The Economy? It's worse than you think

According to a new article in the WSJ, the economy is actually worse than you think.

The Bureau of Labor Statistics preliminary estimate for job losses for June is 467,000, which means 7.2 million people have lost their jobs since the start of the recession. The cumulative job losses over the last six months have been greater than for any other half year period since World War II, including the military demobilization after the war. The job losses are also now equal to the net job gains over the previous nine years, making this the only recession since the Great Depression to wipe out all job growth from the previous expansion.

Here are 10 reasons we are in even more trouble than the 9.5% unemployment rate indicates:

June's total assumed 185,000 people at work who probably were not.

More companies are asking employees to take unpaid leave. These people don't count on the unemployment roll.

No fewer than 1.4 million people wanted or were available for work in the last 12 months but were not counted.

The number of workers taking part-time jobs due to the slack economy, a kind of stealth underemployment, has doubled in this recession to about nine million, or 5.8% of the work force.

The average work week for rank-and-file employees in the private sector, roughly 80% of the work force, slipped to 33 hours.

The average length of official unemployment increased to 24.5 weeks, the longest since government began tracking this data in 1948.

The average worker saw no wage gains in June, with average compensation running flat at $18.53 an hour.

The goods producing sector is losing the most jobs -- 223,000 in the last report alone.

The prospects for job creation are equally distressing. The likelihood is that when economic activity picks up, employers will first choose to increase hours for existing workers and bring part-time workers back to full time. Many unemployed workers looking for jobs once the recovery begins will discover that jobs as good as the ones they lost are almost impossible to find because many layoffs have been permanent.

This is warms my heart with goodness and cheer. Latest talks regarding the economic recovery are putting the end of this recession sometime in the middle of 2010....and then the tax increases will take effect, which will almost insure no new job creation. I'm never finding a job. And my unemployment is almost up. Feel free to help me out by visiting a couple of my "sponsors" who probably have no idea they are sponsoring my blog.