Right now, there is a lot of talk from Trump’s dwindling acolytes about how many improvements have been done to unemployment numbers. However, the fact is that these ‘numbers’ are meaningless because they do not indicate the quality of the work as it concerns pay, if the work in question will be long term, and if one will be able to stay in such a position for the long term. Sure, there are lots of jobs for working at a fast food restaurant, but since it has been mathematically proven that no job which pays less than a minimum of $17.07 in the lowest case, it is very, very hard to afford an apartment without causing extreme financial imbalances in one’s life if one is making $7.25 (federal minimum wage), $10, $12, or even now $15 per hour.
Thus it is with interesting that Zero Hedge reports in addition to the current job number ‘increases’, the number of ‘permanent’ job losses has sharply increased.
According to the BLS, average hourly earnings for all employees fell by 35 cents to $29.37. Average hourly earnings of private-sector production and nonsupervisory employees decreased by 23 cents to $24.74 in June. The decreases in average hourly earnings largely reflect job gains among lower-paid workers; these changes put downward pressure on the average hourly earnings estimates. So how did average hourly earnings rise? Simple: the average workweek for all employees – i.e., the denominator – decreased even more, or by 0.2 hour to 34.5 hours in June, while the average workweek for production and nonsupervisory employees on private nonfarm payrolls fell by 0.2 hour to 33.9 hours. That said, even the BLS admitted that the recent employment changes, especially in industries with shorter workweeks, “complicate monthly comparisons of the average weekly hours estimates.”
Today’s report also noted that the number of unemployed persons who were on temporary layoff decreased by nearly 5 million, to 10.565 million from 15.3 million, a second consecutive decline from 18.1 million in April. Among those not on temporary layoff, the number of permanent job losers continued to rise, increasing by 295,000 in May to 2.3 million.
And one red flag: according to the BLS, the number of permanent job losers continued to rise, increasing by 588,000 to 2.9 million in June. The number of unemployed reentrants to the labor force rose by 711,000 to 2.4 million.
Also in June, the number of unemployed persons who were jobless less than 5 weeks declined by 1.0 million to 2.8 million. Unemployed persons who were jobless 5 to 14 weeks numbered 11.5 million, down by 3.3 million over the month, and accounted for 65.2 percent of the unemployed. By contrast, the number of persons jobless 15 to 26 weeks and the long-term unemployed (those jobless for 27 weeks or more) saw over-the-month increases (+825,000 to 1.9 million and +227,000 to 1.4 million, respectively). (source)
Permanent job loss means permanent. These jobs aren’t coming back, and good luck finding one’s way in the ‘new normal’ with a situation like this.
It is a very ‘hard pill’ to swallow, but life is fundamentally changing in the US, and it is going to get a lot harder for a lot of people.
If a man is wise, he will work right now on paying down his debts and economically preparing himself to weather what is going to be a fiscal winterthat will last for a very long time. The country is getting poorer, jobs are becoming a LOT harder to find, and the time to get new skills and work hard is right now before it is too late and even more serious poverty comes. Savings, while a useful tool, will also likely not help you because savings are related to the dollar, and the fundamental problem is that the value of the dollar itself is in decline, so the price of goods will be forced to rise- not because they are worth more, but because the same amount of money buys less.
What we are seeing is the active economic stratification of the country to a point where the US is starting to look like the USSR.