newjerseynewsroom.com

BY GINA G. SCALA

NEWJERSEYNEWSROOM.COM

In Feb. 1981, President Ronald Regan delivered a speech about the state of the economy, saying, “I regret to say that we're in the worst economic mess since the Great Depression… And finally there are seven million Americans caught up in the personal indignity and human tragedy of unemployment. If they stood in a line, allowing three feet for each person, the line would reach from the coast of Maine to California.”

More than 30 years later, the unemployment rate has hovered near the 8 percent mark for the longest consecutive period since the end of World War II; nearly 23 million Americans are unemployed or underemployed.

The 368,000 Americans who have given up on finding work in August actually contributed to a slight dip in the national unemployment rate, according to the latest Department of Labor report. The government only counts people actively searching for work as unemployed.

With only 96,000 jobs added in August, TD Economics senior economist James Marple called the latest numbers “downright dismal,” ABC News reported.

There’s more bad news. The labor department also noted 41,000 fewer jobs were created in July and June than initially predicted, the Washington Post reported. Since January, 139,000 jobs a month have been added; 14,000 less than last year’s average. The hourly pay has also fallen and 15,000 manufacturing jobs were cut. That’s the largest amount of lost jobs in that industry since 2010.

"A declining labor force is not (a) sign of an improving economy," Joel Naroff, president of Naroff Economic Advisors, told ABC News.

With a troubling jobs report, many economists anticipate the Fed will assert another round of bond purchases at its meeting next week, ABC News reported. And while that’s likely to sit well with investors, if Europe goes into a full blow recession it could damage the one mainstay of the U.S. economy—its exports.

“What we really need is to have policies coming from Washington that are fiscally sound,” GOP presidential candidate Mitt Romney said in an interview with Fox News Sept. 7, “and that get America back on track to having the kind of financial stability and foundation of economic growth that puts people to work.”

Regan ended his Feb. 1981 speech with these words, “We can leave our children with an unrepayable massive debt and a shattered economy, or we can leave them liberty in a land where every individual has the opportunity to be whatever God intended us to be. All it takes is a little common sense and recognition of our own ability.”