· 156,000 additional people remained unemployed for more than 26 weeks, thereby making them ineligible for unemployment insurance

· In last one year, an additional 3.2 million people have stopped receiving unemployment allowance

· Of the total unemployed, currently 35.6% of them are not getting any allowance

· The average duration of unemployment has gone upto 26.9%, the highest ever recorded

What this means is that recovery (or some acceptable form of it) will only be possible if the stimulus package continues. Withdrawal of stimulus will affect likely nascent recovery.

another gem from Samuelson:
“ever since the year 1000 A.D., export-led growth has been the rule whenever an educatable low-wage population has begun to imitate the technology of a more advanced nation, and thus out-compete the industries of the affluent regions.” it’s borrow more money and consume to our demise!

Stop the ‘jobless recovery’ madness!

“Because output fell so sharply following the oil shock and Lehman Brothers collapse of 2008, some pundits are banking on a sharp rebound.

But job and wage growth have been weak for a decade. Total private sector employment has dropped since the Yankees held their previous victory parade, in 2000.

That means there has been no net private sector job growth over a nine-year span where the U.S. population expanded by 11%, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics. “

Wow, I feel your pain while fortunately not having to go through it….yet. Unfortunately, you are in an industry that was pumped up on steroids thanks to Uncle Greenspanic and the withdrawal could go on for years.

Have you thought about changing your career path for at least a short period? If not what about foreign work? There are a lot of other countries that might be hiring someone of your expertise. It may not be American rates but it could be a lot better than unemployment and it may be a cool way to get a paid vacation.

The best thing about your experience is that it is mainly in your head and thus portable. You probably don’t even need to leave your house to do it. That could come in very useful for you. I’m throwing up hail Mary’s here in case you’ve already burnt your brain looking for ideas so don’t be afraid to shoot me down if my aim is far off

US jobs and the world
http://blogs.reuters.com/felix-salmon/2009/11/06/a-global-problem-with-no-solution/

This is a very good article. El Erian and Salmon understand what is going on structurally within our economy where most people continue to cling onto past circumstances and are apparently incapable of discerning the profound change that we are undergoing.

In a nutshell, we will never again have full employment until our dollar is significantly devalued. And the converse, we will significantly devalue our dollar in order to again have full employment.

But even with that, we are in for rough times. China views us with contempt. They are going to get every advantage they can from us in the way of technology transfer and capital investment, but once they are ready to go it on their own, they will abandon the USA. Free and open trade will never be on their agenda. There will come the time in the future when China wants to revalue its currency, however they will do so with barriers to limit imports on to essential commodities they cannot produce domestically. Then we will lose the ability to buy imported goods at low cost while still having the world’s largest market closed to our exports. (If this paragraph doesn’t make sense to you today, save it and read it again about 10 years from now.)

I just used the Census data and the total population has increased by 8.9%.

The 20-70 has increased by over 11%, which is normal because in the 00′s we hit the peak in workers/dependant. And the number of dependants starts to go up from now on.

So it’s a sad state that we didn’t even have good employment numbers when the ratio was at its best.

Fortune Magazine…

I guess it could be worse, witness the horror of this:

http://www.orlandosentinel.com/os-shooting-reported-downtown-orlando-20091106,0,7958763.story

http://www.orlandosentinel.com/orl-jason-rodriguez-bio-orlando-shooting,0,2152879.story