Problem is, wbill—the only reason we haven’t had HIGHER unemployment is because of the number of “discouraged” workers. Look at the U-6 number if you want a REAL indication of where we’re at, and IIRC, last month’s figure was just under 17 percent. That number won’t improve with the addition of a mere 100K jobs. Even temporary Census workers will return to the unemployment line, and the expiration of the Bush tax cuts are causing more businesses to hold off hiring. Yeah, 2010 might not be too terrible, but this is the calm before the storm of 2011-2012.
It's down a little - 16.8% (I think) - down from around 18%. But, to still have *real* unemployment / underemployment hovering around 20% is scary, IMHO.
FWIW, I saw some numbers on U6. In the best of times, it was around 7.5 - 8%. Which supports something my Dad always told me - 5% of the population is completely unemployable. Figure that a couple of percent more would be in between jobs, or laid off and looking, etc etc etc.
Roughly, the long term graph showed that things are 8-10% worse than the historical unemployment lows, and around 5-8% worse than normal. Figure that an extra 1 out of 15 people are unemployed or underemployed, over what would be considered normal....that's pretty bad.
What I'm wondering - and I'd guess that these are more rhetorical questions, as I doubt that they can be measured - are the following:
1. How much of the economy has been driven underground? Think barter, being paid cash off the books, etc etc etc.
2. Assuming that at any specific moment, there are a finite number of jobs, how many of these jobs are consumed by illegals? Figure that 1+2 have some overlap.
3. How is the current exodus of illegals (look it up, it's happening) affecting the jobs market?
4. How has the jobs market been irretrievably damaged by illegal immigration? For instance, it's currently impossible in my area to hire a roofer who uses local labor. They don't exist, I tried, the best I could find was locally owned with a local foreman. Where did all of the "American" (read, local, not foreign/illegal) roofers go? What are they doing now? I live in a fairly large metropolitan area - there must have been a fairly decent number of them.....
No need to respond - I'm just using my lunch hour to rant. Listened to Rush and he got me all fired up. :-)