These Harsh Realities

We base this conclusion on an abundance of information coming in from the United States, our economic sustainer.

We now know that despite the claims of economic recovery, the combined total of 834,000 workers either losing their jobs or giving up the search for work is comparable to the 700,000-plus job losses recorded in January and February.

This September past marked the 21st consecutive monthly decline in jobs—the longest continuous drop in US employment since the Labor Department began collecting such figures in 1939.

All currently available indicators – inclusive of information that is both local and foreign – attest to the quite probable reality of the fact that while some sort of recovery is afoot in the United States of America, that turnaround is apparently jobless.

Currently available metrics show that, there are now six unemployed workers for every job opening in America. A survey by the Business Roundtable, an association of corporate CEOs, said 40 percent of its member companies intended to cut their payrolls during the next six months, while only 13 percent planned an expansion.

Some 15 million American workers are unemployed; nearly double the number out of work when the recession began at the end of 2007.

The average duration of unemployment is 26.2 weeks, more than half a year, the highest figure since the Labor Department began such statistics in 1948. One third of the unemployed, more than five million, have been out of work for 27 weeks or more. This is another Labor Department record.

In addition to those totally without work, another 9.1 million workers are classified as involuntary part-time, working far fewer hours a week than they need to sustain their living standards. The combined total of unemployed, discouraged and involuntary part-time workers has surpassed 25 million—a number that, in absolute terms, far exceeds the jobless toll during the Great Depression of the 1930s.

With some alarm we report that, virtually every sector of the economy showed job losses in September, including 53,000 in government, mainly due to layoffs by states and cities.

In other words, things are bad for the working class.

If things are bad for the working class in its guise as labourer, things are bad for those who sell things to the worker in his guise as consumer of goods and services.

More to the point, the entire system is today – and yet – wallowing in the throes of a major challenge.

Indeed, and as we have previously noted [and in this space, no less], those eternally optimistic folk among us "who believe that things are set to turn around and that once they do happy days would be back might well be in for a shock of a life-time.

"That shock – as we have previously suggested – turns on our considered conclusion that things as they once were are over.

"Of necessity, this implies that the search must be on for a new paradigm, a new way of coping in a time when austerity is set to become the new ‘normal’.

"While some might wish to dismiss this argument and then and thereafter consign us to oblivion, might be well-advised to take note how the current economic crisis has devastated America’s working people…"

Today we come – as it were – laden and burdened with similar information; intended this time around to underscore and drive home the point previously made.

The Associated Press provides information that supports our claims, and to the tee.

As they say, "Job hunters will face long odds well into next year. As the unemployment rate inches closer to 10 percent, most businesses are nowhere close to hiring again.

Uncertain about prospects for recovery — the economy's and their own — employers cut 263,000 jobs in September, the government said Friday. Unemployment crept up to 9.8 percent.

As the economy slowly turns around, sales are slowly growing and many companies are starting to make money again. But they're doing it by cutting costs, squeezing more work out of fewer employees and relying on part-timers and cheap overseas labor…"

An apparently shell-shocked Barack Obama is on record as he lists and depicts this conclusion as, "…a sobering reminder that progress to reverse the recession will come in fits and start."

There are tens of millions of Americans who are today hurting. This has effects on them and all those others who must now carry them.

And so it necessarily follows that our leaders must now wake to the reality that they must – as it were – lead as if this nation is in the throes of crisis. It is.