The May jobs report is a disaster -- the weakest reading since September. Non-farm payrolls grew only 54,000 last month, according to the Labor Department's Bureau of Labor Statistics. Private employment rose only 83,000 -- the smallest growth since last June. Government payrolls dropped 29,000.
The overall jobless rate rose to 9.1 percent.
Together with plummeting housing prices, falling wages for non-supervisory workers, a paltry 1.8 percent growth in the first quarter, and a precipitous drop in consumer confidence, the picture should be clear to anyone able to see clearly.
The recovery has stalled.
We're not in a double-dip yet, but the odds are increasing.
The question is whether all this will wake up Washington, and stop the monumental distraction of the games being played over the debt ceiling and long-term budget deficit. The Republican lie that the nation's long-term budget deficit is responsible for high unemployment would be laughable if it weren't so tragically irrelevant to the current situation.
The President cannot be reelected if the economy tanks. He may not even be reelected on an anemic recovery in which unemployment remains nearly this high. But all incumbents are endangered. Republican House members from swing districts are toast if they don't show voters they're actively working on the twin problems of jobs and wages.
Several steps need to be taken right away. Exempt the first $20,000 of income from payroll taxes for two years. Lend money to cash-starved state and local governments. Initiate a new WPA for the long-term unemployed. Amend bankruptcy laws to allow homeowners to include their prime residencies in personal bankruptcy (giving them more bargaining leverage with their lenders to renegotiate mortgage loans).
Above all: Washington needs to show Americans it's taking seriously the ferocious problem of jobs and wages, and the trend back toward a double-dip.
Robert Reich is the author of Aftershock: The Next Economy and America's Future, now in bookstores. This post originally appeared at RobertReich.org.
Follow Robert Reich on Twitter: www.twitter.com/RBReich
Rep. Gary Ackerman: Patriots Don't Let Their Nation Default
IT IS STILL BUSH'S FAULT! http://www.cbpp.org/files/5-10-11bud.pdf
Print this chart, laminate it and put it on your refrigerator. For the next 20 years (maybe longer) the US will be paying the price for electing Ali Baba Bush and the 40 thieves.
Elections have consequences...sometimes dire consequences and yet there are still people who vote for the Republicans who are trying their best to destroy the country. Are they blind? Is it that they don't care? It's beyond me.
They have been pumping up the GDP by buying bonds and inflating commodities bubbles.
They have been able to keep us from technically negative growth but the reality in the real economy is that we have not recovered and there is a distinct possibility that we will not recover for a long time.
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People like Mr. Reich, while on the mark on many of our issues, seem to have their head in the sand when it comes to our failed experiment with so-called free trade.
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He was the first president I ever voted for in my life, ever since it has always been the lessor of the two evils.
The Republicans are trying to create a “miracle†while sticking together in preventing the Obama recovery policies from working. When the Obama policies have worked to prevent this Republic from falling into another great depression, the Republicans are playing the voters “like a fiddle†in trying to convince them that since our crisis conditions are not 100 per cent corrected, they are saying Obama is a complete failure.
The voters will have to decide who has done the best for the good of this country in preventing another “great depression†when the private fraudulent financial systems and the loss of manufacturing jobs created by the “global economy†caused the 2007 deep recession which cannot be corrected in the short time.
Are the Republicans trying to help with any recovery problems or make them worse? .It is the same Republican attitude during the 1929 great depression, go through another great depression, weaken this Republic farther while letting the people "fend" for themselves after they have helped the "capitalist" force the loss of jobs.
There is too much misinformation and untruths put out by the opponents of President Obama.
The voters have their work “cut out†for them in the 2012 elections if they are concerned..
Yes, it would be good to teach the private financial systems a real lesson of what their "greed" brings on them. In the mean time what would the conditions of this Republic be like with an already $12.0 trillion dollars in National Debt, and with over an accumulated trade deficit of Trillions of Dollars with the private global corporate monopolies over a period of many years.
Now we hear that the corporations are lobbying to get the taxes reduced on this so they can bring it back into the US without any assurances of the money being invested to create private sector manufacturing jobs here.
There should not be any surprises about what happened to our loss of manufacturing as our trade deficit with the global corporate monopolies increased.
Who are the people that keep telling us that our jobs will never come back? Are the same people who pushed for the free trade agreements, tell us that "new innovation" would replace the lost jobs here? What about the people in the low monetary value countries buying our manufactured goods? They do buy the goods, owned by the private global corporate monopolies which are made in other countries.than the US.
In the long term it will even things out across the world. As China becomes wealthier they will send their jobs to Africa, Africa will become richer and so on. Surely this is not a bad thing?
The USA could improve conditions at home by reducing its military budget by 75% and bringing troops home from the 800 garrisons worldwide. America would still spend more than twice as much on war as China, and eight times as much as Russia.
When Hitler declared war on Britain and France America stood by and watched, and did not enter the war until over two years later when she was attached by Japan and Germany declared war. This left America the only nations still standing in 1945. Why is America today waging war against nations that have not attacked the USA, and could not attack the USA? It is America's insatiable appetite for war that is bringing her down.
So while as you say that may not be such a bad thing, it certainly could have been done in a way that was FAIR to the US worker. As it is now, multinational corporations and the politicians that support them have accumulated huge stores of wealth, at the DIRECT EXPENSE of the US worker. Could this have been done more fairly, without decimating our manufacturing sector and subsequently our middle class? Yes, yes yes.
A few trade and currency policy changes would bring back many jobs to the US.
But if Obama wins he has shown that he is unwilling to fight GOP policies and he appears to have no policies of his own.