Featured Newsbite (Edward Luce writing in Sunday's FT)

America used to be exceptional.

Postwar, it maintained lower unemployment than the Europeans and a higher rate of jobs turnover, enabling it to get away with more meager benefits; “a fair day’s work for a fair day’s pay” was within the grasp of most. That gave America a booming middle class that until recently was the [single] most important engine of global demand.

No longer.

Today, somewhat remarkably, U.S. joblessness is higher than in much of Europe.

* FOLKS... REPEAT AFTER ME:

According to government statistics, if the same number of people were seeking work today as in 2007, the jobless rate would be 11%.

* AGAIN...

According to government statistics, if the same number of people were seeking work today as in 2007, the jobless rate would be 11%.

* ONE MORE TIME...

According to government statistics, if the same number of people were seeking work today as in 2007, the jobless rate would be 11%.

* NOW... KEEP READING...

And the US consumer is mired in high personal debt.

Nothing Mr Obama has been able to accomplish since 2009...appears to have resolved that underlying structural challenge.

* HIS POLICIES HAVE MADE THINGS WORSE!

Indeed, the signs are that the problem is intensifying.

* AS I WAS SAYING...!!! (BUT, HEY... IT'S NOT JUST ME, FOLKS!)

In the words of David Autor, a leading labor economist at Harvard University, the labor force is suffering from a growing “missing middle.” In short, the middle-skilled jobs that once formed the ballast of the world’s wealthiest middle class are disappearing.

(*SIGH*) (*NOD*)

Most people know that median U.S. income has declined sharply since the late 1990s. Fewer are aware that real incomes also fell sharply in the same period for those with [college] degrees.

Only those with postgraduate qualifications, particularly PhDs, saw net gains (for some spectacular).

* BECAUSE WE'VE DELIBERATELY REPLACED ACTUAL ACTUAL EXPERIENCE-BASED KNOWLEDGE AND DEMONSTRATED REAL-WORLD COMPETENCE WITH CREDENTIALISM.

The jobs crisis has many worrying manifestations, of which three are worth highlighting. Perhaps the most troublesome is the waning dynamism of the market.

People used to describe the U.S. labor market as Schumpeterian, after the Austrian neoclassical economist who depicted the cycle of “creative destruction.” Jobs might be lost rapidly in a downturn but were swiftly reallocated to more productive sectors when economic growth resumed.

That is not now the case.

According to McKinsey, the consultancy, it took six months for the U.S. economy to recover its pre-recession jobs level after the 1982 downturn.

Following the 1991 recession, that had risen to 15 months.

After 2001, it took 39 months - meaning that the economy required almost the full business cycle to regain the jobs total bequeathed by the previous one.

Following the Great Recession of 2008, McKinsey forecast that the economy would take 60 months to reach the pre-downturn jobs level.

* AND, FOLKS, THAT JUST AIN'T HAPPENING! OBAMA HAS LITERALLY BROKEN THE ECONOMY!

In December 2007, the US economy employed 146 million people. Four years later, it languishes at 140 million [employed].

* DO THE FRIGG'N MATH! THAT'S SIX MILLION JOBS LOST! AND... TO POUR SALT ON THE WOUND...

At the current rate of job creation it will take another two and a half years to regain 2007 levels [and even] that understates the problem, since in that time the population will have risen by more than 10 million!

(*MIGRAINE HEADACHE*)

America is employing a decreasing proportion of its people. At the start of the recession, the employment-to-population rate was 62.7%. The rate is now 58.5%.

(*SIGH*)

Last month, unemployment [technically] fell from 9% to 8.6%.

(*SMIRK*)

On the surface, this looked like a welcome leap in job creation. In reality, more than half of the fall was accounted for by a decrease in the numbers “actively seeking” work.

* FOLKS...! UNDERSTAND... (READ ON!)

The 315,000 who dropped out of the labor market far exceeded the 120,000 new jobs!

* FOLKS... ASK YOUR FRIENDS, FAMILY, AND COLLEAGUES; HOW MANY ARE AWARE OF THESE FACTS, OF THIS REALITY? NOT MANY, I'LL WAGER! YOU NEED TO EXPLAIN THIS TO THOSE YOU LOVE!

* FOLKS... BOTTOM LINE: FRIENDS DON'T LET FRIENDS (OR FAMILY, OR COLLEAGUES) VOTE DEMOCRAT WITHOUT A FIGHT!

According to government statistics, if the same number of people were seeking work today as in 2007, the jobless rate would be 11%.

* AH... BUT IT GETS WORSE! (READ ON!)

Some have moved from claiming unemployment benefits to disability benefits, and have thus permanently dropped out of the labor force.

Others have fallen back on the charity of relatives.

Others still have ended up in prison.

(In 1982 there were just over 500,000 in jail; today there are 2.5 million - more than the combined population of Atlanta, Boston, Seattle and Kansas City, according to the Economic Mobility Project of the Pew Center, a Washington-based think-tank.)

[A] growing share of whatever jobs the economy is still managing to create is in the least productive areas. Of the five occupations forecast by the Bureau of Labor Statistics to be the fastest growing between now and 2018, none requires a degree. These are registered nurses, “home health aides,” customer service representatives, food preparation workers and “personal home care aides.” [S]uch jobs cannot replace the pay and conditions once typical of [the manufacturing] sector. “The food preparation industry cannot sustain a middle class,” says Dan DiMicco, chief executive of Nucor, one of America’s two remaining big steel companies, whose company motto is “a nation that builds and makes things.”

* GOD FRIGG'N HELP THIS POOR COUNTRY OF OURS. FOLKS... WE'VE GOTTA TURN THINGS AROUND! FOLKS... WE'VE GOTTA SAVE AMERICA FOR OUR KIDS AND GRANDKIDS...!!!

According to a study this year by Michael Spence, a Nobel Prize-winning economist from Stanford University, and Sandile Hlatshwayo, all net job creation since 1990 has been in the “non-tradable sector.”

* MEANING THERE'S NO EXPORT INCOME.

Between 1990 and 2008, the US added 27.3 million jobs, of which almost every one was in services.

Almost half [of these jobs] were in healthcare or the public sector - both areas in which productivity growth is virtually zero.

(Conversely, manufacturing’s impressive productivity growth has tracked its shrinking headcount.)

If there is an explanation as to why middle-class incomes have stagnated in the past generation, this is it: whatever jobs the U.S. is able to create are in the least efficient sectors - the types that neither computers nor China have yet found a way of eliminating.

* AND NOW... (READ ON...)

That trend is starting to lap at the feet of more highly educated American workers. And, as the shift continues, higher-paying jobs are also increasingly at risk, argue Prof Spence and Ms. Hlatshwayo.

* FOLKS... IF THE CONTINUING DECLINE OF AMERICA HASN'T DIRECTLY EFFECTED YOU AND THOSE YOU LOVE... IT WILL.

* FOLKS... PLEASE... DON'T AVERT YOUR EYES FROM WHAT'S HAPPENING!