Buddy, Can You Spare a Job?

Select ratingGive it 1/5Give it 2/5Give it 3/5Give it 4/5Give it 5/5

President Barack Obama, Italian Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi and Russian President Dmitry Medvedev pose at the G-20 summit on April. Photo courtesy of Newscom.

Summits are one thing, jobs are another. Even as world leaders at the G-20 summit congratulate themselves on avoiding a catastrophe—but not actually agreeing to very much—unemployment in America has continued to soar.

On the face of it, the headline numbers for March are bad enough: 13.2 million unemployed, an increase of almost 700,000, amounting to 8.5 percent of the labor force. But the overall impact of the recession on people’s lives (see FLYP’s Unemployment 1, America 0) is even more dramatic. All told, there are 25.3 million unemployed or underemployed Americans—people who want full-time work and either can’t find a job or are stuck working part time.

That’s 16.3 percent of the labor force.

The force of the economic squeeze is reflected in one more number: average hours worked fell to 33.2 per week in March, the lowest level since the government started keeping records in 1964.

The contrast between these grim economic readings and the renewed froth on Wall Street could not be more pronounced. Although stock markets are supposed to lead recovery, the current stock market boomlet—accompanied by CNBC talking heads like Jim Cramer and Larry Kudlow declaring that good times are right around the corner—seem dramatically out of whack with reality.

At this rate, looking for a job (see FLYP and Fortune magazine’s collaboration, How to Get a Job) might just replace baseball as the national pastime.