For the first time that I am personally aware of, a large corporate media outlet has finally reported on the under-reported U-6 unemployment number (which measures total unemployed plus workers whose employers make them work less than full-time but want to work full-time). In watching CNN this morning, a reporter did start with the U-3 number, newly reported at 10.2%, the highest in 26 years. In addition, however, the reporter made sure to mention the U-6 number of 17.5%. To be clear, they spent much more time on the 10.2% number, simply out of convenience and inertia.
I do have a question, though. Why now? Is it because a growing number of people outside of the corporate media are pointing toward the U-6 number? Or could it be perhaps that the 17.5% number sounds really bad for a country with a black President? CNN hasn’t exactly been the paragon on ethical journalistic practices. Over the years, they’ve slid toward covering what Fox Propaganda reports on. Fox’s carrying of the Con’s water has extended and intensified since a year ago when President Obama won the 2008 election.
Whatever their motivation, the U-3 number jumped 0.4% since last month, far more than science-lacking economists were predicting. Worse, the U-6 number jumped 0.5% since last month. That clearly shows us that this economy is still very weak.
American corporations have out-sourced millions of jobs in the past 20 years – they’re not coming back unless forced to do so. The bank bailouts of 2008-09 came with too few strings, so the banks are sitting on trillions of American taxpayer dollars instead of using them to loan money to worthy Americans, ensuring the recovery will take longer than it should. And instead of helping out the American middle class, the largest driver of our economy, ConservaDems continue to want to give tax breaks to the wealthiest, spend our children’s money on occupying two foreign nations and are working to derail critical health care reform. If you’re mad about any of this, contact your Congresspersons and tell them to stop holding back what we know is needed.
[Update]: Here is a graph of the percent in job losses in every recession since WWII and the length of time it takes to recover back to pre-recession job numbers. The 0-line is the peak employment prior to the recession. This is an excellent way to visualize how devastating the Great Recession has really been for average Americans. We’ve lost more jobs than were lost in the 1948 and 1958 recessions. The only worse conditions existed in the Great Depression. It will take years to recover from this, especially with the Cons shutting down every effort to do something positive. It took 2.5 and 4 years to recover from the last two recessions by this metric. Will it take 8 or 10 years to recover from this one?
