Repugnicans should simply be outlawed now.

Add to that, my teenage son is looking for a job in Southeast Michigan too...he has applied at tons of places and not gotten a single call. All of these businesses that are hiring for the holidays are hiring adults with years of work experience...not a 16 year old kid who has never had a job.

Well, the air traffic controllers strike was illegal, after all. [tinyurl.com]

Perhaps if the Big Three auto companies had taken a similar hard line with their unions, their employee costs wouldn't have gotten so out of control that they couldn't compete with imports. This isn't union bashing. It was management's fault. They rolled over for the unions. Can't blame the unions for wanting better wages and conditions. It was management that was too shortsighted to recognize the import threat and negotiate contracts that kept them competitive.

@Oranges w/ Cheese wants it to be winter already: Ya know, feeding trolls is just as bad as trolling. Just ignore them.

It just shows how fragile and propped up the old economy was . So much has been outsourced during the last 26 years it could another 26 years to get the economy inflated to the tech or housing bubble levels .

I think these numbers will change a litte once unemployment runs out for many . I know people that have flat out given up and or refuse to even look at jobs below their unemployment checks for which I don't blame them . BUT at the sametime they're holding out hoping to walk into a high 5 to low 6 figure salaried job without additional school , certificates and/or degrees . They have no intention of starting over or lower .

Twenty Six years ago was the Reagan Administration . He many respects he wasn't a bad president but he opened the door to outsource and break the unions during the air traffic controllers strike .

Twenty Six years the auto companies were floundering around figuring out what to do about the Japanese imports . Or just waiting & hoping those imports were just a fad . Pffftttt... My how some things never change .

And now you're never eligible for health insurance.

Don't forget Clinton, a little bit. And Nixon, too. Not sure about Bush Sr. or Carter. But this is really on Reagan.

not giving you a fish but teaching you
how to fish

As far as the stimulus package goes, without it we might be looking at an unemployment rate in the high teens so comparing Obama to Hoover, I'll take Obama any day of the week.

The 120 million dollar a year in revenue company I work for(which has grown by 20% in the last two years) has frozen the salary of everyone for an undetermined amount of time. They still do yearly reviews, but nobody gets a salary increase, and no new hires are getting benefits.

If consumer confidence is in the toilet, foreclosures and job losses are high, then stock value is in the toilet where it should be.

@Death to Frying Things: you hit the nail on the head. you would also increase moral by 80 percent.
You earned a star*

@ShruggingGalt:

Employers are squeezing more blood from the same stone.

@j-o-h-n: it's only a prisoner's dilemma if the players could reach a better result by collaborating reliably. if each company is a prisoner, and their options are "fire" and "don't fire," i don't really see a better outcome by everyone coordinating their policies for the greater good--that would also be communism.

At the same time, employers are using the recession to freeze the salaries of the people they do employ. Can't really expect me to go out and "consume" when I'm not getting paid more, but required expenses like utilities, food, gas, continue to go up in price.

- an IT guy who sees the useless crap they send in email.

17.5% of the population wants to work more, but can't; that's more than 1 out of ever 6 people in this country.

[www.bls.gov]

My husband and I are members of the "unemployed who aren't counted". We moved states in order to care for my mother and to do that we had to quit our jobs. We are looking for work in our new state (we both have bachelor's degrees -- fat lot they are doing us) but haven't been successful so far. We aren't eligible for unemployment benefits so no one is counting us in that 10.2%.

It really does shock me that the "counted" numbers are 1 out of every 10 people is unemployed. It's a staggering number and I can't imagine how that situation is going to be corrected in the next five years. And with retirement benefits dropping and healthcare costs rising, more people who would have retired are going to be staying in their jobs which will leave even fewer job openings.

[j/k]

@nnj: well, I don't think the unemployment rate includes contract workers or recent college graduates - so it's entirely likely that the rate being reported is not reflective of the actual unemployment rate.

Either way, it's sad as hell.

My family of three is myself, mom, and dad.
I'm a 22 year old working part time retail job, one that will likely drop me and half its staff in January.

Mom got laid off last week. Dad lost his 20 year position in 2008, and were it not for his entepreneurial skills wed be, well, in some bother.
That makes for a 'classic' employed to unemployed percentage of about 33% for my household.

I've worked with a few people in the past who could really cause productivity to go up if they did not show up for work.

Not that this is a jab at the laid off ones, I am just pointing out that putting in more hours is not a precondition.

However practically, when a layoff happens, there is a spike in work load temporarily, which might go down soon if the managers are competent and circumstances are permissive to distribute load evenly and reduce work load based on reduced work force.

But if you are an assembly line for instance, and you want to keep the production to the same level, yeah, people are going to have to put in more work. If you were laying people off because a project got cancelled, other workers will not have too much extra responsibility.

It's like winning at Weight Watchers by removing your appendages.

Plus, I was scouting out opportunities of employment for me, and though I most likely will never work in my industry (web design) again up there, I can get a job as a CSR. They called me even though my resume said I'm in FLORIDA the day after I submitted it. Obviously they're looking to hire.

@Jeangenie: oops, he is right.

My brother just called me and said what the world needs now is "Welcome to the Jungle". He played it, it was right.

The only thing that suprises me is the unemployment number is not twice that...although in reality it probably is.

I can only imagine we will hear the next consecutive economic bottom call in the news soon.

@ShruggingGalt: Productivity went up. Workers who had jobs were working more hours, essentially.

That open thread cannot come soon enough. All this bad news is depressing.