This post is mostly for my students (and myself) since the unyieldingess of the academic calendar means we are in class on labor day.
I know as a kid growing up with two professional, salaried parents, I had no concept of labor day aside from that three day weekend. I wonder how many of my students have a similarly hazy and immaterial understanding of the “labor” part of labor day.
So, how is the state of our workforce? Not good.
Official unemployment is at 9.7%.
This number of course, due to how it is measured (those actively looking for work in last four weeks). That doe snot include discouraged workers, those who are marginally attached (would work more), or who have dropped out of the labor force. This NY Times article nicely adds a human face to those categories.
They were left out of the latest unemployment rate, as they are every month: millions of hidden casualties of the Great Recession who are not counted in the rate because they have stopped looking for work.
And it has pictures!
This discouraged worker carpenter fills his time by cutting grass with clippers.
The Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS) has a very broad category to capture these various situations people find themselves in. In August, the u6 measure, as it is known, came in at 16. 8 million. That was a 6 million increase over the year prior. At 155 million in the labor force, that is an unemployment rate of 10.8%. Throw in the number of people dropping out of the labor force all together, and you can add another % point to get to an unemployment rate of around 12%.
Over at CalculatedRisk, the following chart captures the way that unemployment is steeper (big drop) and longer (more time to recover) than most recent recessions. In short, this is a whole new world and historical analogies are rough at best.
Well, there are bound to be bumps when you unleash the creative, destructive forces of capitalism, some might say. Overall, we do better if we take the long view.
This is not a jobless recovery, it is a jobless economy. The amount of job growth since 200o is essentially zero. This graph shows that the ten year change in private employment is almost zero.
UPDATE: Here is a small glimmer of good news. While labor-managemment, or labor unions in general, are usually seen in pretty negative terms, I am happy to share this little list of organizations acorss sectors that are successful and rely on collaborative organizaed labor partnerships.
orgtheory.net
The Nets We Weave 
