Jobless Rate At %10.2 - How High Will It Go By The End Of 2009?
 

How bad will it get?

If I remember right, it is actually REALLY closer to 17-20% I believe. Depending on the real numbers all inclusive. That lower number leaves out some stats. I wanna say it is the people who ARE working part time, but looking for full time employment, and those who just gave up.

It was covered in depth on some financial show I was listening to last week.

How does that compare to the %25 we had during the depression? Was it really %25 that were completely out of work?

I really don't know why more people aren't worried ......

Overall, the national median home price is predicted to drop 11.3% by June 30, 2010 with hard hit areas like Florida, Calif and Arizona falling another 25+%.

http://finance.yahoo.com/news/Homes-...10894.html?x=0


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I think you have to consider the American attention span to anything.

The war going on for almost a fucking decade, tuned out. The financial mess and daily reporting of doom and gloom, tuned out. Terrorism and tall that madness, tuned out.

While of course this does not assume everyone does not care, the masses on whole do not really give a flying fuck unless it effects them directly.

While it could be argued that is does to some degree in prices, and changes in access to credit and so forth. It would appear that unless it rocks the foundation of their own little personal lives or universe directly today, they simply do not care and change the channel back to Jon and Kate Plus 8, The Hills, or whatever fade is going on at the moment.

Sad.

:2 cents:

I wish I could argue but ..... You're dead on.

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Damn, everyone thinks over %11

Well said :2 cents:

Actually 'thinks' is no longer in the equation.

:2 cents:

Obama's BLS doesn't report people not looking for a job or unemployment benefits that ran out so yes, it's around 20%.

It's called the downfall of American society. Each generation gets dumber and dumber.

Some of this is a correction in the market. With the recent housing bubble we saw something in this country we ha never had before which is an average home price that the average worker could not afford. The average wage in the US is $16 per hour. The average home (as of about 12 months ago) was around 180K. When you factor in taxes and insurance and an average down payment of 10% it meant that the average person would have so spend about 60-70% of their take home income just on the house. This caused a lot of issues including people over extended on credit to afford other things and more competition for cheaper - below average - houses which caused them to increase in price.

A large part of the downturn is all the people who got sub-prime mortgages and couldn't afford them when the rate changed, but much of it is also the market just coming back to earth. It sucks if you were someone who bought a house at the peak of the bubble and planned to sell it now, but if you are planning on living there for a while in the end you will probably be okay. Still, I don't think housing prices will be going back up for a while and there are some parts of the country that it could take a decade or longer for prices to return to where they were.

I find that it has become much harder get good part-timers for contract work because either their main gigs are all gone and any work they do would just decrease their unemployment benefits or they really need the part time thing to be their main gig and they are resentful about the number of hours they get.

With banks and insurance getting paid billions for effing up and what feels like more than half the people I know on some sort of benefits, sometimes I feel like a chump for grinding it out every day. I almost feel like the system is set up to punish me for working and trying to actually create value.