The US Department of Labor announced last fall that they were going to alter the scandalous way they report unemployment figures – to more accurately represent the true number of jobless in the US. Don’t hold your breath. Nevertheless the figures they released for January 2010 (13.9 million or 9.0% of the workforce) still only reflect Americans unemployed for six months or less. Once you are unemployed longer than six months, you cease to be counted.

According to UCubed (http://www.unionofunemployed.com/), the unemployed union started by the Machinists union last January, the true unemployment figure is 18.5%. This includes the 10 million Americans who have been jobless longer than six months and 8.4 million “involuntary” part timers. The latter are Americans wishing to work full time but unable to find full time jobs. In the18 to 24 age group the “official” (less than six months out of work) jobless rate is 18% (21.5% for males). Numbers for long term unemployed and involuntary part timers aren’t counted for youth. Some analysts estimate true US youth unemployment at 24 – 25%.

The UCubed website also refers to another figure – the all important Jobs Gap – never mentioned in the mainstream media. This is the number of new jobs that need to be created to re-employ all the Americans made jobless by the 2008 recession. The formula used to calculate the Jobs Gap takes account of the 150,000 new jobs that need to be created to keep up with population growth, the average number of months all the jobless have been unemployed and the number of workers who have given up and left the workforce. According to UCubed, the current Jobs Gap is 21.6 million.

The Need for Powerful Union/Unemployed Coalitions

The implications of a true unemployment rate of 18.5% and a youth jobless rate of 24-25% are staggering. With nearly one out of five Americans out of work, there is enormous potential for the rebirth of a union/unemployed workers coalition similar to the one that forced Franklin Roosevelt to enact far reaching New Deal reforms – the first major federal reforms that benefited working people, rather than business interests. The Social Security Act is the most prominent New Deal program. However sustained militant collaboration between unions and unemployed workers – including major wildcat and sit-down strikes and the historic 1932 (unemployed) veterans march on Washington also resulted in other important reforms, including Aid for Dependent Children (welfare rights for children – which Clinton repealed in 1996) and the National Labor Relations Act (guaranteeing workers the right to join unions and bargain collectively over wages and working conditions).

  

***

American students aren’t taught labor history in school – for obvious reasons. The ruling elite wants us to believe that Roosevelt enacted Social Security, AFDC and minimum wage legislation because he was a kind man. Nothing could be farther from the truth. Confronted with a well organized, militant union/unemployed worker union, Roosevelt faced the hard choice of enacting major reform or confronting the chaos of an Egyptian-style revolution in American streets and factories.

The US government has never granted reforms benefiting ordinary Americans simply because it was the right thing to do. Even abolishing slavery in the US required a lengthy, militant struggle against the business interests who profited from it.

To be continued.