Economy Worse Than You Think It Is

I find myself with little time to blog these days, but I couldn’t pass up this opportunity to talk about unemployment – currently 9.5%. An interesting article by Mortimer Zuckerman explains a few reasons why the economy is even worse than you think it is. A few of his main points include:

- More companies are asking employees to take unpaid leave.
- No fewer than 1.4 million people wanted or were available for work but were not counted in unemployment numbers.
- The number of workers taking part-time jobs due the slack economy has doubled to about 9 million.
- The average work week for employees in the private sector has dropped to 33 hours.
- The average length of official unemployment has increased to 24.5 weeks.
- Next year state budgets will have depleted their initial rescue dollars. Absent another rescue plan, they will have no choice but to slash spending, raise taxes, or both.

As my wife and I have considered the future, and how to best prepare ourselves financially, it becomes obvious that my employment situation will be the deciding factor. Suddenly job stability has become more important to me than job satisfaction or even compensation. I still believe that high inflation is inevitable, but how many years of depression will we wade through first? Or, will we experience a combination… a kind of stagflation?

Our federal government will keep throwing money at the “economy.” I don’t think there is an end in sight because government spending has not, cannot, and will not fix the problem; but they’ll keep trying. It’s delusional to think that we can spend our way out of this!