The American economy in its present form is unsustainable. Indeed it's a false economy--a voodoo economy--based on thin paper and false hopes and promises. Every month, throughout the past three years, American consumers and businesses spent an average of $523 billion more on products and services from overseas than they did on American products and services. And the only job sectors that have maintained unemployment levels well below the national unemployment rate are white-collar, temporary clerical, government, health, and education.
The average unemployment rate since the end of the recession and through Nov. 2010 was 9.7 percent. In the month of November, the unemployment rate was 9.8 percent. During that same period, the average combined unemployment rate for white-collar professions, which include banking, finance, securities, and insurance, was 5.8 percent. Health care workers averaged 5.9 percent and government workers averaged 4.3 percent. The construction industry averaged 19.8 percent, the manufacturing industry 11.3 percent, and the durable goods industry averaged 12.1 percent. During that time, the Gross Domestic Product (GDP) rose slightly and fell slightly. The GDP is a measure of all goods and services produced in the United States whether the goods are produced by American or foreign owned companies.
There are now "officially" over 15 million Americans unemployed. However that amount significantly understates the actual unemployment numbers by millions, because unemployed workers are dropped from the "official" final unemployment count every month. The 15 million that are counted as unemployed have been unemployed for an average of 8 months. That is the highest average duration of unemployment since the Bureau of Labor Statistics began compiling those statistics. Moreover, since 1948 we haven't seen numbers anywhere close to that. We did however see those kind of numbers during the Great Depression which occurred throughout the 1930s and up through WWII.
Since the recession was declared officially over in June 2009, America has experienced an average net job loss of over 86,000 per month. In order to bring the unemployment rate down within the next two years to 5 percent (which is considered by many economists to be a "full employment level"), it will require the creation of at least 450 to 500 thousand new jobs every month beginning in January 2011.
America experienced a major recession in the early 80s during the Reagan Administration. The recession was severe and prolonged because the Federal Reserve put the breaks on the economy in order to reign in the inflationary spiral that occurred during that time. That recession began in July 81 and was declared over in Nov. 82. The unemployment rate at the beginning of the recession was 7.2 percent. It took until June 1984 before the unemployment rate went back down to 7.2 percent. During that time, substantial net job gains only started occurring in March 1983 at the average rate of 400,000 per month and totaled over 6 million.
America's last recession was declared officially over in June 2009. Since June 2009, the average monthly job growth has been minus 86,000. In other words, we haven't experienced any net job gains for the 18 month period beginning June 2009 and ending Nov. 2010. It's true that in some months during that period jobs were added. However it's now 18 months later and we still haven't made up for the 1.5 million jobs that were lost during that time let alone make up for half of the 15 million workers that remain unemployed as well as the 100,000-plus new monthly entrants to the American workforce.
Unless we start seeing positive job growth in the neighborhood of 200,000 to 300,000 consistently and without fail every month, we're not even beginning to get out of the unemployment woods. We've got a serious long term unemployment problem here in America and the Bureau of Labor Statistics understates the problem by millions every month in its "Employment Situation Summary".
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