I hate to take headline stories from major sites that everybody here reads and repackage them as my own story, but this one sorta feels like my self-appointed beat, so I'm going to do it anyway. I think it goes something like this:
DETROIT'S UNEMPLOYMENT NEARS 50%
Now for all y'all who aren't terribly good at math. That's half. And much, much higher than the Great Depression.
"The Bureau of Labor Statistics estimated that for the year that ended in September, Michigan's official unemployment rate was 12.6 percent. Using the broadest definition of unemployment, the state unemployment rate was 20.9 percent, or 66 percent higher than the official rate. Since Detroit's official rate for October was 27 percent, that broader rate pushes the city's rate to as high as 44.8 percent."
Listen...this underscores one of my reasons for making such a stink about Michigan's lousy economy in the past. I'm TERRIFIED that if the National economy starts to rebound, those economies that have been in the shitter for well over a decade will once again be swept under the rug and forgotten.
I need to say this again and again and again and again and again.
This recession isn't new here. It's not a year old here. Or two years old. It's well over a decade old.
From 2005 to 2007 the US Census Bureau ranked Muskegon, MI at the very bottom of employment for cities of its size, averaging 22% joblessness. That was back when the United States was supposedly between recessions.
BUT!
If I'm going to ask people to give a damn about the fate of Michigan and its citizens, I need to extend this consideration to other regions and people of the nation and remind everybody that this "recession" has been hitting some American regions of many decades.
In some cases, for generations.
There's a saying here, and maybe everywhere "Unemployment is at 100% when you don't have a job. It's at 0% when you do."
But Poverty in America doesn't end when you and people you know have a job. It just makes it less urgent, politically, to do what it takes to solve the problems of poverty and chronic economic instability.
Coming from a state that's seen economic malaise from a statewide perspective since 2001, this National recession has almost been helpful...finally getting the nation and Washington to devote some time to policies meant to catch people when they're falling...subsidizing COBRA, expanding bridge card (food stamp) allocations, extending unemployment insurance, investing in NEW manufacturing industries. It didn't hurt that Democrats finally took over, too. That last part I can't stress enough.
Unemployment in Michigan as a whole actually dropped. Yeah! It dropped by .4% from October to November to 14.7% using the Department of Labor's U3 figures. That's huge. Especially since we've seen unemployment rising almost consistently for well over a year.
Woohoo! Time to break out the champaign! Our Dept. of Labor unemployment stats are moving slowly in the direction of 1 digit. WOOHOO!
I hope the US economy improves and economic suffering slows for most Americans. But it seriously, seriously does cause me concern that when it happens, regions and populations in long term economic malaise will once again be relegated to third or fourth tier political concerns. The thought causes me anxiety.
I don't talk about it as much as I used to -- Damn, you know, people I know read my blog posts now., heh -- But things are still pretty tight over here. We've finally broken down and applied for a bridge card (food stamps)after budgeting no more than $80 a week for groceries for a family of 4 for months on end. I watch the boys pretty much full time because we owe an unbelievable amount to the daycare, making work, even when it comes along, hard to attend to. The tires of the car are bald and go thuppa-thppa-thuppa as we drive to the store, the leak in the roof is still there after my failed attempts to fix it (though our neighbors told us who installed it and we got ahold of them and they said they'd tar it for free once the weather gets above freezing!), I put off cutting my hair or buying new clothes...
We live in terror of losing the lousy insurance we have. Our doctor is to the point of telling us where we can get free services. We're constantly holding our breaths about my wife's store that may or may not make it through the holiday season with positive numbers.
But, you know, that's kinda what life is like, now. And it's going to be that way for a good long time and we really are among the lucky in a way. Even as the US Economy improves for most regions some day, there are going to be a lot of people in the US who have not gotten out of the hole. Who still live day to day with that weight of knowing one final expense will send them over the edge. Or not even knowing where they or their family will sleep.
America's poverty rate is astonishing.
Fifty percent, folks. HALF of the people of Detroit are unemployed. This isn't going to end for them any time soon. Not this year. Not next year. No way. When things get better, we need to stay mindful of regions like this.