WASHINGTON - Call it the Terrible Teens.

The decade ahead could be a brutal one for America's unemployed — and for people with jobs hoping for pay raises.

At best, it could take until the middle of the decade for the nation to generate enough jobs to drive down the unemployment rate to a normal 5 or 6 percent and keep it there. At worst, that won't happen until much later — perhaps not until the next decade.

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The deepest and most enduring recession since the 1930s has battered America's work force.

The unemployed number 15.4 million. The jobless rate is 10 percent. More than 7 million jobs have vanished. People out of work at least six months number a record 5.9 million. And household income, adjusted for inflation, has shrunk in the past decade.

Most economists say it could take at least until 2015 for the unemployment rate to drop down to a historically more normal 5.5 percent. And with the job market likely to stay weak, some also foresee another decade of wage stagnation.

Even though the economy will likely keep growing, the pace is expected to be plodding. That will make employers reluctant to hire. Further contributing to high unemployment is the likelihood of more people competing for jobs, baby boomers delaying retirement and interest rates edging higher.

Economist David Levy, chairman of the Jerome Levy Forecasting Center, says the country faces a new era of chronically high unemployment, averaging 8 percent or more over the next decade.

A decade of high unemployment is looming - Outlook 2010- msnbc.com

In my area--we are currently 7.5% unemployment (latest figures anyway) & I cannot believe the tent cities that have sprung up around our creeks. On Christmas day--(very cold in the teens) I was driving past this & saw young children in winter coats standing around campfires to try & stay warm. Unbelievable. I don't know what the rest of you are seeing--but I know for certain that most of this country is now at 10% or above unemployment.

So the 787 BILLION dollar stimulus bill that wasn't didn't do a single thing except increase the national debt--& now we have stimulus bill jr. Stimulus bill to this administration & congress now just mean--extending unemployment checks.

ahoy oreo!

matey, whilst i know yer outraged about the stimulus spendin', 'tis important to remember that the bulk 'o that monies (around 70%) has gone to pluggin' various holes in state coffers so they can pay fer the medicaid.

and aye, the employment numbers do appear quite gloomy. hopefully it gets no worse than it already is. things are bad all over, me hearty.

IOL: Global Unemployment Could Exceed 50 Million in 2009

asia seems to be navigatin' 'round these treacherous seas, but 'tis unfair to compare the united states to southeast asia.

yarrr.

- MeadHallPirate

What makes 5-6% "normal?"

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First they came for the mimes, and I did not speak out, because I was a mime.

Its called, stagnation or some such, a word for full emplotyment whixch equalks about 95-96%..I have forgotten actually...anyway,I believe the sweet spot is 4.5- 5%. But that may have changed when the admin. in 95 changed the way the statistics were collated....but I'd say that solid.

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"The captain has turned off the `No Dubbing' sign. You are free to speak any language you choose."

Bis interimitur qui suis armis perit...

Not in the unemployement figures are the ever increasing number of underemployed...
San Franciso = 21.9%
Milwaukee = 18.7%
National figures are not very reliable as I have found sites that promote the stimulus as saying 5.6% (absurd), to 18%..which is probably fairly accurate.

I think 30% is a reasonable number of either unemployed or underemployed Americans....and that is horrible.
I would also say that the underemployed numbers are and will continue to rise, even when the economy comes back.

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I have absolutely no idea what my generation did to improve our democracy. We dropped the ball. We entered a period of complacency and closed our eyes to the public corruption of our democracy.
Wynton Marsalis

Undermployed is indeed a problem, and one that isn't given much attention.

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First they came for the mimes, and I did not speak out, because I was a mime.

I don't see things getter better, period.

We've sent out millions of good paying manufacturing jobs to other nations and this is continuing. These are jobs that require people with various skills to extract natural resources from the earth, process them, and then take the processed materials and build things that we want or need. This is a great way to create wealth and we are giving it away.

Kramer

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“We should never be more vigilant than at the moment a new dogma is being installed. … The left has been swept along, entranced by the allure of weather as revolutionary agent, naïvely conceiving of global warming as a crisis that will force radical social changes on capitalism.”

TheNation, June 7, 2007