New Normal: get used to it
by digby
Ponder the moral and social bankruptcy of this situation for a moment:
Recent surveys suggest more and more long-time unemployed workers are abandoning the search for another job and leaving the nation's workforce.
"And they are disproportionately older workers," Van Horn said. "We have a large number of older (unemployed) workers who are not old enough to retire, yet they are facing discrimination in the workplace and have found it nearly impossible to get another job."
[...]
And while economists note high levels of unemployment among older working-age people, joblessness is disproportionately high among younger workers as well.
Generation Opportunity, a U.S. nonpartisan youth advocacy organization which keeps close track of job levels for younger adults, reported even higher effective unemployment rates for those under 30.
"School is out for summer, and more than four out of five recent grads don't have jobs. My generation deserves better than an economy in which a 15.4 percent effective unemployment rate for 18-29 year olds is considered a good month," said Patrice Lee, director of outreach for the organization.
Even though the overall unemployment rate has been essentially flat since last October and is holding at high levels with 3.4 million Americans counted among the ranks of long-term unemployed, it's been five months since federal emergency unemployment benefits expired, leaving the burden up to the individual states.
The unemployment rate is now back to where it was before the Great Recession. It was 6.3 percent in May, same as the month before.
Still, the share of Americans who are employed is stalled below 59 percent, well below the 63.3 percent peak in March 2007 and 64.7 percent of April 2000, said William Spriggs, chief economist for the AFL-CIO. "That difference represents the multi-million job gap needed," Spriggs said.
Oh, and in case you were wondering what the plan is, try this out:
It may be quite a while before the jobless rate falls back to 5 percent and below, long the informal standard pegged by economists as a typical employment level for non-recession times.
But 5 percent may no longer be the norm.
In February 2011, economists at the San Francisco Federal Reserve Bank suggested that around 6 percent might be a more appropriate unemployment rate as the "new normal." But some analysts suggested even that target may be unrealistically low.
Basically they're telling a whole lot of people at the beginning and the end of their working lives to get used to being poor. And everyone else should be aware that their hold on any job is precarious and they need to do whatever the boss man tells them --- there are millions of others out there willing to work for less. The new normal.
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