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Quote Of The Day: Let’s Use The Word “Depression”

Posted by JOE GANDELMAN, Editor-In-Chief in Economy.
Dec 5th, 2008 | Comments

Former Clinton administration Labor Secretary Robert Reich gives us our quote of the day. Writing in his weblog he says this:

Today’s employment report, showing that employers cut 533,000 jobs in November, 320,000 in October, and 403,000 in September — for a total of over 1.2 million over the last three months — begs the question of whether the meltdown we’re experiencing should be called a Depression.

We are falling off a cliff. To put these numbers into some perspective, the November losses alone are the worst in 34 years. A significant percentage of Americans are now jobless or underemployed — far higher than the official rate of 6.7 percent. Simply in order to keep up with population growth, employment needs to increase by 125,000 jobs per month.

Note also that the length of the typical workweek dropped to 33.5 hours. That’s the shortest number of hours since the Department of Labor began keeping records on hours worked, back in 1964. A significant number of people are working part-time who’d rather be working full time. Coupled with those who are too discouraged even to look for work, I’d estimate that the percentage of Americans who need work right now is approaching 11 percent of the workforce. And that percent is likely to raise.

Read it in its entirety.

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mikkel

"Coupled with those who are too discouraged even to look for work, I’d estimate that the percentage of Americans who need work right now is approaching 11 percent of the workforce."

I'm not sure why he needs to estimate, it's contained in the jobs report. They don't talk about it but it's U-6 and is 12.5%.

Jim_Satterfield

Hey, we're only halfway to the Great Depression. Good news! At least for those who might seek to deny how serious things really are. It certainly seems that there are those willing to see the auto industry and its employees go under, tacking another few million onto the unemployment rolls. Meanwhile, the finance industry has not come close to doing what they were supposed to do with their bailout, which was to start the credit that our economy needs flowing again. Truth is, unless you want a crash as bad as the Great Depression was, we're going to have to swallow and provide a cushion keeping the current debt fueled system from crashing so hard that it makes the Great Depression seem like a cake walk. Look at the comment on Reich's blog about how Citi is treating its customers (Myself included.) even as they get this massive infusion of help from the government. I understand that the finance industry people are planning on coming back to Congress to ask for more of that money to be released. I think the only appropriate answer to that request is that they will have to swear under oath to Congress that they will mend their ways in terms of providing liquidity to the credit market, both business and consumer or their assets will be redistributed to someone who will do so. And the people responsible for this fraud on the American people can have some quality time in Federal prison. Can you tell that I'm annoyed by the big banks not doing what they were claiming they would do if only we (Through our duly elected representatives.) would agree to rescue them from their own stupidity?

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