Unemployment Figures and New Types of Work

What’s the difference between a recession and a depression? A recession is when your neighbor loses his job; a depression is when you lose yours. Well, to more and more people worldwide, this is starting to feel like a depression.

The new American unemployment figures came out this week. It’s bad: 9.5 percent of Americans looking for work, can’t find it. How does that compare with the last 10 years? Here’s the data from the Bureau of Labor Statistics.

But wait, it gets worse. Unemployment is measured by the percentage of people who are actively looking for work, but can’t find it. The figures don’t include people who have given up and stopped searching. America’s effective unemployment could be as high as 18 percent.

So could we be entering another Great Depression? It’s a scary possibility. Here’s what New York Times columnist Paul Krugman had to say today.

“All of this is depressingly familiar to anyone who has studied economic policy in the 1930s. Once again a Democratic president has pushed through job-creation policies that will mitigate the slump but aren’t aggressive enough to produce a full recovery. Once again much of the stimulus at the federal level is being undone by budget retrenchment at the state and local level.

So have we failed to learn from history, and are we, therefore, doomed to repeat it? Not necessarily — but it’s up to the president and his economic team to ensure that things are different this time.”

And hey, it’s not just Americans who are suffering. The unemployment figures in the UK are at a 12-year high.

Here’s a snapshot of the Eurozone.

But have faith, many say: We have a leader for the times in President Barack Obama. But here’s a sober thought outlined in an interesting essay by Kevin Baker in Harper’s: The 1930’s had a brilliant leader back then in Herbert Hoover. He was the golden boy who could do no wrong. And we all know what happened with his legacy as the president.

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