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Sunday, Nov. 08, 2009

Don’t be fooled by comparisons: Americans are hurting badly

It’s tough out there. Unemployment figures were released Friday detailing an unemployment rate of 10.2 percent for the month of October, and those statistics don’t count people who have given up the job chase. Our nation has been shedding jobs for 22 straight months. Another 190,000 jobs, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics, were lost last month.

Some point to the Great Depression, when a quarter of the work force was out of a job, to say this “recession” is not all that bad, however, that’s an unfair comparison. In 1933, during the height of the economic collapse, the nation’s population was 125 million and there were only 48 million Americans in the work force — 12 million jobless. Now there are more than 307 million Americans with 154 million in the work force, and with October’s statistics, 15.7 million are out of work.

We do look down right prosperous compared to our 1930-era forefathers who mostly worked the land. They earned their keep by the sweat of their brows. We now sit in air conditioned luxury, many of us, staring at a computer screen. Billions of dollars are made shuffling money.

No matter the comparisons with the Great Depression, this recession is painful for many Americans. While the economy has officially turned around — GDP up 3.2 percent in the third quarter, the Dow over 10,000 on Thursday, financial institutions rolling in money again and getting set to hand out more than $20 billion in bonuses to their employees, the rest of the nation’s employed are still looking over their shoulders wondering if a pink slip is headed their way.

The Obama administration is faced with two tasks of which they have little control over. The government can’t force industries to begin hiring again nor can it insure hiring at a certain level. This recession may have brought about a “new normal.”

During the first eight years of this decade, unemployment only hit 6 percent in 2003. In 2007, the unemployment rate was 4.6 percent, but we fear those days may never return. Many economist are pointing to a 15 percent unemployment rate before this recession is all said and done. The “new normal” may be 10 percent unemployment or higher.

Why a “new normal?” Look around the American landscape. At the end of 2008 there were 17.8 million workers in production and transportation jobs according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics. In October, that figure had fallen to 15.6 million. In 2000, that sector employed over 20 million people. Are all those jobs coming back?

As you think of your own work situation — unless you work for the city of Macon — there are fewer employees around today than there were a year ago. Workers are being asked to multitask — and to their credit — the jobs are getting done.

Many industries have already adjusted to the “new normal.” Any fat has been cut away, and in many instances, the cuts have reached bone. The employment levels across the board will never approach those of even two years ago,

We all now understand the term, operating “lean and mean.”

— Charles E. Richardson,

for the Editorial Board