We’re Not There Yet: Unemployment Not at Its Peak

We would have to travel back in time to 1983 to find unemployment rates as bad as today’s. The October, 2009 figures list the national rate at a distressing 10.2%. Put a bit more graphically, perhaps, if one would be so inclined – the unemployed among us now outnumber available job openings more than 6 to 1.

For those who are still working, they’re likely finding life to be much harder than it’s been in some time. Under the ever-present threat of job loss, and also with that, the prospects for the sudden loss of their health care coverage, they are very much under the gun. They must do more with less; they must run yet faster – and then faster still.

There are limits involved, though. And those limits encompass several things: our expectations for just how high unemployment rates might yet still rise, for one, plus exactly how much more employers can afford to demand from their remaining employees, for another. People do eventually tire, after all. They will first start to run down, to question more, to burn out and to become both physically and mentally ill; only then to ultimately collapse.

The stock market itself would appear fairly oblivious to this stark mixed reality of high unemployment and low job satisfaction numbers. Faster, faster is still the watchword for businesses– "get your productivity up – use that now lean workforce to improve the company bottom line – at least pretend that things are returning to normal; whatever that may be – help us provide the illusion that recovery is here by encouraging people to spend money which they admittedly most likely do not have."

The "smarts" that are in charge of things economic, after all, always seem to manage to create their own opportunities; "they" will make their own jobs; thank you very much. Intelligent people just seem to also come handily equipped with an inborn sense of self-sustainability. "They" say it’s just too bad there are some people – 10.2% of them, apparently for now at least – who can’t seem to find a job at all. Maybe all those people who are looking for jobs just are not looking hard enough…"they" will probably say.

These unfortunate few have failed in so many ways, "they" will also charge. These people were just not as intelligent or as astute as some of the others, they didn’t understand the hidden messages and inferences that were there for everyone to see; these people simply failed to take note that we now operate in a "New Economy" that is going to work exceedingly well – really it is - at least for a fortunate few. Trust me.

"Black Friday" looms just days away. Some of the bolder economic prognosticators quietly tell us we should also largely write off 2010 as to the prospects for improving employment figures. These same forecasters tell us not to look forward to more confident and profitable days for business in general. We must then be left to wonder if this "New Economy" – if that is indeed what it is – is only going to be truly "successful" in just one way: in creating a brand new, increasingly desperate underclass of perpetually non-working Americans.