US Unemployment Soars, Benefits Running Out

Image SourceWith a real unemployment rate of 16% and rising, the US is finding its federal unemployment insurance benefits starting to run out.

Underemployment is a more comprehensive measure of labor market slack that includes not just the unemployed, but also “involuntarily” part-time workers (workers who want full-time work but can’t get the hours) and marginally-attached workers (jobless workers who want a job but are not actively seeking work and are therefore not counted as officially unemployed). Underemployment data as currently measured are only available since the mid-1990s, so it is not possible to compare the current recession to the recession of 1981 on this measure. Table 4 shows underemployment over the current recession. In particular, the number of involuntarily part-time workers has increased by approximately 90%, from 4.6 million to 8.8 million. Over this time, the underemployment rate has increased from 8.7% to 16.3%, so that now nearly 26 million people—one out of every six US workers—are either unemployed or underemployed. Figure D shows the components of underemployment over the course of the recession. _EPI_via_NakedCapitalism

Go to the original story for all the charts and figures.

The US government is putting the squeeze on small businesses at the same time it is growing its own bureaucracies to monstrous proportions. Labour unions -- friends of Obama -- are receiving sweetheart deals today that Americans will regret for decades to come.

Obama and Pelosi are preparing to put the squeeze on the biomedical, pharmaceutical, and medical technology sectors of the economy -- which will virtually exterminate innovations from US medicine and biotech. All in the name of government controlled health care.

Under Obama and Pelosi's "Cap N Trade", US energy will be constricted from all directions. Since US industry runs on energy, it is US industry that will be choked off by the Obama / Pelosi grand energy plan.

All of these policies will reap a harvest of unemployment of historic size.

With unemployment comes default on debts, cutting back on spending and future investment, and a self-propagating constriction of economic activity.

There are those who claim that Obama has nothing to do with this depressed economy. That it is not his fault. How they can say this with a straight face is a mystery, perhaps known only to themselves and their psychoanalysts. But as Obama and Pelosi proceed to place their stamp upon this age of unemployment, people who once looked to Obama for hope and change are starting to see something else.