Leo Hindery, Jr.: 'Crystal Ball' on the Economy and Labor

Leo Hindery, Jr.: 'Crystal Ball' on the Economy and Labor
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All the while on the jobs front, we remained and remain mired in a jobless recovery, with nearly 20% real unemployment and 30 million women and men either unemployed or chronically underemployed, of whom 10 million have been out of work more than half a year. These millions of effectively unemployed workers now know firsthand the sharp and painful difference between the real unemployment rate and the official rate (at 10% nearly as high as at any time since the Great Depression, but still only half the effective real rate).
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As for the nation's labor force and its vitality, what will be most concerning is if, as I suspect, we have essentially embedded high real unemployment in the economy into the medium term. Thus, my employment forecast for the next five to ten years, assuming we don't take significant actions, is sadly pretty simple: more of the same large-scale unemployment and underemployment; meager wage gains and worsening working conditions for the employed; and little or no job security for anyone.

This ugly labor forecast is possible because this recession's almost unprecedented fury has already significantly accelerated the adverse labor force trends that we began to see all the way back in the '80s. In order to appreciate the breadth of the problems ahead, it helps to look at the relevant aspects of today's labor force:

The number of Americans working part-time-of-necessity -- that is, because full-time work is unavailable -- has doubled since the recession of 2007 began, to 9.2 million.

25% of America's workers now have jobs that are not fulltime and in one way or another are "non-standard", which includes independent contractors, temps, part-timers and freelancers. From their employers, 75% of these non-standard workers have no access to a retirement plan of any sort and 60% have no health insurance.

Pay for production and nonsupervisory workers -- now 80% or so of the private workforce -- is 9% lower than it was in 1973, adjusted for inflation.

Unions represent less than 8% of private-sector workers, compared to 36% in 1953.

And in just the last ten years, total manufacturing jobs have declined 33%, while jobs in health care have increased 30%, in leisure & hospitality 12%, and in government around 10%.

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And the reason for the China recommendation is simple: we can never get back even to pre-recession employment levels if we don't put a stop to China's illegal and unfair trade practices. China is consistently responsible for about 70% of America's trade deficit in manufactured goods, and this is quite literally crushing the life out of our nation's non-services employment. ...