SHOCK AND AWE!

In a further attempt to get the AP to sue me (just kidding) I'm posting excerpts from some recent articles that were facinating to me. Sure it'll bore the hell outta all you readers ... all 3 of you (not counting my Step-mum).

(This was a zillion column inches, it's been clipped)

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Jobless Count Skips Millions
Dec 29, 2003

By David Streitfeld
Los Angeles Times Staff Writer

SAN FRANCISCO — Lisa Gluskin has had a tough three years. She works almost as hard as she did during the dot-com boom, for about 20% of the income.

When Gluskin's writing and editing business cratered in 2001, she slashed her rates, began studying for a graduate degree and started teaching part time at a Lake Tahoe community college for a meager wage.

It's been a fragmented, hand-to-mouth life, one that she sees mirrored by friends and colleagues who are waiting tables or delivering packages. In the late '90s, the 35-year-old Gluskin says, "We had careers. We had trajectories. Now we have complicated lives. We're not unemployed, but we're underemployed."

The nation's official jobless rate is 5.9%, a relatively benign level by historical standards. But economists say that figure paints only a partial — and artificially rosy — picture of the labor market.

To begin with, there are the 8.7 million unemployed, defined as those without a job who are actively looking for work. But lurking behind that group are 4.9 million part-time workers such as Gluskin who say they would rather be working full time — the highest number in a decade.

There are also the 1.5 million people who want a job but didn't look for one in the last month. Nearly a third of this group say they stopped the search because they were too depressed about the prospect of finding anything. Officially termed "discouraged," their number has surged 20% in a year.

Add these three groups together and the jobless total for the U.S. hits 9.7%, up from 9.4% a year ago.

No wonder the Democratic presidential candidates have seized on jobs as a potentially powerful weapon. Howard Dean criticized President Bush for "the worst job creation record in over 60 years."

In every election since 1960, the party in the White House lost when the unemployment rate deteriorated during the first half of the year. If the rate improved, the party in the White House won.

One statistic proving particularly perplexing is the percentage of the adult population that is employed. This number rises during good times, as people are lured into the workforce, and falls during recessions as companies falter.

True to form, the percentage of adult Americans with jobs dropped from a high of 64.8% in April 2000, just as the stock market was cresting, to 62% in September — the lowest level in a decade. If past recessions are any guide, those 5 million people who found themselves jobless should have driven the unemployment rate up to about 8%.

Instead, the rate never went much above 6%.

Many (adults) may be working for themselves part time, temporarily, as a way to get food on the table in the absence of better options.

The segment of the labor force that has been jobless for more than 15 weeks has risen nearly 150% since 2000. The current level is the highest since the recession of the early 1990s. Nearly one-quarter of the jobless have been unemployed for longer than six months.

In some eyes, a nation of burger flippers, temps and Wal-Mart clerks isn't the worst scenario for the economy. The worst is that companies continue to eliminate jobs faster than they create them, setting up a game of musical chairs for the labor force.

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Here's another:

Gov. Asks Bush to Extend Jobless Benefits
Dec 26, 2003
Associated Press

AUGUSTA, Maine - In a letter to President Bush that echoes concerns raised in other states, Gov. John Baldacci is appealing for an extension to a program that provides an extra 13 weeks of unemployment benefits to workers whose regular jobless benefits have run out.

Baldacci expressed his concerns in a letter to Bush and is also working with Maine's congressional delegation to extend Temporary Extended Unemployment Compensation benefits, which are set to expire at the end of this month.

Congress adjourned for the year without approving what would have been the fourth extension of the program since March 2002.

"While our workers continue to look for employment in a job market that has been slow in recovering, these TEUC benefits have enabled them to pay for rent or mortgages, utilities, health care and prescription drugs, food, and other bills," Baldacci said in the letter.

In New York, where the unemployment rate has been higher than 7 percent in some counties, U.S. Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton (news - web sites) has also called on Congress to extend unemployment benefits as soon as it returns next month.

Clinton sent a letter to Senate Majority Leader Bill Frist urging him to make the unemployment extension the Senate's first order of business when it returns Jan. 20.

Advocacy groups are petitioning Congress for changes in unemployment laws they say will benefit the long-term jobless in Oregon and Washington state. Unemployment rates in the Pacific Northwest are among the nation's highest at 7 to 8 percent.

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Hefty reading.

-- Mz M.