11.5 million is a lot of jobs

The jobs debate this election has boiled down to an argument between two parties who have no interest in discussing what really needs to happen to get enough people back to work to allow the public to feel as though the economy is finally going in the right direction. It is not enough to argue, as the Democrats have done, that it could have been worse. It could have been, but it is pretty bad right now and the numbers prove it. According to the Economic Policy Institute,

the labor market remains an estimated 8.1 million payroll jobs below where it was at the start of the recession in December 2007.  This number includes both the 7.8 million jobs lost in the payroll data as currently published plus the announced preliminary benchmark revision of -366,000 jobs to last March’s employment level.  And even this number understates the size of the gap in the labor market by failing to take into account the fact that simply to keep up with the growth in the working-age population, the labor market should have added around 3.4 million jobs since December 2007.  This means the labor market is now roughly 11.5 million jobs below the level needed to restore the pre-recession unemployment rate (5.0% in December 2007).  To get down to the pre-recession unemployment rate within five years, the labor market would have to add around 300,000 jobs every month for that entire period. In September, excluding changes in temporary Census hiring, the labor market lost 18,000. 

Yes, that’s 11.5 million jobs in an economy that is, at best stagnant on the job front. And yes, it could have been worse — the Labor Department estimates that the stimulus passed in 2009 saved about 5 million jobs. But, as many of us pointed out at the time, it was too small and now we are going to have to deal with the economic effects of a political miscalculation on the part of both the White House and Congresional Republicans for a long time.

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Author: hankkalet

Hank Kalet is a poet and freelance journalist. He is the economic needs reporter for NJ Spotlight, teaches journalism at Rutgers University and writing at Middlesex County College and Brookdale Community College. He writes a semi-monthly column for the Progressive Populist. He is a lifelong fan of the New York Mets and New York Knicks, drinks too much coffee and attends as many Bruce Springsteen concerts as his meager finances will allow. He lives in South Brunswick with his wife Annie.

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