Thursday, February 11, 2010

U.S. unemployment doom & gloom

It's all dooom and glooom out there, folks. The salad days are over.

The new "normal" starting in 2011 (if we're lucky) will be 6.5 to 7.5 percent unemployment.

America is not as innovative as it once was, and is less able to pull us out of this recession fast enough.

Gradudates entering the job market now will NEVER catch up income-wise to those who graduated in boom years, all else being equal.

10 percent of adults younger than 35 have moved back in with their parents.

About 1/3 of millenials/Generation Me is not even trying to find jobs; they're holding out for that dream career with flexible hours and high pay that their parents promised them if they got straight A's and packed on the extracurriculars.

More men are beating their wives and children. And, horror of horrors, soon, for the first time in U.S. history, women will hold a majority of America's jobs, since this recession is hitting men much harder. As a result, expect more divorces as soon as couples can pay for them, and fewer marriages now.

And if that doesn't scare you teabaggers: 17 percent of black men over age 20 are unemployed.

For a whole bundle of reasons, pervasive high unemployment may be the worst social and economic evil there is.


How a New Jobless Era Will Transform America
By Don Peck
February 2010 The Atlantic

URL: http://www.theatlantic.com/doc/201003/jobless-america-future/

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