Expect Higher Unemployment This Year

As this year begins to unfold, we can expect that the jobless rate will rise...much higher than is currently expected. With the U6 rate, a broader measure of unemployment that measures not just those receiving unemployment benefits, but those who are working only part-time as well as those who have given up looking for work altogether. That rate hit 17.3% last month. That's the highest rate in decades. Moreover, with 1 in 5 men unemployed,

That means that one in five men in this country between 18 and 54 are neither working nor claiming unemployment. They have fallen completely out of the workforce.

That helps explain why December’s unemployment rate remained at November’s 10% rate in spite of an additional 85,000 Americans losing their jobs. At the same time the new jobless claims were added, many of the previously unemployed were simply removed from the workforce numbers altogether.

The Obama Administration seems unable, or unwilling to see that their programs have failed to stem the tide of job losses. Even the AP has admitted that the huge "stimulus package" rammed through Congress last February has utterly failed to "save jobs." Thus the calls by the Obama Administration officials for yet another round of Keynesian "stimulus" is bound to fail as well. Of course, the Democratic leadership in the House, ever willing to further mortgage our great grand children's future, VERY quietly passed a $250 billion dollar measure last month. This will be taken up by the Senate after they complete the government seizure of health care later tthis month.

So our spendthrift Congress will spend yet another huge some, that we don't have the funds to pay for, having to issue yet more bonds, that will eventually be paid back...in 30 to 50 years. I hope our great grand children will forgive us for what we are doing to their future.