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 May Jobless Rates Grim for Most StatesPosted on Jun 19, 2009
As the national unemployment rate in May rose to 9.4 percent, jobless rates jumped in 48 states and hit record highs for some, reaching double digits in many cases. The winners in this depressing race are Michigan (think GM and Chrsyler), Oregon and California, which is registering its highest unemployment rate to date, 11.5 percent.
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By Kay Johnson, June 22 at 10:34 am #
(Unregistered commenter)
My exeriences, living here in NYC, are similar to many of you who have written on this issue. About 2 1/2 years ago, I lost a steady freelance job—I worked in the music industry which collapsed, and was already caving in prior to Gee Dubya being appointed to the presidency in 2000. Merger after merger threw people out of work. Finally, in 2007, I was unable to find freelance work in the music industry—at least, not work that pays.
Today, I work as a researcher, when I can find work, and I walk across streets and up and down avenues in the city most days of the week. On nearly every block there are empty storefronts and office buildings—huge spaces for rent. The Virgin Mega-Stores are gone. The other day, I walked up 3rd Avenue to my apartment and noticed that an upscale furniture store is going out of business—Maurice Villency—between 56th and 57th Streets, taking up the entire block. Each day, I see additional empty spaces. I also see buildings for sale, as well as more “for rent” signs than I have seen in quite some time.
In my neighborhood of East Harlem, over the past two or three years, developers built a number of luxury condos. To my eye, they are all sitting empty. A friend of mine, who lives on East 72nd St., told me that she noticed that developers also built a lot of luxury condos in her neighborhood. Those, too, sit empty.
The other day, I was at the Municipal Archives on Chambers Street, across from City Hall, and afterwards, I walked up Lafayette Street, and kind of zig-zagged my way home. Entire blocks are sitting empty.
My conclusion, similar to many of your observations, is that the situation is much worse than they are telling us.
Report thisBy Inherit The Wind, June 20 at 11:23 pm #
EH,
For once we agree.
It seems so ironic that Reagan’s great line was:
“Recession is when your neighbor loses his job.
Depression is when you lose your job.
Recovery is when Jimmy Carter loses HIS job!”
The first two lines were very perceptive. The third was nothing more than a catty, witty, but nasty punchline.
But the first two lines were more perceptive than even the Ray-Gun realized. Of course, somebody else wrote them for him.
Report thisBy Bat Guano, June 20 at 10:37 pm #
(Unregistered commenter)
Ed - I agree completely. The systematic destruction of the American standard of living has continued unabated for at least the last 30 years aided by both parties while they gave tax breaks to companies to send jobs out of the country.
Apparently our “best and brightest’(all sarcasm intended) ‘never saw it coming’ that outsourcing high paying jobs would destroy our economy. Oh wait, they did, but they were paid off as usual to look the other way.
The best government money can buy can proudly say “Mission Accomplished”.
Check out shadowstats.com - click on alternative data for a more realistic view of the unemployment numbers.
Report thisBy Ed Harges, June 20 at 4:24 pm #
re: By Inherit The Wind, June 20 at 4:01 pm:
Yep, it’s hidden in plain sight.
Forget Bradbury’s Fahrenheit 451, with all the book-burnings. Forget Orwell’s vision of a careful, systematic falsification of history by an all-controlling government. Totally unnecessary. As it turns out, you can just blatantly deny the facts by defining them in a patently nonsensical new way, and Americans will accept it without a peep, even though they still have easy access to all the information necessary to judge for themselves.
Report thisBy Inherit The Wind, June 20 at 4:01 pm #
EH,
On this we agree.
Indices that for years were non-partisan and both sides relied upon became pressured to bend under Reaga-metrics to make Republicanism and Corporatism (not TRUE capitalism) look better and healthy when they were sick as a dying leper.
The unemployment rate was cooked 27 years ago.
It took years but the Consumer Price Index was cooked.
Remember when they reported Gross National Product—aka GNP? Gone. Now they report Gross DOMESTIC Product—GDP and it makes things look better than they are.
Yeah, on this EH, you are right. But the crazy thing is they hid it in plain sight. You don’t have to go to crazy web sites to find this—it was documented and reported in the NYT and WaPo, but nobody PAID ATTENTION—it’s all there in black and white, the bending and cooking of stats to create lies.
We’ve not yet realized that when your neighbor’s house is foreclosed on:
a) Your house is worth less
b) Your mortgager looks at your neighborhood as risky and may demand the MOST onerous payments they can impose
c) Your neighbor goes from being an earner to being a collector—the burden on you and businesses go up.
d) More businesses fail as the support base is lost with further foreclosures.
e) You have to pay MUCH higher insurance rates as your neighborhood declines.
f) YOU spend less on other things (see insurance) and the companies where you stop spending go under
g) etc, etc and the cycle worsens and feeds on itselfl
Meanwhile the Reaga-metrics make things seem rosy when YOU know they are not.
Report thisBy Ed Harges, June 20 at 2:15 pm #
ITW writes:
“And we all know after 6 months your benefits expire AND they no longer count you as unemployed…”
And isn’t that the most evil thing, ITW? It’s Orwellian, how they’ve trained us to accept these blatantly false unemployment numbers.
Except Orwell imagined that it would be harder. He imagined that in order to get the public to believe patently false nonsense, the government would systematically have to change all available records, alter the books in the libraries, force people to use a restricted new language, etc. Orwell didn’t imagine America, where after a week or two of saturation publicity, people will accept the most blatant lies, and forget anything contradictory they might have previously known.
