Think the Job Market Still Stinks? You’re Right

[rhett o rick]

You’ve probably never heard of the federal JOLTS report, but as the Economic Policy Institute pointed out recently, it’s a good measure of the strength of the national jobs market. And the news from the feds Tuesday is not good.

According to EPI, another section of the JOLTS report reveals a frustrating truth. “In today’s economy, unemployed workers far outnumber job openings in every major sector. … This demonstrates that the main problem in the labor market is a broad-based lack of demand for workers—not, as is often claimed, available workers lacking the skills needed for the sectors with job openings.”

Corporate profits, on the other hand, are at an all-time high, as are the levels of cash that corporations are hoarding in fear of another recession. Of course, if they spent some of that cash putting people back to work … yeah, that’s just crazy talk. Never mind.

—Posted by Scott Martelle

http://www.truthdig.com/eartotheground/item/think_the_job_market_still_stinks_youre_right/

I hate to distract from the Syrian debacle but the middle class is still struggling. Still too many unemployed yet corporate profits are at an all-time high.

[durablend]

1. Oh please

Everyone knows if we give the rich another tax cut and get rid of all those pesky rules and regulations they'd start hiring TOMORROW!

Right? Right? RIGHT?!?!?!?

[rhett o rick]

4. We dont have to worry, the TPP will ensure that the masses around the world will share

the same standard of living. And I dont think it will be good.

[woo me with science]

2. Unemployed?

Who?

C'mon. The TPP will fix all that!

[rhett o rick]

3. Who will buy Walmart's garbage if they and their fellow corps dont pay their workers.

Just sayin.

[Catherina]

5. I can't believe we're going through this again, after the NAFTA debacle

IWW has been fighting the TPP tooth and nail. The other labor unions seem asleep. Thanks IWW!

[leftstreet]

6. 84% of world's people live in 'emerging markets'

84-85% ish

[Catherina]

7. Suburban Americans now the majority of food stamps recipients

Surprise—The Majority of SNAP Recipients Live in the ’Burbs

The geography of American food insecurity is moving out of the cities and into the cul-de-sac.
September 4, 2013

When talking about food stamps (or SNAP, the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program, as it’s now called), many people imagine that it’s primarily an urban benefit—think Ronald Regan’s “welfare queen” living on the South Side of Chicago. That image still persists today: When talking about government nutrition assistance, news stories are often illustrated with images of single mothers of color or older retirees in large urban housing developments. Seldom do the suburbs—the land of cul-de-sacs, strip malls, and minivans—come into play in regards to SNAP.

But increasingly, the ’burbs are becoming the defining image of food stamps. The number of Americans living in suburbs who receive SNAP doubled between 2007 and 2011, and the majority recipients nationwide—55 percent—now live there, according to an analysis of American Community Survey data by the Brookings Institution.

“Many of the regions that saw the steepest increases in food stamp receipt were Sun Belt metro areas hit hardest by the collapse of the housing market and recession that followed,” writes Elizabeth Kneebone, a fellow at Brookings’ Metropolitan Policy Program and co-author of Confronting Suburban Poverty in America. This includes cities like Modesto, CA, Tampa, FL, and Riverside, CA, “where the number of suburban households receiving SNAP benefits more than tripled, as well as regions like Cape Coral, Las Vegas, and Atlanta, where suburban SNAP receipt more than doubled.”

In 2007, the share of SNAP benefits was divided roughly in half between urban and suburban households. Just four years later, however, suburban households comprised 55 percent of all households receiving SNAP—a 100 percent increase over that time period. (The urban share increased by 69 percent over that period.)

...

http://www.takepart.com/article/2013/09/02/majority-snap-recipients-live-burbs