Washington, D.C., February 1, 2013 – The Union of Unemployed (UCubed) renews its call for an ambitious, robust jobs program in response to today’s anemic jobs report from the U.S. Department of Labor.

“The new employment numbers are abysmal,” said UCubed President Rick Sloan, regarding the meager 157,000 jobs added last month. “We need to add 350,000 jobs a month to see real prosperity again. And we can’t get there from here with more austerity measures. We need a jobs program on steroids to spark a new economic reality: sustained growth of 4 percent for the next three years.”

UCubed maintains that the creation of a 21^st century Works Progress Administration (WPA) is the only proof-positive way to pull the country from the depths of the ongoing jobs crisis. During the Great Depression, the WPA put more than 8.5 million Americans back to work working on projects the country needed anyway.

“They built bridges, fixed weather-beaten roads, installed 20,000 miles of water mains,” said Sloan. “Seventy-eight years later, many of those projects are in dire need of repair. In addition, there are new, modern-day tasks that need to be done like research and development, devising clean energy programs, burying power lines, renovating factories, installing new machinery and equipment, and improving our transportation grid. We need more teachers, police, firefighters and health care workers. There’s much work to be done.”

The Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS) announced earlier this morning that based on its monthly survey of households, in January 2013:

U.S. employers added 157,000 non-farm jobs versus the 166,000 that were expected per the monthly Wall Street Journal survey of economists.

The BLS Unemployment Rate at 7.9% was essentially unchanged from December’s adjusted rate of 7.8%.

There are now 12.3 million Unemployed Workers, based on BLS’s separate monthly survey of businesses.

However, each month BLS’s figures do not reflect Real Unemployment, since BLS: counts only those workers who are actively looking for employment, which can vary fairly widely month-to-month due to workers voluntarily removing themselves from the labor force; does not include “discourage workers;” and does not include the 10.4 million workers who are “part-time-of-necessity” (the “underemployed”).

In contrast, our Summary of U.S. Real Unemployment makes these changes to the Adjusted Civilian Labor Force and in the number of Real Unemployed Workers.  In January 2013:

The number of Real Unemployed Workers decreased by 10,000 to 22.7 million (i.e., the BLS Unemployed Workers figure (12.3 mm) plus the 10.4 mm workers who are part-time-of-necessity, discouraged or other marginally attached).  December’s increase in Real Unemployed Workers was an insignificant 53,000.

Since February 2010, when the number of Real Unemployed Workers was at its highest at 26.5 million, and despite the Civilian Labor Force now being 2.0 million workers larger, the number of Real Unemployed Workers in the country has declined by 3.8 million workers

The Real Unemployment Rate declined by 0.1% to 14.4%, compared to the BLS Unemployment Rate of 7.9%.

Note: In addition to the current 22.7 million Real Unemployed Workers, there are 4.3 million workers who, while also saying they want jobs, have not looked for one over the past 12 months.  Prior to December 2012, we included these workers among the Real Unemployed because they say they want jobs and because the number is so large; however, after discussion with BLS and considering that these workers have not looked for employment in over a year, we now exclude them from attachment 2 and our calculation of the Real Unemployment Rate.  If they are included, though, January’s Real Unemployment Rate of 14.4% becomes 16.7%

Dear UCubed Leader:

As the Great Recession began, corporate America slashed its payrolls. Over 625,000 employees were laid off each month, hundreds of thousands more saw their hours cut and millions – 31 million to be exact – faced the abyss of joblessness.

Corporations targeted employees in the prime of their careers. Those born between 1947 and 1953, the core of the baby boom generation, were in positions of real responsibility – senior vice presidents, middle managers, foremen and women, executive secretaries, sales representatives, accountants, agents, brokers and producers – and many were drawing down six-figure salary packages.

Most had college degrees, three decades of experience in their chosen fields, homes in communities where their children attended the local high school before heading off to college, and voting histories dating back to 1972. They were, in short, solid citizens who were being prematurely retired.

Gender discrimination vanished. Men and women felt the axe in almost equal numbers. By 2011, those searching for work included 2.4 million from management or professional ranks, 2.7 million from service occupations and 3.1 million from sales and office careers. Their former employers proved to be equal opportunity firers.

Unemployed women over 55 grew from a low of 311,000 in 2007 to 1,042,000 by July 2011. Unemployment among men over age 55 grew from 452,000 in 2007 to a peak of 1,306,000 in October 2010. Subsequent declines were due mostly to baby boomers leaving the workforce.

Today 794,000 women and 1,095,000 men in the 55-plus age cohort remain officially unemployed (U-3).  Their real unemployment, however, are twice those levels. U-6 for those over 55 is 3.93 million.

Now between the ages of 58 and 67, the prematurely retired are potential allies of the unemployed.  With their careers effectively over, financial assets depleted and dreams destroyed, their next 20 years will be meaner and more hardscrabble than they ever imagined. But the pain they have endured since 2008 has steeled them for the harsher lives they will lead.