Report thisBy sharonsj, June 20 at 2:06 pm #
(Unregistered commenter)
Try http://www.shadowstats.com and http://www.globaleconomicanalysis.blogspot.com for more information on the real state of the economy. Unemployment is probably double what the government claims. All other industries are having problems. What’s fascinating is the approx. 20% drop in traffic: the movement of trains, planes, buses, cars, trucks, and boats. Shipping is way down because nobody is buying much of anything; there’s no money left after paying for the basics. And I expect it to be much worse during the winter, when a lot of older people and the homeless are likely to freeze to death. But that’s what happens when Congress prefers to reward its corporate masters rather than save American lives. So you can kiss health care goodbye too.
Report thisBy hippie4ever, June 20 at 12:08 pm #
The economy in California is terrible: entire neighborhoods are now destroyed due to foreclosures. Stores are vacant, even the big box stores are going under. They are shutting down schools, libraries, hospitals, clinics: any social service is fair game. And yet…cannabis continues to be mainly a Mexican cartel operation, corporate farms and hi-tech firms pay no taxes, jobs continue to move to China, people hope Obama does something to help. For his part, the POTUS has hung California out to dry. He isn’t spending any money on us; it’s only for Wall Street and Insurance thugs.
Is it any wonder that this country is collapsing in on itself? There’s always money for imperialist wars, always money for prison, never money for education or health care. Imagine a house having little food, no medicine, no education, lots of guns, a crowded dungeon, 24/7 Faux News and a mealy-mouthed head of household. Throw in some liquor and maybe heroin (it’s gonna be dirt cheap now we’re in Afganistan).
Would you expect great things from such a household? Would you suggest its a model for the neighborhood? Yet that’s what and where we are.
Report thisBy Inherit The Wind, June 20 at 11:14 am #
As I drive through the towns of North-Central New Jersey, it’s eerie how many empty stores and office buildings I see. I don’t think there’s one shopping center or store cluster around that doesn’t have an empty unit, and frequently it’s an anchor.
Housing prices are plummeting, but not fast enough. Car dealers are desperate to move the vehicles, and more and more people are out of work.
I’m now at the beginning of my third month on unemployment, downsized, the first time I’ve been involuntarily unemployed in 30 years. I went to small jobs fair the other week, just for people in pharma with a BA/BS or better and 4 of 5 years of experience—only skilled professionals. The place was JAMMED with people and the lines to talk to the recruiters at each both were amazingly long. The big companies had layoffs, and the little ones as well.
But I’m lucky—and much, MUCH better off than most people I see or know: My spouse is still working and doesn’t SEEM to be at risk and we’ve cut back on spending and haven’t eaten into savings. Meanwhile, being handy with tools, I’ve had the time to take on tasks we’d normally have to pay someone to do, so we figure money we HAD to spend that saved us by being able to do it is money earned.
But, as I said, I’m lucky. I’ve seen people selling bits of treasured jewelry to have money to pay the gas bill when it was bitterly cold in Dec and Jan. I’ve seen people not answering their cells because it was bill collectors and they had to figure which one they HAD to pay with what meager money they had. I’ve seen friends burn through their life savings trying to get to the next job, out 6 months or more.
And we all know after 6 months your benefits expire AND they no longer count you as unemployed…Reaga-metrics at work to go along with Reaganomics. Reaga-metrics added the military into the population denominator to make unemployment look smaller.
So….if you remove the mil from the pop, and add those whose UI expired, then add those who went from UI to part-time jobs, you’ll see unemployment at something like the 15% level, not 9.4%
But, as I said, I’m lucky and I’m hopeful something will break for me soon so I can get back to work.
Report thisBy Ed Harges, June 19 at 11:18 pm #
By Freddie Beer, June 19 at 9:45 pm:
Dang right. The real percentage of people who are unemployed, or at least effectively economically useless, has got to be much higher. I wouldn’t be surprised if it’s half the country. I mean, walk into any store, and look at the stuff on the shelves. Americans make nothing. Nothing. They’re not even selling each other houses anymore. What are they all doing? Are they all giving each other massages and manicures? Paying each other to kill spouses for the insurance? It’s a total wasteland.
Report thisBy Freddie Beer, June 19 at 9:45 pm #
(Unregistered commenter)
We don’t really know what the unemployment rate is at all. We can make a good guess. That fact alone is scary. An important function, this measurement, has been diluted over the years and buried in the mainstream press. No job means “hell” for most people.
That’s how genocide get’s goin’ too - in the pages of history we can read how the bodies start piling up, nobody really even notices or cares. Then finally, maybe after 10 years of carnage or something, someone, a reporter in another country finally says something about what happened.
Report thisPeople are getting fucked over so severely in this Country and it’s all out of sight, out of mind. That peculiar point in history where the masses are desensitized to the point they’re just waiting indifferently , before bombs start to explode.
By espaz, June 19 at 9:01 pm #
(Unregistered commenter)
typo - “see ed, i was taught…..”
Report thisBy espaz, June 19 at 8:58 pm #
(Unregistered commenter)
it’s too bad all those jobs went over-seas.
now…you see, ed .... was taught that if you used an “and”, then you should not use the comma. (i forget if this was in college or high school, but i distinctly remember being taught this). however, i have had people tell me otherwise before so your point is taken. i myself do not use capitals for some reason, you may have noticed.
espaz.
Report thisBy Ed Harges, June 19 at 8:43 pm #
A quibble, but…
Regarding the phrase, “...The winners in this depressing race are Michigan (think GM and Chrysler), Oregon and California….”
— Count me as a defender of the serial comma: there ought to be a comma before the “and” here.
Report this