Today's unemployment numbers should have splashed all that talk of "green shoots" with economic Weed-B-Gone, as the official job deficit rolls toward 10 percent in our midnight garden of recession - while the unofficial numbers creep higher still.
To crib from early 70s Paul Simon: "I don't know a soul who's not been battered. I don't have a friend who feels at ease." The Labor Department's monthly number - 9.5 percent and once again picking speed on the downhill lie - doesn't include all the underemployed, the furloughed, the salary-sliced, the benefits-deprived and the just plain battered into submission in our society. Throw in the fearful and the trepidatious still clinging to old-fashioned paychecks, and that's pretty much everyone I know.
As monsoon season in New York gives way to rainy season, and the humidity grows and ripens in the corners and on the subway platforms, there's a gathering gloom about town that has nothing to do with merely the latest thunderhead rolling in from New Jersey. No, what's rolling in from the rest of America is the Great Recession, the economic event of most of our lifetimes, the one they warned us about, the one our parents and grandparents lived through a couple of generations back before the war.
Noting that Leo Hindery's "real" job losses are 18.7 percent - or more than 30 million Americans - Steve Clemons argues that "with Christina Romer out raising expectations again with giddy talk predicting a V-shaped recovery and given the 'jobs, jobs, jobs' mantra of President Obama himself -- the gap between the job figures expected and the disappointing economic realities generated may be politically consequential." Yeah, when a fifth of working age Americans are out of a job, you can bet there are consequences.
One of which is a clear depression in spending. "Americans are tightening their belts" report the pollsters, which is a bit like saying that someone run over by a semi has "passed on." Magazine subscriptions are being cancelled, fewer shirts are headed for the drycleaners, more workers are brownbagging it, coffee sales are down - hence Starbucks' massive cutbacks. The jobs cliff is pretty obvious - and so is this recession's historic nature (via Ezra Klein):
Was the stimulus enough? Is it well-targeted? Is it working and creating jobs? Hard to tell, but the job numbers are pretty indicative - and perhaps we'd be worse without it. And as Kevin Drum said today: "keep in mind that we're in good shape compared to Europe and China." This could be a long, gloomy summer.
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