The thumb suckers in Washington were quick to extend unemployment for 3 million Americans for whom benefits expired January 1st. Too quick! Nobody wants to draw attention to the bleak job situation…
The U.S. economy, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics, has been creating a little over 100,000 jobs a month for the last two years. All the “experts” are more or less happy with that number because they say it’s not going to improve the unemployment rate, but it’s not going to make it worse, either.
What nobody anywhere will tell you is that (1) it takes about 150,000 new jobs a month just to keep even with population growth (young adults entering the labor force for the first time and recent college graduates looking for their first job), (2) the U.S. gives roughly 100,000 new work visas to foreign nationals every month, (3) the U.S. issues roughly 90,000 permanent green cards to qualified illegal immigrants each month and (4) an average of 100,000 illegal immigrants enter the country every month on average.
The general rule on Wall Street is that we need to add 400,000 jobs a month over several year’s time to get the unemployment rate back down to 4% or 5%. The truth is that adding that number of jobs won’t even tread water.
Everybody believes the economists because, lo and behold, the unemployment rate has actually dropped a bit lately, to 7.8% now. The REAL unemployment rate – the unemployed, those working part time needing full time jobs and the discouraged workers who have just plain stopped looking for work – is 15%.
All things considered, this is the worse unemployment situation since the Great Depression. The really scary part is that nobody in Washington even talks about extending unemployment benefits beyond 99 weeks any more. Six months ago this was a major point of contention.
Now Washington doesn’t give a hoot about the long term unemployed.
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