“Secular Stagnation” and Mass Unemployment in America. Obscene Enrichment of a Corporate-financial Elite | Global Research

“Secular Stagnation” and Mass Unemployment in America. Obscene Enrichment of a Corporate-financial Elite | Global Research

Speaking Friday in advance of signing a bill slashing $8.7 billion
from the food stamp program, President Barack Obama hailed the dismal
jobs report for January released earlier that day. Wall Street also
reacted enthusiastically, rallying to send the Dow Jones Industrial
average higher by 160 points.

The US economy created 113,000 jobs in January, according to Friday’s
report, far fewer than the 189,000 economists had predicted. It was the
second consecutive month of slow job growth, following December’s
increase of 75,000.

There are mounting warnings by economists that the US confronts
long-term economic stagnation and high unemployment into the indefinite
future. The Associated Press ran a piece Sunday entitled “US
economy may be stuck in slow lane for long run,” and last month former
Treasury Secretary Lawrence Summers warned of “secular stagnation.”

Mass unemployment has become a permanent fact of life in the United States and much of the rest of the world.

* Officially, there are ten million unemployed people in the US, up from 6.8 million in 2007.

* Fully 3.6 million people have been unemployed for 27 weeks or more,
according to the official jobless rolls. This figure is three times
larger than it was in 2006, when there were 1.1 million long-term
unemployed.

* Nearly 36 percent of the unemployed have been out of work for more
than 27 weeks, three times higher than the average between 1948 and
2008. The mean duration of unemployment currently stands at 35.4 weeks,
up from 16.9 weeks in 2006.