Today's Job Report Is Much Worse Than You Think

By Charles McMillion

Created 07/08/2011 - 2:51pm

Today’s Bureau of Labor Statistics jobs report for June suggests the economy is again nearing even officially-defined recession and weakening further as state, local and federal government cuts to jobs and contracts to private employers begin to take a serious toll. Conditions could get far worse. My updated, detailed data tables and graphics are available [1].

In a reprise of earlier self-interested but economically incompetent hysteria over the current (awful) federal budget deficit, it is vital to understand that the private sector today employs 1,999,000 (1.8 percent) FEWER Americans than 11 years ago in June 2000 – when the U.S. had almost 30 million fewer people. The sustained, 11-year plunge in U.S. jobs is the first since 1927-1938, when the Depression-era job gains of 1933-1936 were sharply reversed in a devastating deficit-reduction effort.