Comments on: Job Losses: Comparing Recessions

By: Job Losses: Comparing Recessions « ForgottenEcomony.com

Job Losses: Comparing Recessions « ForgottenEcomony.com — Mon, 04 May 2009 22:51:06 +0000

[...] February 9, 2009 Job Losses: Comparing Recessions Posted by W.N. Nasserdeen under Business, news No Comments Job Losses: Comparing Recessions [...]

By: try2bamused

try2bamused — Sun, 08 Feb 2009 20:31:05 +0000

Simple back-of-the-napkin calculation: At the rate of job loss over the last 12 months, we reach 100% unemployment in 5 years. Cheers!

By: Blissex

Blissex — Sun, 08 Feb 2009 18:07:21 +0000

«The means of production have become too efficient, and we have all that near-slave labor in China and India doing manufacturing…what else are we going to do?»
Losers will become servants of the deserving winners. Butler, maids, gardeners, footmen. That’s the logic of a plantation economy.

Of course if peak oil happens, only the lucky few will get such good jobs as house servants. Most will have to work on farms as say labourers to compensate for the demechanization of agriculture, which has gone from being labor intensive to oil intensive (all that farm machinery and fertilizer) and might revert to labor intensive.

By: Blissex

Blissex — Sun, 08 Feb 2009 18:02:58 +0000

«The means of production have become too efficient, and we have all that near-slave labor in China and India doing manufacturing…what else are we going to do?»

Losers will become servants of the deserving winners. Butler, maids, gardeners, footmen. That’s the logic of a plantation economy.

By: DL

DL — Sun, 08 Feb 2009 05:30:12 +0000

NY Times article on Japan’s experience with public works projects:

http://www.nytimes.com/2009/02/06/world/asia/06japan.html?_r=1&partner=permalink&exprod=permalink

By: Mark A. Sadowski

Mark A. Sadowski — Sun, 08 Feb 2009 04:47:08 +0000

Are we at an end? That is to say, has the rate of decrease in jobs itself decreased? If not, then expect things to get worse (Duh!). The Great Depression II has just started.

By: wnsrfr

wnsrfr — Sat, 07 Feb 2009 23:01:01 +0000

The U.S. needs to mature–we need shorter work weeks and more vacation time per full-time employee, so that more of us can be gainfully employed.

The means of production have become too efficient, and we have all that near-slave labor in China and India doing manufacturing…what else are we going to do?

By: Broken

Broken — Sat, 07 Feb 2009 19:35:08 +0000

@ DL:

That just proves the unemployment rate is a near-meaningless number. 3.5 million jobs lost in 12 months after a very weak job recovery from the last recession, and unemployment is “not that bad”.

By: JohnnyVee

JohnnyVee — Sat, 07 Feb 2009 18:48:19 +0000

Great chart. I’d like to see a chart of job growth after the respective recessions, because the job recovery from the 2000-2001 was anemic. Meaning the job losses today are more significant.

By: DL

DL — Sat, 07 Feb 2009 18:33:39 +0000

Hammergirl @ 1:09

This is from Alan Abelson’s column today:

“By the alternative method of tallying lost jobs — the so-called household survey — a whopping 1.24 million slots disappeared, the biggest loss since the Bureau of Labor Statistics first began to keep track in 1950. Bad as those numbers are, they don’t reveal the full horror of the employment picture. Our favorite out-of-work measure is U-6, which takes in the entire lot of folks who can’t find a job worthy of the name. It shot up to still another record peak of 13.9% (a year ago, it was 9%). And the jobless rate among full-time workers weighed in at 8%”.