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In July of 2009, Peter Goldman reported in an article inThe New York Times ["U.S. Job Seekers Exceed Openings By Record Ratio," September 27, 2009] that,as of July, 2009, there were six unemployed workers for every one job opening, which was the worst ratio since the United States Department of Labor started tracking this ratio in 2000. With an official estimate of 14.5 million unemployed, there were only 2.4 million job openings. During the period between December, 2008 and July, 2009, education and healthcare services lost 21.4 percent of jobs, professional and business services lost 21.1 percent in same period, government employment declined by 17.1 percent, and the manufacturing sector lost a staggering 47 percent of its former jobs.
Despite the sanguine news from the U.S.Department of Labor, this figure has not changed significantly in the intervening nine months. In fact, a New York Times economics correspondent, Catherine Rampell, reported on her blog, ["Lay-offs at All-Time Low, but Still 5 Unemployed for Every Job Opening," March 11, 2011] that "There were five unemployed workers for every available job in January, a ratio that has been virtually unchanged for several months, according to a new report from the Bureau of Labor Statistics." In addition, tens of thousands of public sector jobs are likely to lost in the coming months as states, at the behest of GOP governors and legislators, opt to balance their state budgets to compensate for declining tax revenues - due to joblessness - by reducing public payrolls rather than to ask wealthier citizens and corporations to contribute to the general welfare by paying increased taxes.
Notwithstanding the grim economic statistics that document pervasive and intractable unemployment across the U.S., Republicans have now decided to wage war against the unemployed. In February of this year, the Florida Senate and GOP Governor Rick Scott announced their support for a measure to restrict unemployment benefits to employees after describing some recipients of these benefits as "slackers and malingerers." GOP State Senator Nancy Detert filed the bill that would tighten unemployment eligibility, make it easier for businesses to deny benefits and push laid-off workers to take lower-paying jobs after they have received 12 weeks of payments.
In a similar vein, Michigan Republicans last month took action to limit unemployment benefits to newly unemployed workers by decreasing the amount of time someone, who just lost their job, can receive unemployment benefits. If the bill becomes a law, future unemployed workers will suffer a reduction in unemployment benefits from 26 to 20 weeks.
From the perspective of economic policy, the austerity measures endorsed by GOP legislators across the country, as exemplified by the budget proposal presented this week by GOP Congressman Paul Ryan, are counter-productive. If adopted, these austerity measures would only compound and prolong the current recession which has been caused by a collapse of the demand function.The absence of demand - in the consumer and labor markets - is directly related to the loss of well-paying jobs and the hollowing-out of the middle class in this country.
Those who advocate the virtues of the market economy need, at the very least, to acquaint themselves with the General Theory of John Maynard Keynes to try understand how macro-economic fiscal policies need to work in a recessionary economy. An unthinking, theological devotion to discredited 19th century nostrums from classical liberal economic theory - as advocated by the likes of Milton Friedman and Alan Greenspan - is a prescription for continued economic stagnation and an implosion in the GDP.
Equally important, the widespread misery caused by unemployment is corroding the soul of America. In the Sunday New York Times of a week ago, Marti Davis of Knoxville, Tennessee wrote a letter to the editor which said: "While I sympathize with young college graduates who feel misled abut how eagerly the workplace would welcome them, I can't help thinking that those of us at the far end of the worker-age time line are facing a far more taxing problem. Ask almost anyone over 55 who has been laid off: We are the unemployable in a society that values youth and Ivy League degrees for more than reliability, wisdom and experience....These were to be our golden years well earned after 30 years of toil. But now we are past our 'sell buy' dates, offering ourselves at deeply discounted rates but still stuck here on the shelf, hoping for someone to notice."
Balancing budgets on the backs of the poor and most vulnerable among us is morally obscene. Those who are untroubled by such concerns because they lack a moral compass will be remembered when the history of this era is written for the harm that they have done, rather than the pious platitudes that they have mouthed. As Shakespeare reminds us through Mark Antony in Julius Caesar, "The evil that men do lives after them; The good is oft interred with their bones."
