No Jobs, No Recovery - Let's Have a Real Stimulus

Zandar brings us the bad news about the recession, which is getting worse, not better.

From CalcRisk:

Here is a graph with an estimate of the impact of the preliminary estimate of the annual benchmark revision. (ht John)

Percent Job Losses During Recessions. Click here for larger image.



The dashed line is an estimate of the impact of the large benchmark revision (824 thousand more jobs lost).

The graph compares the job losses from the start of the employment recession in percentage terms (as opposed to the number of jobs lost).

Instead of 7.2 million net jobs lost since December 2007, the preliminary benchmark estimate suggests the U.S. has lost over 8.0 million net jobs during that period.

Zandar comments:

In other words, almost two years after this recession began, we've lost five percent of the jobs in this country. Only the recession of 1948-50 came close to that, and it was over after two years. We're still looking for the bottom. The reality is we've almost lost six percent of the jobs in this country.

They're not coming back, for the most part. Eight million jobs lost in 21 months. America will be fundamentally different. There will be no V-shaped recovery. There will be no easy or quick fixes. It's going to be a long, hard slog, and frankly I doubt we'll get those eight million jobs back for a very, very long time...and the truly miserable part is there's still going to be millions more jobs lost before we turn the corner.

If you're wondering where the $750 billion spring stimulus went, Steven Benen reminds us that Senate repugs and Blue Dogs made sure the $100 billion part of the stimulus that would have created the most jobs was stripped out of the bill, just because.

In February, when the debate over the economic stimulus package was at its height, a handful of "centrist" Senate Republicans said they'd block a vote on recovery efforts unless the majority agreed to slash over $100 billion from the bill.

The group, which didn't have any specific policy goals in mind and simply liked the idea of a small bill, specifically targeted $40 billion in proposed aid to states. Helping rescue states, Sen. Collins & Co. said, does not stimulate the economy, and as such doesn't belong in the legislation. Democratic leaders reluctantly went along -- they weren't given a choice since Republicans refused to give the bill an up-or-down vote -- and the $40 billion in state aid was eliminated.

At the time, it seemed like a very bad idea. That's because it was a very bad idea.

In the past, government hiring had managed to somewhat offset losses in the private sector, but government jobs declined by 53,000, with the biggest number of cuts on the local and state levels. Even the Postal Service, which is included in the public-sector job statistics, dropped 5,300 jobs.

"The major surprise came from the public sector, where every level of government cut back," Naroff said. "The budget crises at the state and local levels have caused an awful lot of belt-tightening."

Remember the next time Mitch McConnell and DINO Ben Chandler bleat about the deficit and fiscal responsibility, they're really talking about eliminating your job and making sure you never find another one.

Cross-posted at They Gave Us A Republic ....