Working Life

Job growth is allegedly “steady” but unemployment increases — so said the statistics. But, here’s the thing — these stats still miss an important point.

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   Paul Krugman wasn’t actually writing directly to the Catfood Commission II (speaking for myself, I decline to use a superlative being used by many to describe the Congressional fool’s gathering because the superlative implies higher quality). But, his message, looking at the debacle in Europe, is very clear: austerity is a loser.    In [...]

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   To return to my theme of "numbers are a bitch"…here is one to chew on: $1.3 trillion. It’s a gap–a BIG gap…and in that number is part of the story of the crisis we’re in.   At this point, after checking in with my colleague and friend Dean Baker, the Gross Domestic Product is [...]

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   My head hurts every time I read about the phony crisis about the debt and the deficit–whether it be the idiotic headlines bowing down to the rating agencies’ hand-wringing (the same bozos who did such a good job blessing the financial instrument trash churned out by Wall Street) or the daily headlines about a [...]

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   Ok, fine, this is a good thing, via The Wall St. Journal: The number of U.S. workers filing new claims for jobless benefits slid last week to the lowest level in nearly two and a half years, indicating that labor-market conditions continue to improve. Initial unemployment claims declined by 34,000 to 388,000 in the [...]

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We are missing part of the anger that I think cuts across the political spectrum–and it goes right to the question: why is Angelo Mozilo not going to jail for a very long time? Because the political system still is not willing to jettison our coddling of the vast array of people who committed deep [...]

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I have always thought there is a huge gap between economists and numbers’ crunchers versus the reality-based world of workers. But, in the midst of the current economic crisis, it seems to me that the entire way we talk about "recessions" needs to be thrown out the window. It simply does not measure, and obscures, [...]

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Every single day that I campaign, someone comes up to me in the streets and says, "can you get me a job?". On one day this past weekend, I got literally a couple of dozen of those questions. The desperation in peoples’ voices is more urgent than I have heard in a long, long time [...]

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   This was predictable: This year is shaping up to be even worse than last for the millions of high school and college students looking for summer jobs. State and local governments, traditionally among the biggest seasonal employers, are knee-deep in budget woes, and the stimulus money that helped cushion some government job programs last [...]

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   If Democrats wonder why more than half the people in the country think that the party of FDR cares more about the concerns of big corporations, no need to look any further than this: House leaders cut the cost of the package by roughly $44 billion, in part to address complaints from Blue Dog [...]

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   A lot of pain is going to continue to wash across the country. Witness this info on the continued lag in the construction industry: Construction is a big employer and one of the better-paid sectors for men who lack a college degree. The sector has shed 2.1 million jobs from its peak in March [...]

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The danger in a blip of good news is that it’s simply that: a blip. It is certainly a good thing that the data shows that 162,000 jobs were added in March. But, the truth is that this is not much to celebrate. And it actually should be a siren to move dramatically to embrace [...]

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   Conventional wisdom–along with a great dose of greed and blind faith in a failed economic model–caused the immediate economic crisis we are still deeply mired in. Every day, brings another does of conventional wisdom. Here is one from The Wall Street Journal: U.S. household wealth fell by $14 trillion during the recession, sapping confidence [...]

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   I do not like to be negative. I’m actually quite the optimist, generally speaking. So, I admit to feeling uneasy that I’ve been presistently, regularly disbelieving about the talk of "economic recovery". I think that such talk ignores the actual FACTS and is largely driven by political imperatives–meaning, politicians who want to be re-elected [...]

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   There is a rhetorical firefight going on in Britain that is worth reading. It’s carrying on in the letters section of the Financial Times. It started with a call this past Sunday from 20 conservative economists that the British government immediately begin cutting back the fiscal budget–an echo to what we are hearing in [...]

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    I understand why many people do not expect much from most of the traditional media–particularly The New York Times. People don’t get the sense that the traditional media can get out of its own insular thinking to do hard, independent reporting about the facts.    The newest drumbeat being pushed by the traditional media [...]

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