Holy fucking crap...

I just had a chance to read Friday's Bureau of Labor Statistics release of January's employment stats. Highlights:

1. The economy lost 598,000 jobs in January -- worse than expected.
2. At that rate, the economy will lose 7.2 million jobs by the end of the year.
3. 11.6 million Americans "officially" unemployed.
4. 2.1 million Americans disappeared as "Not In Labor Force", but actually unemployed
5. 7.8 million Americans looking for a full time job, but not counted as "unemployed" because they worked as little as 1 hour a week at odd jobs to make ends meet while looking for work.
6. "Official" unemployment up to 7.6%.
7. U-6 unemployment at 13.9%.
8. Another 4.6 million Americans disappeared via "labor force participation", but actually unemployed, raising the *real* number of unemployed Americans to 16.5%.
9. Another 7.2 million jobs lost by the end of the year will raise the "official" unemployment rate to 11.7% and the real unemployment rate to 20.6%.

These last numbers are Great Depression numbers, folks. One thing to remember, when you look at the Great Depression, is that the employment statistics then were collected in an entirely different manner. It was assumed that men were the wage earners in homes. The Census Bureau went to a home and asked the man of the house, "Are you employed?". If the answer was yes, they marked him employed. Otherwise they marked him unemployed. They didn't try to figure out whether he was "marginally attached" or "not in work force" or any of the other myriad of ways they now try to kick people out of the statistics to prettify them up. They just counted employed or not employed and let the chips fall as they lay. So the correct number to compare to the numbers we have from the Great Depression is my last number above, which includes working-age men who are not employed but are currently being counted as "not in labor force". By that number, we are in 1931, when unemployment hit 15.9%, and by the end of this year, closing in on 1932, when unemployment hit 23.6%.

In short, we are in a new Great Depression, a Depression which started in December 2007, whether anybody wants to admit it or not. And stopping the full-bore slide to the disaster of 1932 will require immediate and drastic action -- action which, alas, does not appear to be forthcoming because the Villagers, the insular media superstars who control what we see and hear in our media, are still stuck on conventional wisdom, which is that tax cuts solve all economic problems (yeah right, so why are we in this mess with eight tax cuts over the last 8 years?) and government spending is evil (except when spent on handouts to rich people, apparently). Neither of which has any relevance to handling a depression.

-- Badtux the Apocalyptic Penguin