They say unemployment is 4.2%, so everything’s fine. 4.2% of what, assholes? 7 million people don’t have a job. Last month the whole country added 29,000 jobs. That’s not a recovery; that’s a parking lot with one open register.
Do the goddamn math: one job for every 244 people still looking. Two million of those people have been out six months or more. They aren’t lazy. They’re sending out resumes to inboxes that already mailed the rejection. They’re tailoring applications for hours and getting a robot’s auto-reply back.
And the states can’t even be bothered to keep the lights on while they look. North Carolina caps unemployment at $350 a week and cuts you off in under three months. $350 a week. In a country where a bag of granola costs $8.50. Tell me again how this is personal responsibility when the benefit is designed to make you desperate? Keke Moore’s out there fighting for scraps while her kid pays the bills, and she feels like a failure. She’s not a failure. The people who built this scraps-for-workers economy are the failure.
I did what I was told. I worked the shifts. I paid in. And now the same crowd that preaches family values turns around and tells a mother her unemployment ran out. Bless their hearts? No. Fuck their hearts. They say the rate is low and the numbers look good, but the numbers are a curtain. Behind the curtain is a 21-year-old kid paying his mama’s rent because the system ran out the clock on her.
They can take the 4.2% and shove it. 29,000 jobs is not a labor market. It’s a goddamn waiting room, and they built it on purpose.
Source story: U.S. employers add 29,000 jobs as job searches take longer.