Older, wizened and far more cynical, the prematurely retired could become the most potent force in American politics… by acting as a bridge between America’s jobless and the elderly. Their reliance on Medicare, Food Stamps, Social Security and Medicaid – the latter particularly important for those who face a need for long-term care – will only grow. And future attacks on their pension or health care benefits, if they are fortunate enough to have them still, will be over their dead bodies, literally.

The prematurely retired fit the original definition of “necessitous men.”  Two hundred fifty years ago, a court of conscience jurist, Lord Robert Henley, wrote that “necessitous men are not, truly speaking, free men, but, to answer a present exigency, will submit to any terms that the crafty may impose upon them.”  But they will not submit to those unconscionable terms forever.

Lord Henley’s words were echoed by President Franklin Roosevelt in his 1944 State of the Union Speech as the rationale for a Second Bill of Rights. Today’s necessitous men and women – the prematurely retired – could be the spark that triggers that such a revolution in American politics.

In Unity – Strength,

Rick

Rick Sloan
UCubed President

Trimming domestic growth is insanity squared when 22.7 million Americans still seek full-time jobs. But insanity is in the air in Washington.

In its austerity asylum, reality vanishes. America’s jobless disappear into a surreal landscape. There they subsist yet do not exist. There they vote yet their votes never count. There they live forever scarred by a dead time in their working lives. And there they are damned for, and to, an unending idleness.

Led by the GOP, the last Congress cut spending by $3.6 trillion. If the International Monetary Fund’s economists are correct, our gross domestic product (GDP) will shrink by $5.4 trillion as a result. For an austerity asylum, that’s the equivalent of electric shock treatments — intense, useless pain with no real change in the patient’s condition.

Yet there’s an insatiable appetite in Washington for more cuts, slower growth and longer job fair lines.  Ezra Klein of the Washington Post sees “a deal that cuts $400 billion from Medicare and other mandatory spending while raising $400 billion in taxes … [that] could put us on a declining debt path.” Another $800 billion in austerity will trim our GDP by $1.2 trillion, and prolong this jobless recovery indefinitely.

Attach jumper cables, spin the dials and watch the patient kick helplessly is this  austerity asylum’s “cure”. It does not work, never did and never will. But we’re damned because the GOP led Congress will  keep  doing the same thing over and over again expecting a different result.

On July 25, 1967 as riots enveloped American cities, the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. sent the following telegram to President Lyndon Johnson regarding the plight of the unemployed:

The President

The White House

I listened with great anticipation to your statement of last evening, for I too have labored with heavy heart through the tragic events of the past week. The chaos and destruction now spreads through our cities is a blind revolt against the revolting conditions which you so courageously set out to remedy as you entered office in 1964, the conditions have not changed.

And though the aimless violence and destruction may be contained through military means, only drastic changes in the life of the poor will provide the kind of order and stability you desire.

There is no question that the violence and destruction of property must be halted, but Congress has consistently refused to vote a halt the destruction of the lives of negroes in the ghetto. First the rent supplement bill was killed then the model cities proposal was drastically cut and finally even a bill with no political or financial implications but great humanitarian aspects was laughed out of the House and Congress rejected a simple bill to protect our cities against rats. The suicidal and irrational acts which plague our streets daily are being sowed and watered by the irrational, irrelevant and equally suicidal debate and delay in Congress.

This is an example of moral degradation. This hypocrisy and confusion seeping through the fabric of our society can ultimately destroy from within the very positive values of our nation which no enemy could destroy from without.

I do not think we are helpless; we are only acting helplessly. I should like to offer a single proposal that I am convinced will be as effective as it is just. Every single out-break without exception has substantially been ascribed to gross unemployment, particularly among young people. In most cities unemployment of negro youth is greater than the unemployment level of the depression ’30′s.

Let us do one simple direct thing — let us end unemployment totally and immediately. In the depression days the nation was close to prostrate on the brink of bankruptcy, yet it created the WPA to make millions of jobs instantly available for all existing levels of skill. The jobs were tailored to the man, not the man to the job in recognition of the emergency. Training followed employment, it did not precede it and become an obstacle to it.

What we did three decades ago during an economic holocaust can easily be done today in the comfort of prosperity.

I propose specifically the creation of a national agency that shall provide a job to every person who needs work, young and old, white and Negro. Not one hundred jobs when 10,000 are needed. Not some cheap way out. Not some frugal device to maintain a balanced budget within an unbalanced society.

I propose a job for everyone, not a promise to see if jobs can be found. There cannot be social peace when a people have awakened to their rights and dignity and to the wretchedness of their lives simultaneously. If our government cannot create jobs, it cannot govern. It cannot have white affluence amid black poverty and have racial harmony.

The turmoil of the ghetto is the externalization of the Negro’s inner torment and rage. It has turned outward the frustration that formerly was suppressed in agony.

The Negro knows that a society that is able to plan intercontinental war and interplanetary travel is able to plan a place for him in its callous refusal to be just the civilized society is driving a wedge of destructive alienation into the hope of harmony.

