U6 Unemployment
As
Egberto Willies pointed out in a recent post, there are a lot of reasons in terms of the economic strides we have made for people like Obama to do a bit of gloating.
My opponent in that last election pledged that he could bring down the unemployment rate to 6 percent by 2016 -- next year -- at the end of next year. It’s 5.5 now.
...
And right here in Cleveland, the leader of the House Republicans -- a good friend of mine -- (laughter) – he captured his party’s economic theories by critiquing mine with a very simple question: Where are the jobs, he said. Where are the jobs? I’m sure there was a headline in The Plain Dealer or one of the papers -- Where Are the Jobs? Well, after 12 million new jobs, a stock market that has more than doubled, deficits that have been cut by two-thirds, health care inflation at the lowest rate in nearly 50 years, manufacturing coming back, auto industry coming back, clean energy doubled -- I’ve come not only to answer that question, but I want to return to the debate that is central to this country, and the alternative economic theory that’s presented by the other side.
But as rosy as the economic progress has been recently, I can't help but bring my thoughts always to those Americans who fall into the gap that have yet to feel that rosiness.
While we spend a lot of time on initiatives to raise the minimum wage - which, I do not want anyone to think that I am not also for - for the longest time this has seemed to me to be treating a tumor with a band-aid.
It may not necessarily be a completely accurate analogy for the situation. And not being an economics expert, it may be hard for me to put into concrete words why exactly I feel this way.
But if there is a simple way to get to the reason I feel this way about the current economic climate, it would be to point to the U6 Unemployment Rate.
U6, which is the bureau's gauge of unemployment and underemployment that includes people with no job at all, part-time workers who want full-time jobs but can't find one, and many "discouraged" workers—fell to 11 percent from 11.3 percent.
At 11 percent, that means there are something like
17 million willing Americans who need a full-time job.
Yet few are calling for renewed efforts to reach out to these struggling Americans.
Even the Congressional Progressive Caucus's Budgets, seemingly one of the few examples of an agenda to seriously address this shortfall, as far as creating jobs goes, at 8 million in 3 years, it barely scratches the surface in my mind.
If there is a concise, straightforward economic plan we should rally around, my vote would be for this:
A jobs program that leads to 17 million more full-time working Americans.
I know that the political resistance to a New-Deal type jobs program that this would represent is overwhelming.
But set that aside for a second.
Think of the implications of an economy missing out on the buying-power and producing-power of 17 million or so full-time workers.
These workers are bringing home less money to provide for their families than they should be, leading to lower qualities of life, loss of quality time together, more stress, and likely longer hours and multiple jobs to make up the slack.
They cling to whatever jobs they have, and fear going for any other ones, because their employers have a ready supply of millions of people to replace them in a moment's notice.
Their skills, whatever they are, either go unused, or get dulled by time.
Marx called this a reserve army of labor. It only serves to the advantage of the employers, and to the disadvantage of anyone who finds themselves a member of this army - or at risk of becoming a part of it or replaced by it.
Now, think of the implications of an economy where those workers are in play.
Employers looking for highly-skilled workers would have to compete with far more employers, over applicants who have far more options, and more power to negotiate their working conditions. Of course, the better the working terms are, the better candidates the employers will attract. For the best companies and the best workers, this is to both their advantages.
Workers in lower-class jobs will have more freedom to seek better jobs. If they lose their current one, there will be ample other jobs to fill the gap.
Overall, workers remain more productive, which serves to supply the economy, and are able to earn more, which also ensures there is demand for the economy.
A lot of the economic problems we are combating on individual bases: the minimum wage, income inequality, upward mobility, wage growth, even the reliance on social safety nets, ensuring that there are millions more jobs available would go a long way to addressing all of these problems and more.
Of course, detractors will scoff at the idea of 20 million or so more jobs. If the economy had these millions of jobs that needed to be done, then they would already exist.
But of course, there are countless ways to create these jobs. The New Deal proved the concept. We could even assign every educated adult to get other adults up to a high-school education, followed by prisoners, and then students at risk of failing out of the system. Improve our schools, libraries, and communities in general. Put skilled people to work modernizing all of our myriad outdated records systems. Such programs can conceivably be implemented, as long as the desire is there.
Of course, implementing such a program, daunting as it is, that isn't the largest obstacle. It is simply getting enough people, notably the politicians trying to sell us their economic agendas, on board with the idea.
But considering many of these politicians are supposedly nominally Democrats or Liberals, calling for and implementing such a stimulus program would likely only improve their political support.
And let us not forget what else is at stake. The underemployed themselves.
There are millions of Americans out there who want to provide better lives to their families through a respectable living. And it's not their lack of education, or upbringing, or skills, or capabilities standing in their way. There are simply not as many employment options as there should be.
I cannot bring myself to ignore these fellow Americans.
If you want to show that you understand the plight as well as the work ethic of the average American, this is a plan to get behind: develop more jobs, to the tune of 10-20 million.
Make it so that there are more full-time jobs than people to fill them, rather than the other way around.
I can't think of a better economic agenda to rally around.