For the first time in nearly 4 years, the US unemployment rate has topped 6%, landing at 6.1% for the month of August. The news coming out of the Midwest and California is even worse. Michigan has an 8.9% unemployment rate, and California comes in at 7.7%
I gotta note
Anybody else notice this, the highest areas of unemployment are the blue states?
hmmmmm. Great map, and it's going to get worse.
That's because they WERE high blue collar...
We can't afford free trade or anything else anymore. (0.00 / 0)
Unemployed people don't contribute - they drain themselves and society. Do you know how many unemployed people there are? Here are USDOL BLS national numbers for Total Initial Claimants, Mass Lay-offs only, for all industries:
*1998: 1,771,069
*1999: 1,572,399
*2000: 1,835,592
*2001: 2,51,4862
*2002: 2,245,051
*2003: 1,888,926
*2004: 1,607,158
*2005: 1,795,341
*2006: 1,484,391
*2007: 1,598,875
*2008: 200,382 (July)
Monthly mass layoff numbers are from establishments which have at least 50 initial claims for unemployment insurance (UI) filed against them during a 5-week period. Most of these people do not get re-employed; and the few who do, take substantial pay cuts - if they're lucky. When there are NO JOBS (except nursing), there is nothing to retrain for and nowhere for unemployed people to go. When they gave away manufacturing, IT, and engineering, they gave away our ability to sustain a middle class. They left this country with service jobs, which mostly means "do you want fries with that?"
Obama needs to get with the program. He might get MI, OH. PA and IN in 08, but he better deliver if he wants to keep his job in 12. People were already pissed off and now this one last grab for power and money as they go out the door. No, neoliberalism better have a stake in its heart if Obama is going to win and stay in office.
Note how RED Michigan is. We have been dealing with Clinton's NAFTA and high unemployment for 8 years.
it's not just Bill
NAFTA is assuredly also Bush's.
I heard a number and I don't quote it because I'm not sure if it's exact, but something like 23% of US GDP is now from the financial sector. It's in the Phillips interview (see comment on left for link) and how the financial sector has driven policy.
So, this implosion wouldn't be so bad if the US had stopped enabling outsourcing and we had a strong manufacturing base.
My immediate thoughts were, oh good job US, way to diversify your own GDP.
As far as Obama vs. McCain, God, again I cannot recommend this Phillips interview enough, he really expressed my own views on the election itself.
it's not just Bill
Exactly right, Phillips makes that a key point in his Moyers interview. The roots of the finacial melt down coincides with the shift away from a mfg economy and giving more power to the finacial economy - i.e moving away from a wealth producing and prosperity sharing economy to a wealth shifting and concentrating economy. Buffet, and Bogle of Vangard have echoed similar sentiments
Indiana
Indiana is one of the reddest of red states, KY, TN and MO are purple states.
It would be more correct that industrial states have generally the highest unemployment, although most except as noted above tend to lean blue
The right has long been able to successfully use god, guns, babies and gays as a cynical distraction from industrial states economic plunder.
The left needs to abandon "free" trade, and start being more tolerant of guns and religion and do a much better job of getting the economic word out to industrial staters if they want to stop losing the blue collar vote
CA, OR
are not, look west.
US Unemployment tops 6%
California at one time had the seventh largest mfg economy in the world
Don't take this number at face value either
If we were using the same formula we were using during the Great Depression,you'd have to add in a good 3 million "moderately" disabled and discouraged workers to the 9 million already unemployed- and probably also another 5 million underemployed. 17 million unemployed would rival depression-era standards though, so you'll never see the Bush Admin admit to it.
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Maximum jobs, not maximum profits.