American Jobs and Agendas 2008 Through 2012

The current employment situation in the United States has changed dramatically since 2008 when 145,362 million people were gainfully employed. In the last quarter of 2007 the economic decline bean as firms shed jobs at an accelerated rate after March 13th, 2008. In retrospect, some contemporary politicians would like to stake the blame at the foot of President Obama, but most Americans are aware that one man being elected into The Oval Office did not create the massive slide in job losses. In 2009, the American work-force was at 139,877 million and by 2010 those gainfully employed in the United States dropped to 139,064 million. By the end of 2010 the massive lay-offs and "right-sizing" by corporations had been completed.

Going into 2011 there were about 125,100 million Caucasians employed in the United States with the largest number being Caucasian males at about 67.7 million. Caucasian females were the second largest group of gainfully employed individuals at 57.4 million during that period.

The ethnic breakdown was in stark contrast to those of Caucasians with 17.9 million African-Americans gainfully employed. The interesting inverse in gender of employment among African-Americans was different with 8.4 million African-American males and 9.4 million African-American females gainfully employed. There were 1 million more African-American females gainfully employed at the beginning of 2011 than African-American males. The main significance of this statistic is that the last time there were more African-American males gainfully employed than African-American females was in 1980. No other racial or ethnic group in the United States had an inverse since that year. In 2010 an estimated 22.7 million Latino males and 13.5 Latino females were gainfully employed.

There are some demographic, geographical, and cultural implications from this data provided by the United States Bureau of Labor Statistics. Caucasians have a larger portion of the population and therefore work in both rural and urban areas. Larger African-American populations are in urban areas such as New York City, Atlanta, Georgia, Los Angeles, South Florida, Detroit, and other locations. Many of the jobs they had leading up to "The Great Recession of 2008" were paraprofessional jobs that did not require a college education. Some Caucasians and Latinos were caught in this category because firms did not discriminate due to "right-sizing". A good portion of these jobs were in construction, manufacturing, and other services. The assumption was that the economic down-turn would last about six-months due to the historical data from the earlier recessions in the 1970's, 1980's, and 1990's. However, with this mindset, the nation was not prepared for such a catastrophic dependency on social services for those tha t were removed from the active labor pool.

In 2012, the 6.3 million people laid-off from work between 2008 and 2009 are just those counted officially. The numbers not counted are those that were sub-contractors and independent contractors. One fact that is commonly overlooked is the number of small business owners that lost their jobs and businesses that could not collect unemployment. Adding insult to injury is the number of high school and college graduates unable to find work between 2008 and 2012. Statistically, part-time employment is considered a job, but in most cases the income cannot sustain a household independently.

The long-term unemployed became and issue as the Ninety-Nine Percent took to the streets and remained largely ignored by the mainstream and others until the economic noose tightened throughout much of the country. Parents and grandparents became the only resort for their children and grand children to avoid living in the streets in some cases. This put a burden on families and some marriages victimized by a decision made years ago in a high-rise on Wall Street by several financial analysts.

It is almost impossible to estimate how many actual people are currently unemployed in 2012 due to the lack of tracking after unemployment benefits have run out. Other parts of the country less dependent on manufacturing and construction noticed little impact by comparison to other regions of the country. The Great Recession brought about anger at the politicians, corporations, and others less sensitive to the economic conditions. The unfortunate reality is that some of the individuals that created the financial mess are the same people guiding the ship of the American economic recovery.

Going into 2011 the largest groups of gainfully employed men were 18.1 million Caucasian males between the ages of 35 - 44 and the 17.1 million Caucasian females between the ages of 45 - 54. Statistically, these two groups were able to hang on to their employment throughout the whole economic crisis and demographically they may have a difficult time understanding the burdens that the long-term unemployed are experiencing. And this brings about a new result, the "Class Divide" in America that politicians try to downplay, but it remains a popular topic in the American dialogue. People within this group are concerned about the national debt and other expenditures from the perspective of being working tax-payers responsible for paying for a large portion of the expenditures. This is the prime demographic for Tea Party and other socially and fiscally conservative groups.

The fear of economic instability concerns all Americans in some way, but the nation would be wise to avoid the European solution of only using austerity measures, electing a new government, and using the clich' "Cap & Cut". If we view the situation in Europe we see that the Greece carried too many people on pensions perpetually and did not have a functional tax-collection process and an over-dependency on tourism that did not generate enough revenue to sustain the nation prior to the financial melt-down. Spain is experiencing 50% unemployment with no economic growth due to the fact that the government has no capital to stimulate the economy. And now Germany is at the helm attempting to risk it all in the hopes of saving the European Union.

Fortunately for the United States, China has investor nervous due to a possible economic slowdown because of a potential housing bubble similar to the one Americans survived earlier. So the improvement in the United States economy is due largely to some of the policies implemented by the Obama Administration to foster more foreign direct investment into the country. In short, the United States is currently the most stable of the unstable economies for investors.

Even though the economic conditions in the United States are not ideal, Greece, Italy, and Spain are realizing that austerity without economic growth leads to stagnation and technocrats in office. In the first quarter of 2012, there are very few nations that would turn-down being in the situation of the United States.