...Now What?

So... what changed?

When we found out the unemployment was 9.4% for May, we were told that things were looking up, that there were "green shoots" of signs of possible recovery, that some time soon, maybe before the end of the year, the economy would turn around and things would get better...

And then June's unemployment rate turned out to be 9.5%... and everything went back to being awful.

What changed?

Not much, really - how else to explain only a one-tenth of one percent increase in the unemployment rate - but perhaps what had seemed like a leveling off in some graphs of the economic downturn continued on downward progressions instead. Turns out we have a housing crisis, a foreclosure crisis, a banking crisis, a credit crisis, and a consumer crisis... and none of them appear to be going away.

The idea of "green shoots" would be easy to blame on the media as yet another example of how writers try to find fresh angles to dress up familiar stories... but it is what they were told. Though, to be fair, all through the month of June, economists seemed determined to not oversell the noiton of prospects for a recovery - "a decrease in the rate of decline" is still a downward trajectory.

No, if we plan to "blame the media" or "blame the economic advisors", we should, in fairness, blame ourselves a bit, too. The American short attention span and the need for an upbeat, positive story (we're so good when the storyline involves overcoming adversity) clearly played a part in taking news of "green shoots" and "hopeful signs" and spinning them into scenarios of recovery just moments away. That story of economic hopelessness... it was getting old, and depressing. Give the people what they want.

June's unemployment numbers weren't a dramatic worsening; they were in line with a general decline that shows little sign of stopping, or reversing. And with companies set to show second quarter results in the next few weeks, it's likely that we'll confirm additional details of decline; companies may figure ways to show modest profits... but there will be few, if any, suggestions of growth in a positive way.

The bigger problem is that as a nation, we're still not addressing our urgent needs. All those people without jobs - and the reality is that, all in, about one in five people are out of work, or working part time  when they need full time work - are facing, still, a shredded safety net with few options for support. We have done almost nothing to stem the tide of forelcosure. There have been modest steps toward minor banking reforms (how about a letter from your credit card company explaining what "usurious" means? Would that help?) without a lot of substantive progress on key issues. And all signs point to a painful reckoning over the next few months about the limits of government to spend our way out of these problems. Just ask California.

I didn't expect a modest rise in unemployment to be the wake up call... but one has to take progress where one finds it, I suppose. The question facing us, as I led with is... now what? If we know that our problem is a long term, sustained one; if we know we can't just pretend it's fixed without doing the work... what will we do now?

As a nation, I'm not sure we have a good answer. The rising awareness that the Obama Administration is not just going to save us all has not, I think, woken up any possible viable alternative; if there was ever a need for a progressive protest to shake Democratic Party compacency, the time, it seems to me, is now. I'm just not convinced it's going to happen. We're certainly unlikely to get anything useful from a Republican Party that's essentially in shreds, consumed by personal scandals and self serving attention seekers.

As people... well, I think that story of American triumph over adversity still holds; we are, somehow, muddling through, making sacrifices, changing what we can, helping others where we can. The situation is grim... but we are not.

Still, we cannot get out of this mess with Andy Hardy/Jimmy Stewart notions of hard work, pulling together, and firm resolve alone; all of those are geat things to have... but we need more. We need more from our government, from our businesses, from our leaders. We need more support for the poor, for people losing their homes, for people struggling with the overhangs of our debt crisis. Last week's news underscored all of this. Now what?

Photo by Clementine Gallot, used under a Flickr Creative Commons license.