Monday, September 05, 2011
There could hardly be a worse way to celebrate Labor Day.
The August job numbers weren’t just bad, they were historically bad. The nation produced its first month without job growth since September 1945, just after World War II ended. Unemployment still stands at 9.1%, and the only thing moving are the mouths in Washington, as House Republicans and President Barack Obama talk and talk about creating jobs, but can’t agree to do anything about it, writes David A. Fahrenthold at The Washington Post.
Meanwhile, the country needs to produce 125,000 a month just to keep up with population growth, notes Robert Reich, former secretary of labor and now a University of California-Berkeley professor. Since the end of 2007, the number of Americans looking for work has grown by more than 7 million, but the number of people with jobs has dropped by more than 300,000. “So the hole continues to deepen,” Reich warns.
-Noel Brinkerhoff
No New Jobs, as Washington Remains Divided (by David A. Fahrenthold, Washington Post)
The Zero Economy (Robert Reich)
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