Color Those Green Shoots Brown

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Job seekers wait in line outside of a job fair in New York City. Photo by Frances M. Roberts/Newscom

For weeks, pundits and politicians have been talking optimistically about the “green shoots” of economic recovery, as though the worst of what’s now called the “Great Recession” is over. However, with the announcement that 467,000 more jobs disappeared in June—and the unemployment rate ratcheted up to 9.5 percent—it’s clear that the end is nowhere in sight.

Unfortunately, as we reported in March, the economic impact of the recession is far greater than implied by the headline unemployment rate. In addition to the 15.1 million people who were unemployed in June, another 9.3 million were working part time because they couldn’t find full-time work. And, 2.2 million more wanted jobs, but hadn’t looked for a job during the past month.

Do the arithmetic: that’s almost 27 million people whose lives have been affected by the recession, the equivalent of 17 percent of the labor force (adjusted for the drop outs).

The bad news is that even the optimists agree that these numbers are going to get worse before they get better.