The Untold Devastation to the US Labor Market by the GOP and Obama

We are in the worst economic times since the 1930s but you wouldn't know it listening to the yahoos on Wall Street.

US News and World Report:

Today, over 14 million people are unemployed. We now have more idle men and women than at any time since the Great Depression. Nearly seven people in the labor pool compete for every job opening. Hiring announcements have plunged to 10,248 in May, down from 59,648 in April. Hiring is now 17 percent lower than the lowest level in the 2001-02 downturn. One fifth of all men of prime working age are not getting up and going to work. Equally disturbing is that the number of people unemployed for six months or longer grew 361,000 to 6.2 million, increasing their share of the unemployed to 45.1 percent.

The inescapable bottom line is an unprecedented slack in the U.S. labor market. Labor's share of national income has fallen to the lowest level in modern history, down to 57.5 percent in the first quarter as compared to 59.8 percent when the so-called recovery began. This reflects not only the 7 million fewer workers but the fact that wages for part-time workers now average $19,000—less than half the median income.

We are nowhere near the old normal. Throughout this fragile recovery, over 90 percent of the growth in output has come from productivity gains.

We are, for all intents and purposes, in another Great Depression caused, again, by the policies of the Republican Party.  Whether those policies are implemented by a Republican President like Herbert Hoover or a Democratic one, like Barrack Obama, the results are the same.  Failure to implement massive government spending to drive demand will result in a prolonged downward spiral that will take decades for the nation to recover from.  And a trend that will see the upsurge of Asian powers to replace America as the global power.