Tranquility will not be evoked by pious words. To do too little is as inflammatory as inciting to riot. Desperate men do desperate deeds. It is not they who are irrational but those who expect injustice eternally to be endured. I am convinced that a single dramatic massive proof of concern that touches the needs of all the oppressed will ease resentments and heal enough angry wounds to permit constructive attitudes to emerge.

I regret that my expression may be sharp but I believe literally that the life of our nation is at stake: here at home. Measures to preserve it need be boldly and swiftly applied before the process of social disintegration engulfs the world of society.

Mr. President, this is an emergency state as surely as was the recent crisis in the railroads of our nation. Unless Congress can be motivated to act immediately upon some creative and massive program to end unemployment, we face the possible spread of this tragic destruction of life and property. I urge you to use the power of your office to establish justice in our land by enacting and implementing legislation of reason and vision in the Congress.

Martin Luther King Jr.

Washington, D.C., January 11, 2013 – The Union of Unemployed (UCubed) calls upon President Barack Obama to include the following line in his upcoming inaugural address:

“It is vital that we have an economic strategy that can create jobs and raise incomes to sustain growth.”

The sentence was spoken Thursday, January 10, 2013, by Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe. Abe was announcing a new $224 billion stimulus package aimed at creating 600,000 new jobs.

“If President Barack Obama added a similar line to his Second Inaugural Address — and backed it up with an all-of-government strategy to create jobs — the 22.7 million Americans still searching for work would be forever grateful,” said UCubed Executive Director Rick Sloan.

After two lost decades, Abe’s Liberal Democratic Party is now “touting public works spending and subsidies to strategically important sectors as part of its plan to revive the economy,” according to the Associated Press.

UCubed continues its call for the president to create a 21^st century Works Progress Administration (WPA) similar to the one created by President Franklin Delano Roosevelt in 1935. The celebrated public works project is credited for putting 8.5 million Americans back to work during the Great Depression.

The Union of Unemployed (UCubed) has released a new website in its efforts to organize, educate and empower unemployed and underemployed Americans. Features include a running tab on the “real” unemployment rate which now stands at 14.4 percent.

Unlike the official unemployment rate, as reported by the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics, which is 7.8 percent, the “real” unemployment rate takes into account those forced to work part-time, as well as discouraged workers who have given up on finding work during the month.

The website continues to feature UCubed’s new Facebook campaign “Exit Left Ahead,” which encourages its 134,000 Facebook fans – and their 35 million friends – to urge Congress to vote against any austerity measures being proposed by the GOP.

The page also offers more Facebook shareability, allowing users to share more information directly from the page.

Visit the new UCubed website at www.unionofunemployed.com. “Like” UCubed on Facebook at www.facebook.com/ucubed.

“It is vital that we have an economic strategy that can create jobs and raise incomes to sustain growth.”

Is that a line in President Barack Obama’s Second Inaugural Address?

No, but it should be.

That sentence was spoken by Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe. He was announcing a new $224 billion stimulus package aimed at creating 600,000 new jobs.

After two lost decades, Abe’s Liberal Democratic Party is now “touting public works spending and subsidies to strategically important sectors as part of its plan to revive the economy”, according to the Associated Press.

If President Barack Obama added a similar line to his Second Inaugural Address — and backed it up with an all-of-government strategy to create jobs — the 22.7 million Americans still searching for work would be forever grateful.

In 1933, the broadest measure of joblessness (U-6) reached 38%. U-6 did not return to its pre-1929 levels until 1943, a period of 14 years. Yikes!

U-6 peaked at 15.2% in November 2009. U-6 dropped to 15% in November 2012. But fifteen states remain above the national average:

Nevada 21.4%, California 19.6%, Rhode Island 18.3%, Oregon 17.3%, Washington 17.1%, Michigan 17%, North Carolina 17%, Florida 16.4%, Illinois 16.3%, South Carolina 16.3%, Arizona 16.1%, Georgia 15.9%, New Jersey 15.6%, Mississippi 15.5% and Idaho 15.3%

In the U.S. Senate, 16 Democratic senators and 14 Republican senators represent those states. Driving down U-6 seems like the perfect bipartisan project. But that idea has the shelf life of snow ball in hell.

By arguing for more austerity measures, the GOP dooms all those who want to work to a decade of lost wages and a declining standard of living. Those GOP senators must enjoy seeing their constituents suffer. How else do you explain five years of voting against America’s jobless?

According to Leo Hindery, the “Real Unemployment Rate” was essentially unchanged at 14.4%, compared to the Bureau of Labor Statistics Uemployment Rate of 7.8%.

In addition to the current 22.7 million Real Unemployed Workers, there are now 3.9 million workers “who [also] want a job” but who, unlike discouraged workers, “have not looked for one over the past 12 months” and have voluntarily removed themselves from the labor force. If these workers are included, then December’s Real Unemployment Rate of 14.4% increases to 16.4% and the number of jobless Americans stands at 26.8 million!