America's army of jobless

The real number of unemployed or underemployed people in the U.S. is a stunning 26.9 million.

By David B. Grusky

November 30, 2011

When President Obama announced that 40,000 troops now in Iraq would come home by the end of the year, the initial excitement quickly turned to concern that our already struggling economy couldn't easily handle the shock of an additional 40,000 job seekers.

Although we should, of course, care deeply about returning Iraq war veterans, we ought not to think for a moment that adding 40,000 workers to the job-seeking pool will break the back of the economy. It's already broken. The nation is laboring under the weight of a reserve army of nearly 27 million women and men who don't have a full-time job, but most surely want one.