Higher jobless rates could be new normal - Yahoo! News


• The auto and construction industries helped lead the nation out of past recessions. But the carnage among Detroit's automakers and the surplus of new and foreclosed homes and empty commercial properties make it unlikely these two industries will be engines of growth anytime soon.
• The job market is caught in a vicious circle: Without more jobs, U.S. consumers will have a hard time increasing their spending; but without that spending, businesses might see little reason to start hiring.
• Many small and midsize businesses are still struggling to obtain bank loans, impeding their expansion plans and constraining overall economic growth.
• Higher-income households are spending less because of big losses on their homes, retirement plans and other investments. Lower-income households are cutting back because they can't borrow like they once did.


Ron Paul is on TV more now than ever I think...

I didn't watch the vid, but I usually agree with what Paul says.

Yes I think higher jobless rates will be the new norm. Especially when you look at how they count joblessness, and how that has changed over the years.

We currently have about a 20% jobless rate (not the rosy 9-10% that the gov and media like to quote) if you use the same methodology to count it that was used during the great depression.

The fact we outsourced our manufacturing, import cheap non-citizen workers (for both menial and white collar tech jobs), likely have huge inflation coming, have an overload of debt (on a personal and governmental scale), have the commercial RE loans about to melt down, we'll have an oversupply of homes for the foreseeable future (it'll get worse as the baby boomers continue to age), etc. So yeah, we're screwed.

But hey, if the jobless rate gets too high, then can always change how they tally it to bring it back down to a media friendly number ;)