It’s been two years since Dwight Michael Frazee lost his construction job in New Jersey, and he’s starting to feel desperate. Frazee, 50, the married father of a 5-year-old daughter, has applied for work at car dealerships, insurance companies, big box stores, bail bond firms, even kitschy boardwalk shops—but he keeps coming up empty. After 99 weeks, his unemployment insurance ran out. “My life has been total stress,” he says. “I sleep maybe fours hours a night, worrying about money.” He has lots of company, said Michael Fletcher in The Washington Post. Nearly 15 million Americans are out of work, half of them for more than six months, “the most serious bout of long-term joblessness since the Great Depression.” And with nearly five unemployed people for every opening, job prospects are dismal. With the economy slowly rebounding, and employers ringing up good profits, unemployment should be dropping, said John Harwood in The New York Times. But it’s not. It’s “the biggest conundrum” facing President Obama as Democrats brace for a drubbing in November. “Where did the jobs go?”
It’s no great mystery, said Thomas Sowell in The Washington Examiner. From health care to finance, Washington keeps coming up with “more red tape, more mandates, and more heavy-handed interventions.” This massive expansion of government has created massive uncertainty for the private sector, which is reluctant to commit to hiring new, full-time workers. Obama promised that his $862 billion stimulus package would keep unemployment at 8 percent, said The Wall Street Journal in an editorial. Wrong again. Unemployment remains stuck at 9.5 percent since “employers are afraid to hire because they don’t know what costs government will impose on them next.”
Subscribe to The Week
Escape your echo chamber. Get the facts behind the news, plus analysis from multiple perspectives.
Sign up for The Week's Free Newsletters
From our morning news briefing to a weekly Good News Newsletter, get the best of The Week delivered directly to your inbox.
From our morning news briefing to a weekly Good News Newsletter, get the best of The Week delivered directly to your inbox.
-
Last hopes for justice for UK's nuclear test veteransUnder the Radar Thousands of ex-service personnel say their lives have been blighted by aggressive cancers and genetic mutations
-
'It may not be surprising that creative work is used without permission'Instant Opinion Opinion, comment and editorials of the day
-
5 simple items to help make your airplane seat more comfortableThe Week Recommends Gel cushions and inflatable travel pillows make a world of difference
-
Drones: Will a Pentagon takeover make a difference?feature The CIA appears to be getting out of the drone business.
-
Working from home: Is it really more productive?
feature The CEOs of two struggling companies, Yahoo and Best Buy, have decreed that employees will no longer be able to work from home.
-
The fiscal cliff: What happens if there’s no deal?
feature Contrary to what some doomsayers have predicted, income taxes won’t go up overnight, and $500 billion won’t suddenly be sucked out of the economy.
-
The fiscal cliff: What if negotiations fail?
feature All told, $503 billion could be siphoned out of the economy, which could throw the still-weak U.S. economy back into recession.
-
Romney: Can a businessman fix the economy?
feature The Obama campaign is targeting a new line of attacks on Romney’s business background.
-
Occupy Wall Street: Will the crackdown end the movement?
feature As the police continue to dismantle the tent cities of the Occupy movement, its future as a political force is in question.
-
The economy: Is the recovery for real?
feature The Great Recession is officially over. Where's the champagne?
-
Wall Street: The good times are rolling again
feature The big banks are flush with money and plan to give out billions of dollars in annual bonuses to their employees.