Economic Alert: Unemployment Jumps to 6.1%

Posted by Richard Blair, The All Spin Zone at 9:00 AM on September 5, 2008.

The late Tip O’Neil got it right - at least as far as politics being connected to one’s wallet. When pocketbook issues start to slam the average American, they’re not so worried about what’s happening in Washington, only that bad policy causes their personal woes. If that’s the case, then the GOP is in a heap of trouble this year.


A few months back, when her own job was eliminated, Susie Madrack ran out the old saying, “It’s a recession when you lose your job. It’s a depression when I lose mine.”


There are a lot more people today feeling like there’s an economic depression coming. According to figures released this morning, the unemployment rate jumped to 6.1% in August, up from 5.7% in July. Not to state the obvious, but that’s almost a 1/2 percent increase in a single month. And 84,000 people lost their jobs, which is a significantly higher figure than had been predicted.


The last eight years have been a nightmare in employment markets.

Well paying jobs continue to be outsourced overseas, and that’s not going to change anytime soon, at least not until U.S. companies have succeeded in driving down wages to third world country standards. The labor unions continue to shrink - in both numbers and political clout - and even many of those jobs have flipped to the service sector, where the presence of unions don’t necessarily mean well paying jobs, but do confer at least a bit of job security (as opposed to non-union positions).


Funny thing is, the economy isn’t shrinking on the top end - the GOP “base”, as it were.


The late Senator Tip O’Neill once famously opined that “all politics is local”. He’s right, in the sense that one’s view of politics is primarily localized to one’s wallet. The last decade and 1/2 of GOP dominance of the political scene is about to come to an end, primarily because the GOP didn’t tend to it’s real base: the American people who put them in power.

Richard Blair is the blogmaster of All Spin Zone.