A bottom-line issue in this recession is whether the government will help provide the unemployed with the most basic necessities of life: food, shelter, and health care. The ranks of jobless Americans have swelled by more than 50 percent in the last year, to 11.6 million. The official rate of 7.6 percent accounts only for the recently unemployed; by a broader measure that includes people who have stopped looking for work or can’t find full-time jobs, it jumps to a sobering 13.9 percent. Job losses have plunged millions of families into economic insecurity–where they join the working poor and the elderly and disabled poor, whose incomes are already lower than the unemployment benefits of many middle-class people. Beyond these essential stop-gap measures, of course, what these people really need are jobs.
Will they get them? Read James Ridgeway’s new piece.
