Underemployment and the New Normal

Want to know the real reason we have long-term high unemployment and virtually non-existent inflation? Because that is exactly the combination that makes the rich richer.

 

That it also makes the poor so much poorer and desperate that they'll accept any horrific condition short of immediate death is just icing on the cake.

 

Business First of Louisville:

Although Kentucky’s unemployment rate is holding steady at 8.2 percent — in line with the nation’s jobless rate — workers in the state are suffering from “underemployment” at a rate higher than most other states.

As The Wall Street Journal reported, citing an analysis of U.S. Department of Labor data, Kentucky has the 19th highest underemployment rate at 14.9 percent.

The underemployment rate includes everyone affected by the declining job market, including individuals who want to work but haven’t looked in the past four weeks and those working part time who want to work full time.

Ed Kilgore:

But even as most progressives dismiss the significance of the unemployment figures, Jon Chait raises a point we dare not forget: U.S. elites are exhibiting a dangerous tolerance for persistent high unemployment:

In the years since the collapse of 2008, the existence of mass unemployment has stopped being something the economic powers that be even pretend to regard as a crisis. To those directly impacted, the economic crisis is an emergency, a life-altering disaster the damage from which will endure for years. But most of those in a position to address it simply have not seen it in such terms. History will record that the economic elite has viewed the economic crisis from a perspective of detached complacency. 

SNIP

I’d add to Jon’s argument another oft-forgotten aspect of the split between elite perceptions of the economy and those of regular folk: even if you are lucky enough to have a job, it is the very common habit of employers to exploit periods of high unemployment by treating their employees badly on a broad range of everyday issues. Want a raise? Look for it somewhere else if you can. Your immediate supervisor is breaking all the rules at your expense? Better hope you have a union.

SNIP

 The kind of economy we are enduring now is most definitely a tragedy for the chronically unemployed, but let’s not forget it also enables a work-place power-shift that grinds down dignity and snuffs out hope for many people who may never actually lose, and cannot dare leave, their increasingly unsatisfactory jobs.

Like so much Onion brilliance, this is too close to true for comfort.