Perhaps you had heard that the unemployment rate in the United States has been going down and you were planning to start sending out resumes again. Well, unfortunately it is not “morning in America” again. Some really depressing jobs numbers were just released. The number of Americans applying for unemployment benefits skyrocketed last week to the highest level that we have seen in 8 months. Also, according to a new poll more American workers say that their companies are getting rid of workers than say that their companies are hiring more workers. So feel free to start mailing out thousands of resumes once again – just don’t expect better results. Tens of millions of unemployed and underemployed Americans have been waiting for the “economic recovery”, but the sad truth is that this is the economic recovery. This is about the best that things are going to get before the next major wave of the economic collapse strikes.
Most economists were extremely surprised by how bad the new numbers were. The following is an excerpt from the press release from the Department of Labor….
In the week ending April 30, the advance figure for seasonally adjusted initial claims was 474,000, an increase of 43,000 from the previous week’s revised figure of 431,000. The 4-week moving average was 431,250, an increase of 22,250 from the previous week’s revised average of 409,000.
As noted above, that was the highest number of initial unemployment claims that we have seen in eight months.
In addition, ADP has announced that only 179,000 private sector jobs were added to the economy during the month of April.
That number also was an unpleasant surprise to most economists.
But shouldn’t the economy be recovering by now?
Yes, it should be.
Unfortunately, there is even more bad news.
According to the latest Rasmussen Employment Index, 19 percent of U.S. workers say that their companies are hiring more workers right now and 25 percent of U.S. workers say that their companies are laying off workers right now.
That is not a good sign.
But even when jobs are available most of the time they are crappy jobs.
A growing percentage of jobs in America do not even pay a living wage. Low income jobs now make up 41% of all the jobs in the United States.
In a recent article on outsourcing, I noted that the U.S. economy is bleeding lots of good jobs and that they are being replaced by bad jobs….
Right now America is rapidly losing high paying jobs and they are being replaced by low paying jobs. According to a recent report from the National Employment Law Project, higher wage industries accounted for 40 percent of the job losses over the past 12 months but only 14 percent of the job growth. Lower wage industries accounted for just 23 percent of the job losses over the past 12 months and a whopping 49 percent of the job growth.
So do you want to mop floors at the local Burger King or stock shelves over at Best Buy?
A million Americans recently showed up to apply for a job at McDonald’s. If that is not a sign that the American people are losing faith in the economy then I don’t know what is.
So are you ready to go down and apply for a job at McDonald’s?
Well, if not you may find yourself waiting for a very, very long time for a “good job”.
According to the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics, the average duration of unemployment in the United States is now an all-time record 39 weeks.
Today, we have millions upon millions of Americans that are sitting home because they can’t find work.
Only 66.8% of American men had a job last year. That was the lowest level that has ever been recorded in all of U.S. history.
That is not good for the economy. Instead of being productive and producing wealth for the economy, all of those unemployed men are a drain on the system.
Today, 18 million more Americans are receiving food stamps than when the economic downturn first began back in 2007.
Considering the gigantic amounts of spending that the U.S. government has been doing since the beginning of the economic downturn and considering the massive amounts of new money that the Federal Reserve has been injecting into the financial system, the unemployment rate should be much, much lower than it is now.
Our leaders have gone “all in” on stimulating the economy in the short-term and yet it is still responding like a dead horse.
Now there are even some in the financial media that are saying that we are going to need “QE3” in order to get the economy going.
Perhaps we will even need “QE4”, “QE5” and “QE6”.
This is getting ridiculous.
Essentially the U.S. economy is like a patient that the doctors are hovering around and desperately trying to revive.
So are they going to be successful?
I wouldn’t bet on it.
Sadly, what we are experiencing right now is the economic recovery.
When the next wave of the economic collapse hits, things are going to get even worse.