Mort Zuckerman, the most accurate analyst of the joblessness disaster, writing in the Wall Street Journal:
...the fundamental economic issue facing America... is jobs—their scarcity and the quality of those that people manage to find.
The unemployment rate is about 13% if you take into account people "marginally attached" to the workforce. The Bureau of Labor Statistics reports that at the end of 2013 there were about 27.3 million part-time jobs, making up about 18% of the workforce.
Youth unemployment is a stunning 14%. It is particularly distressing that the labor participation rate has hit a 35-year low of 63.2%.
This rate has dropped most noticeably for men and women in their prime earning years between the ages of 25 and 54 and is up only slightly for those 55 and over.
No wonder recovery is a dirty word to millions of Americans who continue to experience hardship five years after the Great Recession of 2008-09. On Friday, the Commerce Department announced that fourth-quarter economic growth for 2013 was even lower than predicted, coming in at a desultory 2.4%.
That is bad news for Americans who need work.
Job losses in the low-wage and minimum-wage category is the critical issue of our day: Too many of the poor are not working full time or at all.
Income inequality isn't so much the problem as income inadequacy. A more robust economy, stoked by growth-oriented policies from Washington, would help produce the jobs and opportunities that millions of Americans need to climb the economic ladder....
----
Link: http://online.wsj.com/news/articles/SB10001424052702303426304579403711603102886?
No comments:
Post a Comment
Note: Only a member of this blog may post a comment.