By Marian Wright Edelman and Andrew Sum

When I was a young man I observed that nine out of ten things I did were failures. I didn't want to be a failure, so I did ten times more work.
– George Bernard Shaw

Most young men and women today want...

Despite a modest downtick in the aggregate unemployment rate due in part to labor force withdrawals, U.S. labor markets remain in a deep recession. High levels of open unemployment and underemployment and nearly 7 million hidden unemployed dominate the scene. The recent release by the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics...

In reviewing the findings of the recently released national report on employment and unemployment developments in the U.S. for January 2011, one might have encountered a sense of double vision in examining the findings for the nation's teenagers (16-19 years old). In January 2011, only 25.7 percent of...

Last week's State of the Union message by the President left out any substantial references to today's labor market realities and the need for new public policy actions to address these problems. A progressive agenda is called for and bipartisan support is needed. Below is our version of a thoughtful,...

The long lasting economic troubles experienced by the Japanese economy in the 1990s have frequently been referred to by economists as the Lost Decade. In our previous blog, we argued that the past decade (2000-2010) was in many respects a "lost decade" for our nation's economy. The performance of the...

As the clock ticks down on the last days and hours of 2010, the time seems appropriate for reflecting on the American economy's performance during the Lost Decade of 2000-2010. Over the past ten years, the US economy has performed more poorly on every key output, employment, wage and salary,...

During the past week, both President Obama and newly-elected U.S. Representative Austin Scott (R - Ga.) delivered radio addresses, calling for a new commitment to solving the high levels of joblessness in the U.S. In his Thanksgiving address to the nation, the President noted that "as long as many of...

The recent release of the October 2010 job figures by the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics revealed that the national economy was generating net new jobs (151,000) for the first time in recent months, with the private sector responsible for all of the net job growth. A careful look at...

It is generally acknowledged that the onset of the Great Recession at the very end of calendar year 2007 generated a slew of economic problems, most of which remain with us today at the end of 2010. They encompass a wide array of labor market problems including higher rates of...

The Great Recession of 2007-2009 may have officially ended in mid-2009 according to the National Bureau of Economic Research, but a deep recession remains in the nation's labor markets with very high levels of official unemployment, underemployment, and hidden unemployment. The economic burdens of the Great Recession have been very...

The Great Recession of 2008-2009 and its persistence in labor markets through 2010 has generated a massive increase in joblessness and rising unemployment. Job losses were very unevenly distributed across gender, age, educational attainment, and occupational groups, as well as across family income groups. Males, younger workers (under 30), blue...

In recent months, a number of national economic analysts have referred to the persistence of high unemployment rates as the "new normal," and some, including Narayana Kocherlakota, a regional Federal Reserve Bank President, have blamed rising structural unemployment as a source of the problem. This supposed rise in structural unemployment...