Jobs are at the heart of economic recovery if it's going to be meaningful in repairing the damage that's been done across the social spectrum by deep, lingering recession. So what is the outlook for the long-term unemployed? Not good, according to Nancy Folbre, economics professor at University of Massachusetts-Amherst,
writing at New York TImes "Economix":
Once upon a time, economic recovery led to expanded employment of the United States population. Not anymore. The percentage of adults employed has declined sharply during the last two recessions and failed to increase much in their aftermath.
(T)he employment-to-population rate remains at about 58 percent, about the same as in December 2009 and far lower than the peak of 65 percent achieved before the 2001 recession...
(M)ore than 45 percent of those unemployed in January reported they had been looking for jobs for 27 or more weeks. Many other workers in this situation simply give up and stop looking for paid employment – and thus are not counted as unemployed...
(M)ajor multinational corporations cut their employment in the United States by 2.9 million during the 2000s while increasing employment overseas by 2.4 million.
This is a big change from the 1990s, when those corporations added 4.4 million jobs in the United States and 2.7 million abroad...
Globalization weakens the link between economic recovery, increased profits and job creation in the United States...
