Those elusive jobs

The Republican line du jour of there being plenty of jobs out there for the taking if the snooty, lazy, drug-addicted hobos would just deign to fill them is completely blown away by The Atlantic's Daniel Indiviglio, with this simple chart.

Indiviglio states the obvious:

This chart shows a serious problem. That giant gap consists of Americans who are unemployed, and couldn't get a job even if they wanted to. This emphasizes the need for Congress to extend unemployment benefits. It's pretty clear that millions of Americans remain unemployed because the jobs aren't there -- not becuase they aren't trying hard enough to find them. In fact, it's not even close.

More stimulus to create more jobs would be a really smart solution right now, but that seems not to be on anyone's to-do list. The only solution available in the immediate term--extend unemployment benefits. But it also means extending the critical assistance to states that the Republicans have also been blocking, because another half a million jobs are likely to be lost without it.