The Last (Sad) Laughs
April 6, 2010
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“How much longer will America’s ‘gravest recession’ last?” That’s the question posed by IAM Communications Director Rick Sloan in an article appearing this week in the Huffington Post. Citing the conservative figures provided by the Bureau of Labor Statistics, Sloan points to the 13.0 million jobs lost since 2007 and questions whether the jobs crisis in this country is getting the attention it deserves.
Click here to read the article and comments.
“The White House and Congress seem wildly disconnected from the jobs crisis, perhaps because they spend so much time aiming a strobe light on health care reform, Iraqi elections, a new START treaty, financial industry reform, climate change, an amended No Child Left Behind, Afghanistan and a balanced budget,” writes Sloan. “Replacing these millions of jobs — and adding the 140,000 a month needed in order to keep pace with growth in the labor force — must be our nation’s highest priority. And yet, sadly, it isn’t.”
The jobs crisis is also poised to also have an impact on lawmakers who will face voters, both employed and unemployed, in upcoming elections.
“The jobless are not completely destitute in a democracy — they still own their votes which can be ‘spent’ on election days or not,” said Sloan. “And if the BLS total non-farm payroll history is any indication, the jobless will have at least three election cycles — 2010, 2012 and 2014 — to spend those votes, and then, as embittered as they will be, theirs will be ‘the last (sad) laughs’.”
