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NOYB
 
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Default General Malaise of American Workers

September 2nd, eh? Do you get advance copies of the NYT's or something?

BTW--the article by Greenhouse was entitled "Looks Like a Recovery, Feels
Like a Recession"...and it was in *today's* NYT (Sept. 1).




"NOYB" wrote in message
m...
By the time your message gets out, we'll have 12 solid months of increases
in GDP and the employment rate. By then, nobody will be paying attention

to
the economy.


"Harry Krause" wrote in message
...




U.S. workers' fears rise as jobs are lost and pay lags

Steven Greenhouse NYT

Tuesday, September 2, 2003
Even though the U.S. recession officially ended nearly two years ago,
polls show that American workers are feeling stressed and shaky because
the United States continues to register month after month of job losses
and wages are rising more slowly than inflation.
.
One factor above all has fueled the insecurity: The country has lost 2.7
million jobs over the past three years. The recovery has been so weak
since the recession ended in November 2001 that the nation's payrolls
are down by one million jobs from the time economic growth resumed. The
current economic expansion, in fact, is the worst on record in terms of
job growth. The average length of unemployment, more than 19 weeks,
spiked this summer to its highest level in two decades.
.
"American workers are doing very badly," said Carl van Horn, director of
the Heldrich Center for Workforce Development at Rutgers University in
New Jersey. "All the trends are in the negative direction. There's high
turnover, high instability, a reduction in benefits and a declining
loyalty on the part of employers. At the same time, expectations for
productivity and quality are going up. It's a bad situation from a
worker's standpoint."
.
In August, a Gallup poll found that 81 percent of Americans thought that
now was a bad time to try to find a quality job, equaling the highest
percentage found since Gallup began regularly asking the question two
years ago.
.
A new survey by the University of Michigan found that while workers were
showing somewhat less fear about unemployment, they were concerned that
their wage increases were shrinking.
.
"Most workers expect the economy to improve, but at the same time they
don't expect to have their income or their wages increase," said Richard
Curtin, director of surveys at the university. "It's a very untypical
environment."
.
Weekly earnings for all private-sector workers, after accounting for
inflation, have slid for the past seven months and are down 0.2 percent
so far this year, the Bureau of Labor Statistics has reported. A new
study by the Economic Policy Institute, a research group financed by
foundations and labor unions, found that hourly after-inflation wages
had slipped for most workers. But Labor Secretary Elaine Chao predicted
that job creation would soon improve and, along with it, worker

optimism.
.
"We're on the road to recovery, but obviously the president and this
administration are deeply committed to accelerating the recovery so that
everyone who wants to work can find a job," Chao said in an interview.
.
A survey of 1,015 adults conducted by the Heldrich Center at Rutgers in
June found that 18 percent of all American workers reported having been
laid off in the past three years.


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I have a feeling this theme is going to be hit over and over and over
and over, until every American worker realizes that the general malaise
of our society today is the responsibility of the idiot in the White

House.







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