by Tim Williams

Created on: March 30, 2010   Last Updated: March 31, 2010

Having read the latest ads in the help wanted section of Sundays newspapers just reinforces the latest report of what jobs there are and the corresponding wages have declined by more than 10% compared to one year ago. Wage stagnation is now replaced by wage reduction in almost every employment opportunity there is today. When you see ads for production workers or parts assembly at $7.50 - $9.00 per hour and equate those wages with today's cost of living indicates that this country still has a long way to go in providing living wage jobs for the majority of the population. Today with the price of all consumables increasing at the rate of more than 10% annually along with the employment opportunities that pay substandard wages have resulted in millions of Americans still facing acute financial hardship.

The recent jobs bill signed by the Obama Administration is a very small step in the right direction but there still is a monumental amount of effort that needs to be done to turn the tide of diminishing employment opportunities that are still continuing to occur all across the United States. The stimulus funding to states is only a short term solution to the long term problem of the unemployment crisis that we have today.  

Tax credits, the recent passage and signing of the Health Care Reform Bill, and all of the other incentives that the Obama Administration is trying to initiate still won't solve the enormous task of providing and producing living wage employment opportunities that the country needs now so desperately. Let's look at the numbers to date! A total of over 8 and one half million jobs across the United States have been lost within the past two years with no apparent abatement soon. Just in the last month of February alone more than 36,000 people lost their jobs. For African Americans the situation is so dire that in many urban areas the unemployment rate is well over 25%. The national unemployment rate is way over the reported 10%. At the rate the unemployment figures show it would take over 300,000 new jobs to be created within the United States alone per month for almost 3 years just to recover the amount of employment opportunities that have been erased. With these kinds of numbers no amount of tax credits or tax incentives will ever create enough employment opportunities, let alone with real living wages for the United States to fully recover from this economic crisis. 

Go back in history to the Great Depression

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