Cut the Little Mary Sunshine Routine
Last month, 200,000 jobs were added, according to the Labor Department. And today mainstream media hopped to their role as corporate cheerleaders with descriptive phrases like upbeat jobs report, jobs picture brightened, economic recovery gains momentum and other misleading drivel masking the still grim reality of massive unemployment in this country.
As Roger Hickey at Campaign for America's Future writes:
"Today's report of 200,000 jobs created in December means that the economy is barely growing at the rate needed to keep up with the growth of the labor force. Economists estimate that the U.S. will have to create more than 350,000 jobs per month – for the next three years – to get the unemployment rate down to 6 percent.The fact that the unemployment rate has declined to 8.5 percent has got to mean that many more people have become so discouraged that they stopped looking for work (and thus are not counted as part of the labor force).
"The U.S. economy needs 4 percent to 5 percent growth to replace the 5.2 million jobs lost since 2007 and to keep up with new people who need jobs. But most forecasters predict that our economy will be lucky to grow at a 2 to 3 percent rate this year.
"Clearly, if we don’t want to stay stuck at high levels of unemployment – and the growing inequality that comes with stagnant growth -- our government needs to take stronger steps to create jobs."In summary, today’s jobs report shows that our economy continues to struggle to create jobs. After more than two years of official `recovery,’ we are still not growing fast enough to make significant dents in the unemployment rate (and much of this month’s decline comes from discouraged workers giving up on their job search)."
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