New chairman: Unemployment 'going to stay high' in near term

[The Northerner]

President Obama's new chairman of the Council of Economic Affairs (CEA) said Sunday that the national unemployment rate will not decrease significantly anytime soon.

Austan Goolsbee, who Obama announced on Friday will replace Christina Romer as head of the CEA, told "Fox News Sunday" that the president is doing all he can to help the economy, but the recession was so deep, it will take some time for employment numbers to recover.

"I don't think the unemployment rate will be coming down significantly at any time in the near future," Goolsbee said.

Unemployment for the nation reached 9.6 percent in August, and Goolsbee and other White House officials regularly concede they expect it to get worse before it gets better.

Goolsbee echoed that forecast on ABC's "This Week" Sunday. "It's going to stay high," he said of the unemployment rate. "This recession is the deepest in our lifetimes, the deepest since 1929. If you take the people thrown out of work in the 1982 recession, the 1991 recession, the 2001 recession, not only is this bigger, this is bigger than all of those combined. So more than 8 million people lost their jobs.

"It's going to take a significant push on our part and time before that comes down," he said. "I don't anticipate it coming down rapidly."

Read more: http://thehill.com/blogs/blog-briefing-room/news/118221-new-economic-chairman-unemployment-going-to-stay-high-in-near-term

[RKP5637]

1. Much as I said sometime ago, the new norm will be 10%, but the "real" rate

is nearer 20% if you count underemployed, those that have simply quit looking and those getting old that would like to work, etc. But no politician is going to talk about the "real" rate.

And when is the last time any politician talked about the lower class... the homeless... and also the growing horrible areas in our cities, the small towns decaying, the empty strip malls, all the crap going on. A lot if it's swept under the rug by all of the politicians.

[dixiegrrrrl]

2. The deepest since 1929?

which led to a Great Depression a couple years later.

So the recession of 2008...2 years ago....is now a ....what?

No one wants to say the D word.

[andym]

3. Probably will need to spend more government money to create jobs

with a jobs program, or a small business jobs creation program.

Unfortunately, with the likelihood that the people who created the mess (Republicans) are coming back to power, at best nothing will get done, which could mean a very long period of unemployment....

[Panaconda]

4. But I was told this is the FASTEST jobs recovery in decades

http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=show_mesg&forum=389&topic_id=9108420&mesg_id=9115848

[Hannah Bell]

5. duh.

[Amerigo Vespucci]

6. It's because the Have Mores will stop creating jobs if we end the Bush Tax Cuts

You know, the jobs they have been creating for the last ten years instead of investing the money or otherwise spending it on themselves or their mistresses or buying that third vacation home or yacht they've had their eye on for a while. All of those jobs. And we will have no one but ourselves to blame for it.

:eyes: