What recovery?

• Author: Hightower, Jim
• Position: Vox Populist - Viewpoint essay

The good news is that Americas economy continues to grow. The bad news is that most people's personal economies continue to shrivel.

In June, America's unemployment rate fell to 9.5 percent--the best we've had in a year. "We are headed in the right direction," trumpeted President Obama.

Great ... if true. However, the ballyhooed jobs statistic was a mirage. It looked good only because 650,000 more Americans became so frustrated with their fruitless search for work in June that they quit looking. In StatWorld, such "discouraged" seekers are--abracadabra!--no longer considered unemployed, even though they are. There are now 1.1 million Americans in this statistical purgatory.

[ILLUSTRATION OMITTED]

Those lucky enough to have jobs saw America's average workweek shrink. It's now down to only thirty-four hours--which means less income for "full time" working families. Wages have also fallen. That's not what most people would call an economy "headed in the right direction." Indeed, the strongest job growth has come from the low-paying service sector, and nearly half of the 46,000 jobs added there are temporary positions.

Meanwhile, another implosion bomb is set to hit American workers. The public sector, which has been one bright spot for decent wages and benefits, is about to shed tens of thousands of teachers, firefighters, park employees, utility workers, and others from state and local governments, sending our country in exactly the wrong direction.

Yet economists are cheerfully bandying around the most moronic oxymoron I've ever heard. They are exulting that we're experiencing a "jobless recovery."

I don't see how their minds can put those two words together without having their heads explode. Excuse me, Einsteins, but there's no such thing. You can spin your data 'til the cows come home, but an economy that has nearly 20 percent of the workforce either unemployed or underemployed, that has no plan for replacing the eight million jobs we lost in the last two years, that is now proceeding with mass layoffs of such essential workers as teachers and firefighters, and...