There are, however, some ominous signs that are related to long-term unemployment and the issues of technological under- and unemployment that we have been discussing in the previous two posts. First, the actual size of the labor force is still contracting. So even though the overall unemployment rate went down to 10.2%, much of this was due to people dropping out of the workforce altogether or going back to school, which pulls them out of the standard measurements. Second, long-term unemployment continues to swell. There are 5.9 million workers who have been out of work for more than 6 months, and the average length of time people are unemployed has stretched out to longer than 28 weeks -- both stats the worst since 1948 (more here). These statistics confirm what many of us already know anecdotally: for older and more experienced workers, those with more invested in the extensive financial commitments of supporting a household, the competition for jobs is beyond fierce. There is terror afoot, the dread that comes with the suspicion that years of expertise are actually a liability and not an asset. We all know the cliche: why hire a 40 or 50-year old who will expect a higher salary and decent benefits package, when there are young kids with more naturally-ingrained computer skills who will work for half? We've all had friends or loved ones who have sent out dozens or even hundreds of resumes, with nary a peep back in response. 

Finally, most analysts expect that the long-term unemployment will stay low, likely in the 7 to 8% range well into 2012. The job sectors adding numbers in the last couple months, health care and professional services, are likely temporary and/or seasonal, while the Bubble Economy jobs in the construction, financial and retail sectors continued to contract.

In other words, what many pundits and pols see as the bottom of the recessionary trough, which should now reverse and climb back up to full employment and maximum consumption, may instead be the new baseline. We could be looking at 7-11% official unemployment for a long time, with its accompanying 15-20% full-gamut underemployed or discouraged counterpart. As we covered in the previous posts, technology captures and locks in human skill without the human part, creating completely new ratios between how much people-power is actually needed to churn out prodigious amounts of stuff. We just don't need the same number of well-paid workers to produce a full range of goods and services.

Of course, we have so much invested in the current living arrangements, both economically and culturally, that no "serious" person in a position of authority can entertain the notion that we're entering a completely different era of labor ratios and outputs. As Jeremy Rifkin's passage above points out, our self-worth and identities are so completely tied up with our working lives, it is inconceivable to envision a future where people might only need to spend 15 to 20 hours a week engaged in "productive" activity to make ends meet. That's crazy talk?

So instead, we have a desperate push to recreate conditions of economic growth and full employment. There is a pathological desire to pretend that the economic collapse and the housing bubbles were just anomalies that can be worked through the system like a warthog through an anaconda. Once we digest all that bad mojo, and slap some green job training and financial regulation into place, we'll be good to go again, and tri-weekly runs to Costco and Nordstrom's can resume. Robert Kuttner, along with other liberals, calls for more stimulus. He wants federal money to go first to states and localities, to preserve and fund jobs and projects already on the books -- a faster way to get money flowing than big infrastructure spending. But we need that infrastructure stuff too. As Kuttner explains:

So the post-war model of "recovery" cannot be replicated today. We're facing a different world, and we are already saddled with an extremely inappropriate social form, both ecologically and psychologically. The One Person-One Job/One Family-One Dwelling model has been unraveling for quite a while now, and the attempt shoehorn our future into the same patterns that were used to create our awful suburban civilization in the first place will prove totally unworkable. Our survival as a decent society will necessitate uncoupling our lifestyles from full-employment, economic growth, and maximum consumption. The future of work and life will be more collective, in whatever form it ultimately takes.