With the economy deteriorating rapidly, the nation’s employers shed 533,000 jobs in November, the 11th consecutive monthly decline, the government reported Friday morning, and the unemployment rate rose to 6.7 percent.
The decline, the largest one-month loss since December 1974, was fresh evidence that the economic contraction accelerated in November, promising to make the current recession, already 12 months old, the longest since the Great Depression. The previous record was 16 months, in the severe recessions of the mid-1970s and early 1980s.
“We have recorded the largest decline in consumer confidence in our history,” said Richard T. Curtin, director of the Reuters/University of Michigan Survey of Consumers, which started its polling in the 1950s. “It is being driven down by a host of factors: falling home and stock prices, fewer work hours, smaller bonuses, less overtime and disappearing jobs.”
“It is being driven down by a host of factors: falling home and stock prices, fewer work hours, smaller bonuses, less overtime and disappearing jobs.â€
Let us not forget that we are also reaping the rewards of 7 years of flat “real” wages. For about seven years, employers persistently failed to give sufficient wage increases to keep up with inflation. That means that the average worker has suffered the hiddden loss of about 21% of their purchasing power. The insidious workings of an inflationary fiat currency must be a factor in the reduction of consumer confidence we are currently experiencing. Some 20 Million illegal migrants in our economy, depressing wages, must also be considered a contributing factor. The ruling class refuses to deal with the illegal migrants, despite an overwhelming ground swell of citizens demanding that illegal immigration be dealt with severly. If the economic pain we are experiencing right now gets connected with the costs of the illlegal migrant workforce depressing our wages and stealing our jobs, I think there will be a tremendous political reckoning.
We may give thanks to the democratic congress for this debacle.
…and for continuing ‘bailout soap’ on TV every day.
GA/FL, I agree. Things were going fairly well until the Democratic Party got their majority in 2006. I do fault Bush, however, with not being more assertive in heading off the debalcle in mortgages being given to those who should not have had them and financial derivatives trading that got us into this mess. It was started under Clinton, but he should have done more to stop it. Warren Buffet warned us years ago about this. Nobody listened.