Get off your ass and get a job!

The truth behind much of the economic happy-talk that the Obama administration is putting out is that we are in hard times at the moment, with the probability of things getting far worse.

Nouriel Roubini has an article in the New York Daily News that is worth taking a few moments to read.

Think the worst is over? Wrong. Conditions in the U.S. labor markets are awful and worsening. While the official unemployment rate is already 10.2% and another 200,000 jobs were lost in October, when you include discouraged workers and partially employed workers the figure is a whopping 17.5%.

While losing 200,000 jobs per month is better than the 700,000 jobs lost in January, current job losses still average more than the per month rate of 150,000 during the last recession.

If you have a job, try to keep it.

If you don't, then you had better be busting your ass to get one. Every day that goes by that you remain unemployed increases the number of people that are in line with you looking for work. Many o these people will be better qualified and more desirable for a company to hire than you are.

Do not rest on your laurels – you don't have any.

Be prepared for some rough times.

Normalizing high joblessness

One way to try to cope with a high rate of unemployment would be to change what is considered normal.

WASHINGTON - Even with an economic revival, many U.S. jobs lost during the recession may be gone forever and a weak employment market could linger for years.

That could add up to a "new normal" of higher joblessness and lower standards of living for many Americans, some economists are suggesting.

The words "it's different this time" are always suspect. But economists and policy makers say the job-creating dynamics of previous recoveries can't be counted on now.

Well yah. Socialism sucks.

Further in the article:

"Many factors are pushing against a quick recovery," said Heidi Shierholz, an economist at the labor-oriented Economic Policy Institute. "Things will come back. But it's going to take a long time. I think we will likely see elevated unemployment at least until 2014."

At best, many economists see an economic recovery without a return to moderate unemployment. At worst, they suggest the fragile recovery could lose steam and drag the economy back under for a double-dip recession.

"We will need to grind out this recovery step by step," President Barack Obama said earlier this month.

It is almost certainly too much to ask, but the folks in Washington D.C. could try getting the f[**]k out of the way and stop increasing the regulatory and tax burdens that they put on business. Businesses create jobs - regulation and taxation destroys them.