It's Not Getting Better
by digby
As soon as all the GOP Governors fire their public employees things should start looking up. Right?
The unemployment rate in mid-February is 0.8 percentage points lower than it was at this time a year ago, compared with a 1.1-point improvement at the end of January. This suggests that jobs are less available now than they were in January.
More troubling, however, is the surge in underemployment. On this broader basis, current job conditions are barely improved from what they were at this time last year. Essentially, what has happened over the past year is that some people who were unemployed got part-time jobs but are still looking for full-time work. This is not much to show for a year in which many macro-economic indicators showed improvement.
This is likely why Gallup's self-reported spending remains stuck in "new normal" even as consumer optimism continues to hit new highs. Jobs remain the key to getting the U.S. economy moving, and mid-February underemployment results suggest little or no progress is being made in that regard.
If 10% unemployment is the new normal then how are these people supposed to survive when the conservatives finally zero out unemployment insurance?
If economists are seeing this as "structural" and therefore nothing is to be done, we are well and truly fucked. This cannot be considered "normal" by any stretch of the imagination.
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