Fifteen straight years of no job growth?

[eridani]

http://www.usatoday.com/money/economy/2009-12-03-obama-jobs_N.htm
4 million jobs lost in 2009. It would have been a lot worse without the stimulus, of course.

Clinton administration's best performance was 240,000 jobs a month.
http://www.buzzflash.com/contributors/03/05/08_jobs.html

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/lawrence-mishel/jobs-aughts-for-naught_b_416562.html
No net job growth for the decade 2000-2009.

http://www.whitehouse.gov/blog/2010/04/02/employment-situation-march
First quarter averaged 54,000 jobs per month.

To replace the 4 million lost jobs at a Clinton administration growth rate would take 17 months. At the rate so far this year, 74 months (six years).

http://watchingthewatchers.org/news/1082/job-growth-puzzle-clarified
The above does not include new entrants to the labor force, estimated as 140,000/month by Krugman and 110,000/month by the Obama administration.

At current job growth rates, then, there is a net loss of 56,000/month. Getting back to the Clinton era rates, the most optimistic is that there is a gain of 240,000-110,000 = 130,000/month. Replacing 4 million jobs would then require 31 months, or 2 and a half years.

We could be looking at another five year period with no net job growth. Has there ever been a period in our history where we had 15 STRAIGHT YEARS of no job growth at all? This points to a problem that is more than cyclical, as we will have had a number of recessions and "recoveries" during that period.

IOW, we are in really deep shit, and our elite ruling class is functionally idiotic and has no clue. No matter how scary smart some of them are, it doesn't do any good if they are completely isolated from the reality of average people.

[madrchsod]

1. unless there is a change in our trade policies we are facing 0 net job growth

in my opinion obama will do nothing to change those policies that has created this depression.

[Lasher]

2. Median income declined during the Lost Decade.

The legacy of GWB, the worst president of all time.

[eridani]

3. Our current problem is that undoing the Bush disaster requires stronger medicine than we are getting

The White House and our entire ruling class are pretending that we are just in a regular recession that we are recovering from. Better some recovery than none, of course, but the deep doodoo we are now in has zero relationship to what we used to think of as business cycles.

[MisterP]

16. neoliberals have never WANTED high employment and wages

that's why they abolish social safety nets and privatize everything: they want an unfettered free market to make things for cheap so they can siphon up all the money in a monetized economy

then again, impoverished people don't vote for neoliberals as much: hence, we have the GOP and RW populists as the only other option in most states. plutocracy is easy when you own "both" electoral options

[reggie the dog]

4. I have an MA

my parents have high school diplomas and I will NEVER EVER have the same economic status that they had, I will always be poorer, unless i take the 200 000 dollarsa load to run cocaine from arizona to chicago....what a great career path huh????? not only will i earn less than my dad who is a mechanic (i am a teacher) i will also have far less purchasing power, like i said unless i turn to crime.....

[Gaedel]

6. Nature of the beast

You knew it going in to teaching.

I was a career army officer and always made less money than my college drop out younger brother who was a U.A.W. union factory worker. I could have gone into the plants as well, but I knew going in to the Army and staying in what my pay would be.

[reggie the dog]

7. not really

in Chicago you make 50 to 60 grand a year to begin with if you have a master's, but that still wont buy me the same lifestyle that my parents lived off of one salary. The middle class is being destroyed. My brother is a mechanic like my father and has no where near the same standard of living.

[uponit7771]

8. BINGO!!!! 60k\yr was ok money in the early 90s

[RockaFowler]

11. I'd love to make $60K now

I have been stuck at $30,000 for the past 3 years. NO pay increases for the past 3 years. But I'm doing more work of course

[OnionPatch]

5. That's what conservative policy gets us.

No surprise at all here. None.

[HughBeaumont]

9. K & R. I've LONG since theorized on something that seems "out there":

Corporate America is Sabotaging American Progress.

http://journals.democraticunderground.com/HughBeaumont/94
http://journals.democraticunderground.com/HughBeaumont/90

How else would one explain it?

It makes me think that the memo in Capitalism: A Love Story is for real: that the wealthy of this country indeed want a Plutonomy, where all governmental, military and major societal functions are performed FOR the corporations and BY the corporations.

They're just doing it the slow and not-so-secretive way by buying both parties, the defense industry, the food supply, most airlines and other forms of transportation, health care, entertainment, etc. Plus, if we concede higher wages now, via threat of job loss or outsourcing the plant/function, what concessions will be in our near futures?

It doesn't seem that the wealthy of this country is asking themselves a simple question - "What comes first, the chicken or the egg?"

Do the consumers have to start spending again, or do corporations need to stop FIRING?

Is one side simply waiting for the other side to make the first move, or is the country going to turn into one big Northeast Ohio before either one happens?

What needs to happen first?

Are corporations the only "persons" whose lives CAN and MUST thrive and prosper at ALL times, no matter WHAT the cost to everything and anyone else?

I would like it explained to me how corporations think they'll be able to do business . . . without any business.

[seabeyond]

10. nafta.... anyone. nt

[MichiganVote]

12. When we barely make a goddamn thing in the US what can we expect. Trade laws in US suck,

[conspirator]

13. And Bill Gates wants an increase of H1Bs n/t

[keep_it_real]

14. Looks like the end of America

But who's to blame?

[OhioChick]

15. K&R n/t