EconomicsUSA: Labor: USA jobless rate tops 10%

 The Career section of today's Wall Street Journal offers a stark article by Luca di Leo and Jeff Bater,  "October Jobless Rate Tops 10%" (Nov6,2k9). That's quite a percentage of the workforce, the  unemployed who are actively hunting new jobs (does not include  "under the table" work, nor does it include those now labelled "discouraged workers" who no longer hunt a job).  Yes, we are still a Hunter-Gatherer culture, no matter how technically advanced we may be.  Perhaps in America we may now have become a Hunter-Gatherer-Consumer culture, and our society is built somewhat for that.

As to America's job figures, actually, we find the official quantification released today by the Labor Department is precisely:  10.2% of American workers are jobless workers. So, by definition, they are actively looking for work, and apparently going on to,  or are already enrolled in pogey, there being a couple of weeks or months "deductible," delaying the time when you can start receiving your first govt welfare/workfare checks, in this round in your life.  A(n other) round of unemployment insurance benefits ("pogey" as they say in Canada and UK).                                        

The waiting period varies state by state, where it is often subject to workfare provisions resulting from the move of former President  Bill Clinton in alliance with the renown conservative House Speaker, Republican, originally from the Carolinas somewhere, Newt Gingrich.  Newt wrote the workfare reform laws (reform of earlier welfare programs that often offered the wrong incentives to recipients, and in too many cases, resulted in welfare fraud due to bureaucratic boredom and sloth ... and to some extent perhaps a lack of funding to the lower rungs of the bureaucracy).  Cheating and inadequately incentivized recipients aside, we have to note nevertheless, there were many truly ill people who coudn't work but also coud not get/be diagnosed for health reasons: in medical limbo and mental-health based inability to work.

But, hey, we can't give way to a mere recognition of some complex nuances of the present situation.  What's here is that a full 10.2% of willing workers can't find jobs with pay to support the costs of their particular lifestyles.  That's one factor of joblessnes: can't pay the costs of individual's or breadwinners' family's particular lifestyle (which for some includes church-life and tithing -- 10% of income; for others it includes regular afterwork pubbing and partying, which can consume all potential savings and a large percentage of weekly expenses [a footnote here woud include creditcardagery that often pays for excesses in spending on the micro-economic-optimatics level of personal/familial stewardship   ]).

U.S. unemployment rose by more than expected in October to hit its highest level in more than 26 years and employers cut more jobs than forecast, a sign the labor market continues to struggle as the economy emerges from its deep recession.

The unemployment rate, calculated using a survey of households as opposed to companies, rose by 0.4 percentage point to 10.2%, the Labor Department said Friday. Economists surveyed by Dow Jones Newswires had forecast an increase to 9.9%.

The current Recession of the US economy has been declared a "turn around" (Ben Bernanke, Federal Reserve Bank) and "over" by a legion of economists.  The cliché said, The Recession is over -- except of course in the special-case of employment levels, job retention, new job creation.  A national economy that can recover from a Class A Recession (remember the term "meltdown"?) without creating new jobs, is not so much a Recession-recovery, as it is instead a restructuration of the economic institutions especially those of larger sizes, across a range of industrial sectors.  I see this both in the enterprises of the economy and in the govt bureaucratic expansion to dominate all spheres of life, including what in Canada are called "Crown Corporations," like Fannie Mae and Freddie Mae in America. 

However, if in your definition of Recession-recovery, you prioritize the creation of new employment, jobs for the unemployed, and thus thru new jobs created by enterprises, the provision of spendable income to those just previously thrown into the "reserve  pool of unpaid labor" without any income -- the so-called Jobless now able to purchase shelter, food, other necessities at least, and medical insurance -- if so, then, the Recession of the economy is not over.

Rather what's going on in this no-new-jobs "Recession-recovery" is precisely an internal restructuration of the economic institutions of our society (enterprises -- in particular MONEY PROCESSORS (banks, financials, insurers, hedge funds, etc) and AUTO MANUFACTURERS (GM, Chrysler, "Cash for Clunkers" which also helped Ford etc),  such a restructuation itself coud be read as a deception to mask the quite apparent actuality of post-meltdown recovery without the creation of new jobs; instead, the business institutions (inclusive of all legal forprofit enterprises) are attempting to streamline themselves without having to create any statistically-significant new jobs.

If we reify "the economy," as a literary device, we coud say our American economy resists the status of a full-employment society.  As long as a full-employment society is not part of an enterprise's core drives (along with profit, for example),  it cannot meet the norm, as expressed by Prof Bernard Zylstra, of simultaneity of norm realization in its enterprising.

-- EconoMix