What Unemployment Crisis?

by Kathryn Baer · 2010-02-19 06:00:00 UTC
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Arianna Huffington hits the nail on the head. Nearly 15 million people are out of work -- 25.6 million if we count those who are working part-time because they can't find a full-time job or are too discouraged to go on looking. But there's no sense of urgency to create jobs coming from the White House or Congress.

The Senate is set to vote on a $15 billion jobs bill that the the New York Times calls "so puny as to be meaningless." No extension of unemployment compensation, no additional aid to the states though they're poised to cut millions of jobs, no direct creation of public service jobs, no new direct investment in infrastructure or energy. Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid says they'll get to some of that later.

President Obama has incorporated an estimated $266 billion in job creation measures into his proposed fiscal year 2011 budget. But Congress won't pass budget legislation for many months. Meanwhile, Obama seems content to let Congressional leadership do whatever it can line up the votes for.

The reason, Huffington suggests, is that high-earners aren't experiencing a job crisis. According to a recent study by Northeastern University's Center for Labor Market Studies, the unemployment rate for people earning $150,000 or more per year was just 3 percent in the last quarter of 2009. For those in the bottom tenth of the income scale, the rate was 31 percent.

So we've got "band-aids, bipartisanship and baby steps" instead of bold action. A sad commentary on whose needs really count in our nation's capital.

Photo credit: khteWisconsin

Kathryn Baer is an independent consultant in policy research, analysis and communications. She also maintains her own blog, Poverty and Policy.

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