It is hard to imagine why Wall Street would cheer a 10.2 percent official unemployment rate since the stock market actually ended the day higher after this dismal news. Since the start of the recession, 8 million people have lost their jobs. A total of approximately 27 million people are unemployed, underemployed, or have given up looking for work. All the talk of improvement got people out looking for work again and that is why the unemployment rate saw a big jump from 9.8 percent to 10.2 percent even though employers “only†cut 190,000 in October. The data is deceptive for many reasons. For one, long-term unemployment is a sign that many jobs will be lost forever. The second more ominous point is that many sectors are experiencing mini-depressions.
All job cuts are not equal. If we had to sum it up, paper pushing jobs in the financial sector seem more immune than good producing jobs. Let us look at how the real employment situation is panning out:
[Graph]
Since the start of the recession 22 months ago in December of 2007, the government has added 78,000 jobs employing some 22.44 million people. It is interesting to look at local and state taxes that are being pummeled yet this sector is still up. It would be one thing to create new jobs but looking at the chart above, jobs were never cut. What did the government actually do? States like California implemented furloughs and raised taxes in many cases. Of course, the major issue in many states is the bloated pension system that puts an unsupportable burden on those who are actually still working. I can understand that someone needs to live and support themselves in retirement. But in California for example, you have many people receiving $100,000+ pensions and many only worked until their early 50s. What is clear from the above is the government did not cut any jobs on a net basis. So we can scratch this sector when looking at where the jobs were lost.
The next sector is the FIRE economy:
.. snip ..
The next sector is the FIRE economy:
All job cuts are not equal. If we had to sum it up, paper pushing jobs in the financial sector seem more immune than good producing jobs. Let us look at how the real employment situation is panning out:
[Graph]
Since the start of the recession 22 months ago in December of 2007, the government has added 78,000 jobs employing some 22.44 million people. It is interesting to look at local and state taxes that are being pummeled yet this sector is still up. It would be one thing to create new jobs but looking at the chart above, jobs were never cut. What did the government actually do? States like California implemented furloughs and raised taxes in many cases. Of course, the major issue in many states is the bloated pension system that puts an unsupportable burden on those who are actually still working. I can understand that someone needs to live and support themselves in retirement. But in California for example, you have many people receiving $100,000+ pensions and many only worked until their early 50s. What is clear from the above is the government did not cut any jobs on a net basis. So we can scratch this sector when looking at where the jobs were lost.
The next sector is the FIRE economy:
.. snip ..
The next sector is the FIRE economy:
