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The highest unemployment ever reached in this country, in total numbers, was 1933 when 12.8 million people were out of work during the Great Depression. The next time this was surpassed was this past April. It has kept rising and has now passed 14.5 million. While the labor force has expanded many times since 1933, the country has remained the same size. Yet the unemployed today are virtually invisible. I know of a couple of places in my neighborhood where people line-up for free food, but most people out of work seem invisible today.
I was laid-off in January. There were about 270 people on the out of work list in my Carpenters Local and I was at the back end of that number. Fathers' Day will mark my fifth month of unemployment, the list has grown closer to 400 workers and I have climbed to #151. My friend was #36 two weeks ago and is now #35.
My family's health insurance runs out soon and I have sent an application for COBRA. I'll be looking in the mail for that news.
The Green Shoots of the recovery are constant in the local newspapers. I don't see it. It's June for god's sake and we're supposed to see some uptick in construction. It's not happening. Obama's 600,000 jobs in 100 days? It's a good thing, I just don't see it either. If it does kick in, it may well end up being 600,000 state workers who don't get fired because of emergency Federal Funding. That'd be a good thing too, but its not job creation and 600,000 jobs is really nothing when unemployment is nearing 15 million. Six hundred thousand jobs is just a month's rise in unemployment in this country.
Perhaps our invisible army of 14.5 million is waiting, partly in shock, partly just waiting to see if things will quickly recover. And if they don't then it won't simply be the numbers of the 1930s that will be repeated today, but also the radicalism and militant organizing of that period that will be repeated.
3 comments:
I've just spent 20 minutes trying to find these two statistics of the absolute numbers of people unemployed now and during the Great Depression. I found the numbers elsewhere, then found this post. Your numbers are correct.
Your point is exactly what I was afraid of: we actually have more people unemployed now than during the height of the Great Depression.
But I don't think they are hidden exactly. I see so many people in my area (North Carolina) either unemployed, underemployed or extremely nervous about their near-term and long-term futures. Fortunately, because of social measures enacted during FDR's time, we have a far better safety net than back then. My mom has told me how her parents used to feed strangers who showed up at their doorstep daily. I wonder if we would do that today?
I thought it was strange today that I had a harder time finding the actual number of unemployed as it was to get the percentage. Of course, the actual number - and knowing that it exceeds the Great Depression - is much more alarming than "less than 10%."
Hi Ed,
the social measures you refer to definitely came out of the thirties but I think we always have to recognize that it was the mass movement that won them; Roosevelt was forced to make these concessions to save capitalism from itself as some have described it.
The three general strikes of 34, the huge strike wave that struck auto and the breaking of GM, the mass pickets, occupations. The increased interest in socialist ideas and trade Union militancy; this brought about the social measures you refer to. They were forced to recognize on paper what had been won on the ground and also wanted to put and end to a movement with both the carrot and the stick.
They are intent on taking all that back though, and have been somewhat successful. We have seen the breaking of a once powerful Union in the UAW, the defeat of strike after strike, and a complete subservience to the employers on the part of the heads of organized Labor.
Here in the Bay Area the subway workers' contract is up. The Union officials, just as with the teachers and other public sector workers announce publicly that they want to help close the budget deficit. They announce publicly that workers will have to sacrifice; they enter negotiations accepting defeat; this is not very inspiring. "There is no way around it" say prominent Democrats in the legislature about the inevitability of the decline in living standards.
Union organization at 20% in California is much higher than the national and yet there is no mention of going on the offensive on the part of the Labor leaders. No demands that would appeal to the wider working class are made, no threats are made to use the power of Labor to shut down the state as teachers, nurses and others are faced with layoffs and cuts. The employers don't fear the heads of organized Labor. They see them as allies.
The refusal of the Labor leaders to fight gives the employers much confidence. It also retards the development of a fightback and leads to unnecessary suffering for working people but this situation will not go on for ever.
Unemployement usually sticks in the economy for longer time then the crisis (=gdp drop). Companies usually try to optimize during crisis (so they dont need so many people again when it's over) and new businesses are not emerging so quickly
Wish you good luck!
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