Happy Labor Day....or NOT

Labor Day is Monday, and while I appreciate my job and the day off, the celebration means nothing to millions of unemployed Americans.

The Labor Department found that black unemployment — already way above the 9.1 percent national average — had a large one-month jump of 0.8 percent, to 16.7 percent in August from 15.9 percent in July. It’s the highest level of African-American joblessness in 27 years.

The number of African Americans in the labor force numbered at 17,930,000 in August.Of the number reported in the August labor force only 14,941,000 were employed. That means 2,989,000 black people are unemployed. Of course this figure does not take your cousins that stopped looking for a job or your other cousin that just recently got out of jail. These numbers only take into account those people actively looking for a job.

Then to add insult to injury it is being reported that many companies are not hiring unemployed people. This is some ridiculous mess, with such a weak economy how can this be effective. Employers are able to be more choosy in their selections and pay a hell of a lot less for top tier employees. However, this decision by corporate america has a negative effect on non whites, workers over 40 and disabled applicants.
An employer considering an ethnic minority are decreased by one-third if jobless applicants are excluded. The pool of disabled applicants would be reduced nearly 50%.



According to the National Employment Law Project, Sen. Blumenthal of Connecticut introduced legislation this week to ban employers from only hiring those that currently have jobs. “A snapshot sampling of recent online job postings disclosed a large number of ads explicitly limited to those who are ‘currently employed’,” said Christine Owens, executive director of the National Employment Law Project. “This perverse catch-22 requires a worker to have a job in order to get a job, and it means highly qualified, experienced workers who want and need work can’t get past the starting gate in the application process simply because they lost their jobs through no fault of their own. As a business practice, this makes no sense, and as a way to rebuild the economy, it only debilitates workers, particularly the long-term unemployed.”


The talk of a double dip recession has started and many are nervous. I know the crime rate in my city has soared. Every other day I hear on the news that a bank was robbed. Police are working overtime to keep the streets safe. More and people are turning to drugs and alcohol to deal with mounting debt and life challenges. Not to mention the increase of people standing at the highway exits and stop lights with signs asking for money.

It is imperative that we demand out senators and congress people to come up with a plan to create jobs. President Obama will have a job creation speech on Thursday and I hope to God he has something worth saying. I dont blame our Prez for the state of the economy but it is happening on his watch. I personally know so many people who are unemployed that it makes me angry. It's like an un-noticed phenomenon.