The Depressing Job Chart Returns

I wrote a posting last July 2011 about the depth of the recession as measured by job loss, and included a startling chart from the folks at the Calculated Risk web log.  I've check in on occasion since, and as it has been some 20 months, I'm glad to re-post the latest update, but that is the only reason to be glad because the results continue to be dismal.

The chart measures all US recessions since World War II in terms of job losses and recovery to the pre-recession level, at which point the calculators consider the recession to be over in terms of job recovery.  As you can see, this is the most devastating recession by far and if current trends continue (rarely an accurate norm, since trends always continue until they stop), we won't see a return to job numbers equal to the pre-recession total until about May 2014.

But that is another misconception.  After all, the population has increased these last five years, so it is not just the number of jobs, but the percentage of jobs lost or gained.  Oddly enough, NPR calculated out that morsel: 

In other words, if this had been a typical recession and recovery, the US economy would now have 10 million more jobs than it did at the previous peak.  In fact, there are now three million fewer jobs. 

It has been said before that we need to create, at the very least, 150,000 jobs every month just to keep up with population growth.

To add sour icing to an already rancid cake, try this chart as well:

So who is being re-hired in this up-tick of employment figures?  Why, that would be those out of work for five weeks or less.  Any longer than that, and chances are dismal indeed, particularly in the steadily increasing numbers of those who have been out of work in excess of 27 weeks or more (yes, that would be the red line depicted).  That doesn't include the massive number of those who have given up altogether.

So what is changing on the jobs front?  After all, the administration and the MSM (but I repeat myself) tout the fact of the "steadily improving economy", which is true in and of itself.  (Chris Matthews, being Chris Matthews, is over the moon about the "amazing economy".)  For example, the stock market is up, but I don't suppose that has anything to do with the plunging value of the dollar, does it?  In the meanwhile, people who are still desperately looking for a job are to wait still longer, while mollified by jobless benefits (unemployment compensation) that extend to the horizon, financed by taxpayer dollars (paid by those who work and who actually pay taxes, not the 47% who Mitt Romney factually cited) which adds still further to the deficit burden; or with money borrowed from China (which is increasingly cutting back, despairing of the Americans ever getting their house in order); or with money printed by the Fed out of thin air. 

Thus not only will our future generations be burdened with a massive debt to cover our excesses, but they will pay the debt with money that is decreasing in value.  And all this in time to catch the retiring seniors who face whatever future is left with pensions covered by those same weakening dollars.  All the while, we await the trump of that other modern Horseman of the Apocalypse, the wave of inflation that must sooner or later attack our economy still further, to balance out the flood of dollars flowing from the Fed.

And who is responsible for this morass?  Well, according to Obama and the MSM (see above), for the first four years of his regime it was all Bush's fault, with never a mention of the housing crisis brought on by Dodd-Frank.  Now into his second shot at "fundamentally transforming" America, he knows that even the Bush excuse has more than worn thin, so it is now the Sequester, Obama's original idea but now blamed on the Republicans who simply won't do as they are told.

Have a nice day.

(H/T: Lonely Conservative)