Since the Bureau of Labor Statistics announced its monthly payroll survey numbers Friday, there’s been quite a bit of happy-talk – including from some progressives – about how we’re just around the corner from the end of the "Great Recession." On the flipside, we who have said wait-a-minute are being accused of panic, fearmongering, an inability to read statistics and even of not wanting a recovery to kick in so as to advance our unspecified agenda. Which presumably makes us no better than if we were on the payroll of the Foxagandists and Limbaughrubes who want President Obama to fail.
Is the intent of the happy-talkers to use fact that unemployment is getting worse at a better rate to chill the widespread rage over what has - during the past three decades - brought us to the economic precipice? You know: deregulation, deunionization, privatization, unfettered globalization, wage stagnation for the lower- and lower-middle-income groups, and an unprecedented transfer of wealth to the upper 20%, especially the top 1%? Is it to undermine any pressure for additional government action to improve matters? Beats me.
The facts are simple: the short-term outlook may have improved ever so slightly in April if you’re one of the people who didn't get laid off or who hasn’t been out of work for more than six months. But neither the medium nor long term presents any great cause for elation.
Even if April 2009 turns out to mark the bottom of this downturn, a one-month tapering off in the hundreds of thousands of Americans being added to the official unemployment queue does not signal an end in sight to terrible unemployment news. The bottom of the Great Depression, after all, was reached in December 1932. But the Depression and widespread pain it caused did not end a couple of months or even a couple of years later.
And there’s some considerable evidence that the Great Recession’s recovery, when it comes, will be plodding and jobless.
Critics have for years rightly called into question the BLS job numbers – and especially the bogus official rates of unemployment that most traditional media report each month. It’s outrageous that the official rate doesn’t count jobless people who are so discouraged they’ve temporarily given up looking for work. Then, too, these statistics are made far less valuable than they should be by the failure to include some measure of underemployment in the official rate, including those in the "informal" economy.
Still, flawed as they are, BLS data do tell a story that fades the pale glow of the one told Friday. These are collected in a monthly survey of 60,000 households called the Current Population Survey.
The CPS shows that when Bill Clinton turned over the keys to the White House in January 2001, 6 million Americans were unemployed. For the next eight years, those numbers rose and fell but never again went as low as 6 million. When Bush left office this January, 11.6 million Americans were out of work. Now it’s 13.7 million. And that won’t be the peak.
Here’s what it looks like since the recession kicked in December 2007:
So, currently, the official count is 13.7 million unemployed. Optimists say another 1-2 million will join them by December even if the recession ends. Pessimists say 3-4 million will. Either way that’s terrible. And as these terrible numbers accumulate, they will boost some other already terrible numbers:
A record for the length of a recession unmatched since the 1930s. A record high for the number of people collecting unemployment benefits. A record unmatched since the 1930s for the percentage of the unemployed who have been out of work for more than six months. A record high for the number of people collecting food stamps. A record low since 1964 for the number of hours production workers put in weekly: 33.2 hours. A record high for foreclosure filings. And on and on.
Only the foolish can put a smiley face on Friday’s jobless report. Thankfully, Bob Herbert at The New York Times refused to do so:
Joblessness is like a cancer in the society. The last thing in the world that you want is for it to metastasize. And that’s what’s happening now. Don’t tell me about the stock market. Don’t tell me about the banks and their perpetual flimflammery. Tell me whether poor and middle-income families can find work. If they can’t, the country’s in trouble...
Mr. Mishel [at the Economic Policy Institute] has been trying to call attention to the human toll caused by job losses on this vast scale. The institute estimates that the poverty rate for children is in danger of increasing from 18 percent, which is where it was in 2007, the last year for which complete statistics are available, to a scary 27.3 percent in 2010.
For black children, you don’t want to know. But I’ll tell you anyway. The poverty rate for black kids was 34.5 percent in 2007. If the national unemployment rate rises, as expected, to the vicinity of 10 percent next year, the poverty rate for black children would rise to 50 percent or higher, analysts at the institute believe. ...
To get a sense of the task ahead, consider that 7.8 million jobs would have to be created just to bring us back to where we were when the recession began. That’s because the working-age population has continued to grow since then. The economy has to create about 127,000 jobs a month just to keep up with population growth. That comes to more than 2 million jobs since the start of the recession, which you then add to the 5.7 million that have been lost.
There is no light yet at the end of this tunnel.
I’m an optimistic pessimist. I think there’s a chance we might actually come out of the current recession ready for some serious restructuring after decades of the economic pretending and oligarchical banditry that has created the mess we’re in. But only a slight chance. Word on the re-regulatory front is not all that encouraging. Likewise the likelihood of getting any payback, both literally and figuratively, in what Naomi Klein labels the "greatest heist in monetary history."
Being hopeful is important. We need to build confidence. But nothing will be accomplished by blind cheerleading. As Klein recently told Joan Juliet Beck:
JOAN: In The New Yorker, you’re quoted as saying, "This is a progressive moment. It’s ours to lose." What did you mean?
NAOMI: Capitalism is on trial. And you have an organic, grassroots, sort of spontaneous revolt against the elite – which is actually what we’re hearing with this rage at CEOs, and bonuses and government collusion with the elites. Rage is an opportunity. The rage is there, and the country is seething, the world is seething with rage. The question is, where is it going to be directed? I feel there’s a moral responsibility for the Left and for progressives to provide an alternative in this moment that is moral, that is principled, that is just, that is hopeful, because if we don’t, then that anger is so easily directed at "those damn Mexican immigrants," at "the first African American president." So I feel a tremendous sense of urgency. It’s not just, "Hey, our time has come." It’s, "We’d better get our act together because this anger is going somewhere."
The last thing to do now is encourage a dissipation of that seething. The fact that jobless numbers are getting worse at a better rate should not be allowed to squelch a progressive push for deep restructuring, for demanding corporate accountability and penalizing its opposite, for setting us on a fresh path in which the economy and the environment aren’t treated as separate entities. It’s certainly no time to listen to blue dogs and Republicans who express more concern about federal deficits than out-of-work citizens.
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