Men NOT at Work

Today, we learned the U.S. economy lost 4.2 million jobs in Obama’s first year, with December unemployment holding steady at 10%, up from 7.4% a year earlier. At that time, President Obama promised his stimulus plan would create or retain 3-4 million jobs by 2010 (average 3.5 million), while holding unemployment to 8%. The gap between what Obama promised and the actual job count for 2009, with a year to go on the 2010 promise, stands at 7.7 million jobs [chart]. We follow the Obama job gap in the same spirit as former “Meet the Press” host Tim Russert followed Bush’s job count throughout Bush 43’s first term, at least until Bush’s numbers turned positive (the term ended with Bush up 4.2 million jobs; Obama too is likely to be in positive territory by 2012).

David Paul Kuhn has discovered that the current recession is very much a “he-cession“ hitting male workers much harder than women, with 3/4ths of total job losses traditional blue collar jobs, 2/3rds of total losses experienced by blue collar men, and with 1/5th of men age 25 to 54 out of work.