With all the rosy hoopla coming from Wall Street and the Obama administration about the economy “turning around” and unemployment “dipping” to 10% in November, the real picture belies their hot air. As reported by the website <shadowstats.com> which “shadows” government statistics, a “double-dip” recession is in place. “What lies ahead should be a renewed plunge in economic activity.”
The severity and duration of the current Great Recession is unprecedented since the Great Depression of the 1930s. “One in eight Americans receive food stamps, including one in four children.” (NY Times, 1/3) Actually, there are about 35 million workers in the U.S. unemployed or underemployed. According to the Bureau of Labor Statistics, the November unemployment rate of 10% represents 15.4 million jobless. But those figures do not include:
• At least 9.2 million working part-time, unable to find non-existent full-time jobs;
• At least 2.3 million “discouraged” workers who are not counted because they have not sought a job in the four weeks preceding the government polling;
• The unreported long-term unemployed (more than a year), who the Clinton administration redefined as “beyond discouraged” and are not recorded in any government figures, even as “discouraged”;
• Those youth who joined the military because they couldn’t find a job, except a “job” killing and being killed in two U.S. imperialist wars;
• Those on welfare who would work if a job and child day-care were available;
• Those in prison for non-violent offenses (over half of the 2.4 million incarcerated) who in most countries are not jailed but put in re-hab situations, many of whom would add to the jobless rolls;
• Many of the three million homeless, living either on the streets, in tents or in shanty towns and who government polling fails to reach;
• Those among the estimated 12 million undocumented workers who are “non-persons” in the eyes of government statisticians.
Add that all up and there’s no doubt that U.S. capitalism is in the throes of another Great Depression.
Racist Unemployment
Because of racism embedded in the profit system, conditions are even worse for black, Latino, Asian and Native American workers. Black workers face a jobless rate double that of white workers, and Latino and Asian workers slightly less than double. Unemployment estimates among Native Americans run as high as 90%.
U.S. capitalism needs, and thrives on, this racism to rake in hundreds of billions in super-profits — the difference in income between white workers and the super-exploited. It’s equally useful to the bosses as a weapon to divide and weaken the entire working class’s ability to fight back.
In the 1930s, a huge communist-led movement of the unemployed involved hundreds of thousands, and at times millions, taking to the streets and fighting for welfare relief and unemployment insurance. Both were eventually won by this mass struggle. But, as with all reform gains, the ruling class chops away at them, so that Clinton’s “welfare reform” removed millions from even this dole, while the bosses’ laws leave 60% of the jobless ineligible for unemployment benefits.
Launching such a movement now in the shops and unions could pressure the rulers to reverse some of the screws they’ve put on our class. But even more importantly, it could unify the working class’s fight against this system that forces workers into such dire straits. A mass movement uniting the unemployed and employed, can become a school for communism, out of which PLP — involved in the leadership of such a fight — could win masses to join PLP and see the necessity of a revolution to wipe out capitalism.