One of the Blogs that I follow, http://www.calculatedriskblog.com/, that is fantastic by the way, just published a table of recent Employment Statistics. The table was a comparison from the month when this recession started, December 2007 and the latest month of data, May 2011. These numbers are staggering to say the least.
A few that popped out at me were that on population growth alone, we are down 6.157 million jobs. In December 2007 the unemployment rate was 5.00%. Today it is 9.1%. There are 6.2 million people unemployed for 27 weeks or more as of May 2011. This is in comparison to December 2007 when it was only 1.3 million. That's worth saying again. 6.2 million vs. 1.3 million!
The true unemployment rate is 15.8% today, which includes the Unemployed, the Part-Time for Economic Reasons, the Marginally Attached to the Labor Force and the Discouraged Workers. In December 2007, it was about half that number at 8.8%.
In order to get back to December 2007 levels, we need to add 6.94 million jobs. Not Part-Time for Economic Reasons, not Marginally Attached to the Labor Force, but Full-Time Jobs!
You would think with numbers like these, the Obama Administration and Congress would be burning the midnight oil trying to come up with some solutions. They seem to be squarely focused on kicking the can down the road and going on summer vacations.
The voters really have to clean house in the upcoming 2012 election and also for a long series of elections to come. We need some people who will put America first, rather than those who only care about their own self interests. The only kind of legislation that we are going to see from this group is ideologically correct legislation. In other words, the Democrats will only agree to things that benefit their electability and the same holds true for the Republicans.
No matter what. Get out and Vote!
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