A Quiet Factor in the Unemployment Rate

Time marches on.

People look for work for beating out a living. They get a little money ; get credit cards; try to keep up with the Jones's. One day they wake up , & realize , Hey! I can't stretch it anymore! They put in overtime. Taxes take the biggest chunk. They try til they can't sleep anymore. They sometimes wind up divorcing, or in bankruptcy court. Then just when we think it can't get ANY worse, guess what comes along ? RECESSION..... Layoffs , well; maybe we can make it on unemployment til things get better... things rock along and benefits run out . kids need dental work. Wife ( if you still have one) needs surgery. Female problems. Well; you know , if we had just saved our money like our parents taught us, we just might not be in this pickle. Certainly , we would have been in a better situation than sitting here with our car repossesed & our lights cut off. I'll bet you if we get through this ; we ARE going to save that paltry$5.00 a week if that's all we can afford . I bet we'll throw toss credit cards in thr trash next time ; too !! Five years later; NAH... We forgot all about that misery... lol Friends ; I hope not !!

Mike of AL @ Sep 24, 2009 20:16:39 PM

Fed Up with Business as Usual

I agree with RTJ of Florida, and Muser of NM.

The deck is stacked, the game is rigged.

I think that the biggest culprits are corporate execs who get multi-million dollar bonuses, even in years when their company has a loss. It is unjust when these corporate execs reduce the wages of the ordinary workers while simultaneously padding their own pockets with ridiculous bonuses and golden parachutes.

Think auto company execs, think Bank of America, Goldman Sachs, Merrilly Lynch brokerage house. It's just wrong. It's not illegal, but should be.

Barack Obama, please spur congress to limit corporate CEO bonuses to 10% of profit, and have it paid out over 5 years, depending on the profit in each of these years. This encourages corporations to focus on long-term, not short term, and it encourages top execs to mentor those under them, because your bonus might be largely dependent on how well your successor does with company profits.

Tax bonuses and stock options at double the average income tax rate. Eliminate capital gains taxes. Stop helping the rich get richer at the expense of everyone else.

Signed, a fed-up mom who hopes the world will be a better place for all of our children, not just for the rich and lucky ones.

Maggie of WI @ Sep 24, 2009 20:06:16 PM

Barely Employed

2 years ago, I was making 12$ an hour, for about 55 hours a week on average of work. That company lost its contract, and I was the last in, first out. Now I'm making 8$ an hour for 16 hours a week in the sort of job our wonderful service economy creates in abundance. I've gone from being a subcontracted merchandiser to a gas station attendant. According to the government's numbers, I'm not unemployed.

Not all jobs are created equal, and anecdotal evidence from the scores of customers I talk to every day suggests that this is a very common problem. People are facing cutbacks in hours, working for lower pay, and are generally underemployed to the point of being unable to sustain themselves, let alone a family.

Our government needs to address the root causes of the economic collapse, that being government intervention in the housing market, creating artificial and unsustainable lending standards.

We must also take a look at the underlying cause of the economic woes of the average American worker. That is, the loss of heavy industry to developing nations. Over the past thirty or forty years, this country has outsourced its best paying unskilled jobs.

This has created a situation where you either have a parent that can send you to college, a parent or friend that can get you into a trade, or work in a low-paying service job. The middle class is evaporating, replaced by an upper class consisting of those with education and contacts, and a lower class made up of everyone else. In short, we are becoming a two-class society, with upward mobility increasingly impossible for the lower class, except for those rare blessed few that can work a 40 hour week while going to college and possibly raising a family at the same time.

To make matters worse, many companies are starting to require college degrees for even the most basic of jobs, effectively reinforcing the emerging two-class structure. All job-search tools are designed by college graduates and configured to help college graduates, not having any methods of filtering out the jobs that require degrees for those of us that don't and won't ever have them. This makes it even harder for those of us who didn't waste 4 years learning to drink beer while standing on our heads to find employment.

We need to focus on creating long-term jobs for the average worker, not just temporary construction contract jobs that expire when their project is completed (as with the so-called stimulus bill). That means creating entry-level jobs that do not require college degrees, so that the larger part of the workforce can get back to work. This may require some specialized apprenticeship and on-the-job training programs, but it's just about the only way we'll ever be able to have our parents' standard of living.

RTJ,

Lakeland, FL

Vital Stats:

27. Single. Underemployed. H.S. Graduate. 1.5 years college (mathematically challenged, can't graduate). Angry Regular American.

RTJ of FL @ Sep 07, 2009 16:45:52 PM