IGX

The talk in Washington these days is all about budget deficits, tax rates, and the “fiscal crisis” that supposedly looms in our near future. But this chatter has eclipsed a much more pressing crisis here and now: almost thirteen million Americans are still unemployed. Though the job market has shown some signs of life in recent months, the latest figures on new jobs and on unemployment-insurance claims have been decidedly unimpressive. We are stuck with an unemployment rate three points higher than the postwar average, and the percentage of working adult Americans is as low as it’s been in almost thirty years. What’s most troubling is that so much of this unemployment is long-term. Forty per cent of the unemployed have been without a job for six months or more—a much higher rate than in any recession since the Second World War—and the average length of unemployment is about forty weeks, a number that has changed very little since 2010. The economic recovery has now lasted nearly three years, but for millions of Americans it hasn’t yet begun.

Being unemployed is even more disastrous for individuals than you’d expect. Aside from the obvious harm—poverty, difficulty paying off debts—it seems to directly affect people’s health, particularly that of older workers.

ButterCupPowerRanch wrote:Yes We Can!

Turdacious wrote:

ButterCupPowerRanch wrote:

Turdacious wrote:
*swoon*

Jonny Canuck wrote:looking at the graph I see the peak was at the end of the clinton years and the beginning of the bush term. what happened?

Crash of the Dot.Com bubble?

Jonny Canuck wrote:

Crash of the Dot.Com bubble?

the dotdotcom bubble lasted 8 years?

Blaidd Drwg wrote:

Jonny Canuck wrote:

Crash of the Dot.Com bubble?

the dotdotcom bubble lasted 8 years?

actually around here in the PNW it really did last about that long...most of us figured it was fixing to pop in 97-98 This late 90's time frame coincided with the beginning of local housing weirdness.

has nothing to do with 80's movies or shitty presidents et al.

Blaidd Drwg wrote:The low participation rate tells me the country is ripe for some sweet movies... Terminator, Weird Science and Goonies? all 1980....Expect excellence in bread and circuses

http://www.retrojunk.com/movie/list/1980/2/pop/