Only a Trillion-Dollar Jobs Bill Can Save Us Now

From TPM:

We've dubbed this chart the "Scariest Job Chart Ever," as it shows how the decline in employment is WAY uglier than in past recessions.

Calculated Risk has updated it with the latest numbers from this morning, and now it looks even scarier.

Why?

Check out the two red lines at the bottom. The solid one includes Census hiring, while the dotted line doesn't include it.

What's clear is that while we still have a rebound including Census hiring, we're already flattening out on the dotted line. This is a shape not seen on the other lines. suggesting that the fall is extremely deep, and the recovery is shallow.

Zandar brings the pessimism:

The good news? 411k new jobs in May. The bad news? Only 41k were private sector...the rest were Census temp hires.

This is not, by any stretch of the imagination, good news. The stimulus is running out. We're only in positive territory because of that. The deficit cutters are back in control, and when they cut off spending, our economy will plummet into depression for sure.

As awful as 2010 is, 2011 will be far, far worse.

Kevin Drum concludes:

As CBPP's Chad Stone says, "Under these circumstances, policymakers should have no qualms about passing a robust jobs bill — indeed, they would be derelict not to." Preach it, brother.

Paul Krugman warned us 17 months ago: a stimulus less than the $2 trillion necessary to fill the $2 trillion demand gap in the economy would eventually fail. A real fight from the White House in January 2009 could have gotten us a lot closer to the stimulus we needed. Now, it's going to be much, much tougher.