Jul 03 2010
Double-Dip Recession? The Data seems to Suggest, “Yes!”
The economy continues to struggle and stammer to sustain any type of a recovery.
A spate of negative news released this week suggests that the economy may well be headed for a double-dip recession.
Focusing only on the jobs report, the NYT (July 3-4, 2010) reported that nonfarm payrolls fell by 125,000. Some of this loss was accounted for by the government’s elimination of 225,000 census workers. The private sector generated only 83,000 new jobs. Though the unemployment rate fell from 9.7% to 9.5%, the report also showed that 652,000 workers dropped out of the labor market which means they were not counted as unemployed in the latest statistics.
Simply put, the economy is not generating enough momentum to add enough jobs to lower the unemployment rate. 100,00 jobs must be added each month to accommodate new job seekers entering the job market. Only adding jobs at the clip of 300,000, to 500,00 per month will lower the national unemployment rate of 9.5% which, when you add those who have dropped out of the labor market, totals some 16.5 million workers.
Economists are beginning to sound a shocking alarm: high levels of unemployment may be with us for “years to come.” The impact on the psychological well-being of increasing numbers of longer-term unemployed men and women is ominous and may prove to be devastating and debilitating longer-term. The psyche and morale of the american worker in particular and the american workforce in general are being reworked and not for the better.