Two Separate Americas Continue To Exist in This Country
What to make of some the Pollyanna statements about the meager uptick in hiring.
Take it with a hefty dose of salt and the following bucket of cold water reality.
From Roger Bybee at Working In These Times: "The latest unemployment report, showing an unemployment rate stuck at 9.7% in February, offers ambiguous signals about the pace and breadth of the recovery.
"But more fundamentally, the figures simultaneously show a drastic slowing of job loss—35,000 Americans lost their job last month, compared to 650,000 one year earlier—combined with the troubling persistence of long-term unemployment.
"The United States even added 1,000 manufacturing jobs in a sector that has been hammered not only by the recession, but by the persistent off-shoring of job to low-wage nations like China and Mexico. But this gain is tiny compared with the 5.6 million jobs in manufacturing lost since 2000, representing 32% of the nation's industrial employment.
“ 'It’s almost two separate Americas,' said Lakshman Achuthan, managing director of the Economic Cycle Research Institute. One America is experiencing normalcy, while the other remains locked into the worst conditions seens since the Great Depression. “ 'They have been left behind, and their problems are not solved by recovery.' ”
"One indicator of the persisting crisis: males between the ages of 25 and 54—in their primary erning years—have a 19.4% unemployment rate. The picture is far worse among African American and Latino workers.
"The Times outlined a set of grim statistics that reveal ongoing long-term unemployment, and bleak prospects for bringing back high-wage manufacturing jobs given America's de-regulated policy toward the export of jobs...
"....Janesville, Wis., where General Motors closed down a huge assembly plant and wiped out the last 2,800 jobs there after years of relocating work to Mexico, is a community already stretched to the limit by high unemployment, foreclosures, families running short of food, increasing homelessness, and high levels of spousal abuse.
Take it with a hefty dose of salt and the following bucket of cold water reality.
From Roger Bybee at Working In These Times: "The latest unemployment report, showing an unemployment rate stuck at 9.7% in February, offers ambiguous signals about the pace and breadth of the recovery.
"But more fundamentally, the figures simultaneously show a drastic slowing of job loss—35,000 Americans lost their job last month, compared to 650,000 one year earlier—combined with the troubling persistence of long-term unemployment.
"The United States even added 1,000 manufacturing jobs in a sector that has been hammered not only by the recession, but by the persistent off-shoring of job to low-wage nations like China and Mexico. But this gain is tiny compared with the 5.6 million jobs in manufacturing lost since 2000, representing 32% of the nation's industrial employment.
“ 'It’s almost two separate Americas,' said Lakshman Achuthan, managing director of the Economic Cycle Research Institute. One America is experiencing normalcy, while the other remains locked into the worst conditions seens since the Great Depression. “ 'They have been left behind, and their problems are not solved by recovery.' ”
"One indicator of the persisting crisis: males between the ages of 25 and 54—in their primary erning years—have a 19.4% unemployment rate. The picture is far worse among African American and Latino workers.
"The Times outlined a set of grim statistics that reveal ongoing long-term unemployment, and bleak prospects for bringing back high-wage manufacturing jobs given America's de-regulated policy toward the export of jobs...
"....Janesville, Wis., where General Motors closed down a huge assembly plant and wiped out the last 2,800 jobs there after years of relocating work to Mexico, is a community already stretched to the limit by high unemployment, foreclosures, families running short of food, increasing homelessness, and high levels of spousal abuse.
"Of course, the suffering is not limited to blue-collar communities. A professional woman in Georgia recently wrote me an e-mail detailing her bleak situation. She held an important human-relations job in a company before she was seriously injured in an auto accident.
" 'I had worked almost eight years at a job … that I loved and been
promoted three times," she writes. "When I came back to work from
disability, I had a new boss and I was laid off.'
"Even with
college credentials and a professional expereience, she is finding work
impossible to find. "I live in the highest unemployment county in
Georgia," she says. " 'Job fairs turn people away at the door, because
there are so many of us trying to find work.' "
Posted by Kaz at 3/10/2010 4:59 PM 
Categories: Financial Crisis
Tags: Barack Obama Financial Crisis Environment Labor Events
Categories: Financial Crisis
Tags: Barack Obama Financial Crisis Environment Labor Events
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