Is it weird that I have a crush on a 70 year old man?
Bernie Sanders <3
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Is it weird that I have a crush on a 70 year old man?
Bernie Sanders <3
68% of millionaires polled want taxes to be raised on millionaires.
64% of Americans want taxes to be raised on millionaires.
Just fucking do it already.
Two OWS protestors get engaged!
#OccupyMyLife
Last Friday, I brought a statistic reported by the Economic Policy Institute to the attention of my Economics teacher. The stat is that, as of July of last year, there were 5 unemployed people for every one job opening. He didn’t believe me and then continued on to call the EPI a “communist organization”. So, being the nerd that I am, I decided to work things out for myself, using July of this year for my analysis instead.
Let’s begin, shall we?
By the end of July, there were 13.1 million people unemployed and still looking for work (aka people who were counted in the unemployment rate), according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS). Also at this time, there were 3.413 million job openings. Now, as your average 4th grader learning long division (or rather, anyone with a 4-function calculator) could tell you, that works out to about 4 people per job opening. And that’s just for people looking for work.
Next, you can factor in the amount of people who are a part of the labor force and don’t have a job, but are just not currently looking for work. These are what the BLS likes to call “discouraged workers” or “marginalized workers”, so called because many have simply given up on the system after being unemployed for so long. There are about 12 million more of these people on top of those who are classified as “unemployed”. If we add on those people to our previous calculations, we end up with more than 7 people without work per job opening.
So, while I don’t even begin to credit myself as an economist, it turns out that the people over at the EPI seem to credit themselves as such. In August, they released updated statistics that confirm the 4 people per job opening number we arrived at earlier. While they don’t touch on the number that deals with people who have stopped looking for work, I’m fairly confident in the number.
To go further with this, this is exactly why the OccupyWallStreet movement began: because the system is broken, and it needs to be changed. Currently, we have conservatives actually blaming the unemployed for not having a job, when the odds are against them from the very moment they start looking for a job.
I think that Herman Cain and those over at the 53 Percent should take a look at this, and hopefully they will think before the next time that they tell an unemployed person to “just get a job”.
5 tips for Occupy Wall Street from an Egyptian revolutionary who was at Tahrir Sqaure.
