Robert Reich in his blog today, “Shall We Call it a Depression Now?”, says, “We are falling off the cliff.”
Reich reports that 533,000 jobs were lost in November, 320,000 in October, and 403,000 in September — for a total of over 1.2 million lost jobs over the last three months.
“To put these numbers into some perspective,” Reich says, “the November losses alone are the worst in 34 years. A significant percentage of Americans are now jobless or underemployed — far higher than the official rate of 6.7 percent. Simply in order to keep up with population growth, employment needs to increase by 125,000 jobs per month.”
Reich says “I’d estimate that the percentage of Americans who need work right now is approaching 11 percent of the workforce. And that percent is likely to raise.”
Reich is recommending two actions:
- “First, the massive Treasury bailout of the financial industry must be redirected toward Main Street — loans to small businesses, distressed homeowners, and individuals who are still good credit risks.
- Second, a stimulus package must be enacted right away. It needs to be more than $600 billion — which is 4 percent of the national product. It should be focused on job creation in the United States — infrastructure projects as well as services. Construction jobs are critical but so are elder care, hospital, child care, welfare, and countless other services that are getting clobbered.”
