace 6,955,000 Pre-Recession Jobs; 38,000 Created Last Month,” Ken Layne, Wonkette
The Republican geniuses responsible for the global crash have an answer: pull even more money out of America’s economy.
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The Bureau of Labor Statistics has released the jobless numbers for April 2011. This is a regular monthly exercise in statistical flim-flam, and the BLS knows it.
The meaningless unemployment rate in the headlines: 9% (up from 8.9%). The real unemployment rate: 16.6% (includes people who no longer get unemployment benefits, need work but have stopped looking because it’s futile, or have only found part-time work). Learn more here.
There was a net gain of 200,000 jobs in the past month, not all of them at McDonald’s (some were at Wendy’s). At that rate, all of America’s 13 million unemployed should be working by about 2016.
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