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By Sidney Hollander
In a shocking rebuke to the capitalist triumphalism of the last year or so, the “slow but steady” jobs growth of the last six months veered sharply off course in August, with net new job creation dropping from an expected 220,000-230,000 to only 142,000, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics. Even the tiny downward tick in the unemployment rate, from 6.2% to 6.1%, was caused not by the paltry increase in the number of employed workers (16,000), but by the now-familiar shrinking of the labor force, this time by 268,000.
The long-term decline in the labor force participation rate has been a central concern of CPEG since before the onset of the Lesser Depression. Then, as now, it speaks directly to the exorbitant human cost of inadequate job creation that dooms millions of people to precarious lives in a world of little or no work in the formal economy. The Chicago Political Economy Group (CPEG) paper “A Permanent Jobs Program for the U.S.” was drafted as a response to that long-term decline and its consequences.
Source: Jobs Growth Veers Off Course – and a Remedy
