Working Life

   On a plane here soon this morning so just a quick post…you will recall that I am a skeptic about the "recovery" rhetoric, largely because people are just hammered so hard now, after years of no real wage increases, that the concept of when the "recovery" comes will be mostly relevant for government statisticians […]

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Today brings in stark relief the economic chasm in America: the Depression is here, if you measure what real people are going through, but, on Wall Street, the party continues as, in Marie Antoinette style, financial executives reap millions while the rest of the people grasp for crumbs.   Today, David Leonhardt has an excellent […]

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   Allegedly: The total number of U.S. workers claiming state unemployment benefits plunged at the start of June by their largest amount since November 2001, breaking a streak of 21-straight increases in a rare reprieve for the unemployed in this recession. But new jobless claims rose slightly as expected last week, suggesting that while job […]

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   I may be wrong about this but, excuse me, why exactly is the president extending new powers to the Federal Reserve Board as part of his new proposal to reregulate the financial services industry? The New York Times doesn’t even bother to dig into this but The Wall Street Journal does: The Fed emerges […]

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   From time to time, I try to remind folks that there is a strong link between foreign policy and economics. Here is an example, courtesy of the International Labor Organization: The annual report of the International Labour Office (ILO) on the situation of workers of the occupied Arab territories depicts “ a dismal human, […]

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   Yesterday, I highlighted the harsh wages cuts being demanded by The Boston Globe–and, yesterday, the workers voted narrowly to reject the cuts, after which management, in typical bully behavior, said it would now unilaterally impose the 23 percent cut. Before I move on to a bigger point–I wonder if Arthur Schulzberger, the publishers and […]

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   Just a reminder that unemployment isn’t just a burden here (from The Wall Street Journal): Russian unemployment has reached its highest level this decade as thrift replaces a culture of consumer spending, official data released Friday showed. The number of unemployed in Russia rose to 7.7 million in April, or 10.2% of the total […]

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   One of the things I find most tiring–and there are, granted, many candidates for that list–is the refrain that "well, things may be bad in the U.S. but look how much worse it is in Europe?" I get that nonsense all the time, particularly when I have to debate the free-marketeers and the defenders […]

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   When you think about having a job, the logical person would consider that a situation where you were making enough money to pay your bills, and maybe save a bit. Anything less is not real employment. And by that measure, our unemployment figure is more than 15 percent.    So, each month, the media […]

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   The Wall Street Journal has a story today looking at what a modern depression would look like. The story asserts: There is no consensus definition for "depression." Harvard University economist Robert Barro defines it as a decline in per-person economic output or consumption of more than 10%, and puts the odds of a depression […]

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