Job Growth Picks Up, But Unemployment Insurance Crisis Looms

[marmar]

from In These Times:



Job Growth Picks Up, But Unemployment Insurance Crisis Looms

Saturday
May 8
10:00 am

By David Moberg


It seems as if every monthly employment report is a mixture of good and bad news. Friday was no exception. Job growth picked up steam last month, with the economy generating 290,000 new jobs in sectors such as manufacturing, federal census taking, business services and healthcare, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics.

But raised hopes of finding a job encouraged even more workers who had given up hope to renew their search, and as a result, the unemployment rate inched up two-tenths of a point to 9.9 percent. Indeed, prospects are better for those 195,000 re-entrants to the workforce–but still very bad: there are 5.5 workers unemployed for every job opening, down from a peak of 6.25, but still nearly double the worst point of the 2001 downturn.

And Economic Policy Institute president Larry Mishel calculates that there are another 1.9 million people still in the wings waiting to enter the job search just to get back to the level before the recession. Ironically, workers with less than a college education–who as always were hit hardest and first–were gaining some jobs, while better educated workers were still losing jobs.

The economy—and therefore jobs—just hasn’t grown fast enough, despite the beneficial effects of the stimulus.

But as that tapers off later this year and as state and local governments slash jobs in their new fiscal year, the unemployment rate is likely to remain high, and the percentage of the unemployed who have been out of work six months or more–already at a record high of 45.9 percent–will likely continue to grow.

That makes the news from Thursday’s hearings before the House Ways and Means Committee’s Subcommittee on Income Security and Family Support even more grim. The nation’s unemployment insurance safety net, already full of holes and inadequate, faces a financial crisis that could lead to drastic cutbacks at a time when workers need help and the economy needs the powerful stimulus of unemployment insurance. ...........(more)

The complete piece is at: http://www.inthesetimes.com/working/entry/5951/job_growth_picks_up_but_unemployment_insurance_crisis_looms/

[ipaint]

1. Long-Term Unemployment: The Bad News In The Jobs Report

"More and more people are out of work for longer and longer. The number of jobless folks out of work for more than six months rose by 169,000 to 6.7 million, constituting 45.9 percent of all the unemployed.
"We've never quite experienced this in America -- a recession that's gone on so long that even when job creation is strong, people have been out of work so long that it's difficult for them to climb out," said Andrew Stettner, deputy director of the National Employment Law Project. "It stretches beyond the kinds of supports that we are used to providing."
Even though Congress has extended unemployment benefits to the point where in many states the jobless can get 99 weeks of benefits, it's still not enough -- hundreds of thousands of people are exhausting their benefits every month.
The picture is especially ugly for older folks who've lost their jobs. Though the unemployment rate for workers older than 55 is lower than for the rest of the labor force, older workers are more likely to suffer long-term unemployment."

...A Rutgers University survey released Tuesday found that 80 percent of people unemployed last August remained jobless in March, and most of the people who found jobs were working for less money.

"We don't have enough tools to keep people out of homelessness, out of hunger," Stettner said. "It's just really tragic what's happening."

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2010/05/07/long-term-unemployment-th_n_567684.html


The logical end result of reaganomics practiced by both parties. The inventors of the term jobless recovery and the creation of a growing permanent class of contingent workers have destroyed the country.

[tonysam]

3. Neither party is willing to do a goddamned thing about it, either

They haggle with a phony "concern" about the deficit while people are risking homelessness.

They don't give a shit.

It's time the millions of unemployed GIVE a shit and throw these bums out of office.

[Imajika]

2. The census worker jobs are temporary too....

From the article:

"It seems as if every monthly employment report is a mixture of good and bad news. Friday was no exception. Job growth picked up steam last month, with the economy generating 290,000 new jobs in sectors such as manufacturing, federal census taking, business services and healthcare, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics."

Why even list the "federal census taking" jobs? Won't all those jobs be gone by around summer anyway.

It is great news that we got a good job number, but the tens of thousands of temporary census worker jobs kinda distort that figure and make it look better than it actually is don't they?.