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It should be rather obvious that without any sustained job growth there will be no economic recovery.  In the same breath, you will have someone tell you that this is no common recession yet when it comes to talking about the stock market they will tell you that in normal times, stocks recover before jobs.  That is true if this were your run of the mill recession.  It is not.  When you have five states like Oregon, Rhode Island, Michigan, South Carolina, and California all having unemployment and underemployment over 20 percent then you know the unemployment situation cuts deep and wide.  With massive market volatility that has sent the S&P 500 rallying 40 percent in only 4 months.  That is not normal.  Most Americans intuitively know that without a broad based job recovery, there is little reason to believe this recession is close to being over.

Let us look at how widespread unemployment is across the country:

*Source:  Zero Hedge

The current nationwide unemployment rate is 9.5 percent.  Yet if we look at the broader U-6 number, we will see that unemployment is closer to 17 percent.  What does the full employment situation look like?  Well let us break down the numbers to give you a better sense of what this is:

All said, we have about 26,000,000 Americans fully out of work or underemployed.  Things actually get tougher when you realize that many people are unemployed for much longer times as well.  Those who are long-term unemployed (meaning they have been jobless for 27 weeks or more) has surged to 4,400,000.

Mass layoffs are also still in record territory.  Mass layoffs occur when a single employer will be laying off 50 or more individuals.  This is an important measure because it shows deep contractions in the overall industry instead of targeted niche layoffs.  In June, we had 2,763 notices of mass layoff action:

You’ll notice that manufacturing layoffs are pushing the overall trend up.  I know that the U.S. Treasury and Federal Reserve are concerned with Wall Street and banks but little is being done to improve the employment situation for the average American.  This is disconcerting.  Most Americans depend on employment and to the vast majority, their job is the economy.  Yet what targeted effort is being taken to compensate for the 6,000,000+ jobs that have been lost since the recession started in December of 2007?  Don’t you think that a concentrated effort on jobs is more important than dumping trillions into the banking casino?  I think most Americans that are laid off already understand what it means to be in economic chaos; the chaos many were told would unfold if we didn’t give banks untold billions.  Yet here we are with 26,000,000 unemployed and underemployed Americans.

The job losses have been broad and are hitting each category:

You’ll notice that the two biggest sectors hit were manufacturing and professional/business service.  These are higher paying sectors in relation to leisure and hospitality for example.  The only sector that saw some growth was education and health services but even in these areas, with government cutbacks we know job losses will be occurring here.  And this is telling.  Normally education and healthcare are the last bastions of hope in a deep recession but that is not the case anymore.  Even secure jobs like nursing are coming under fire:

“(Market Place)  A lot of people go into nursing for security. That was part of the draw for 32-year-old Narayan. The former filmmaker was told Hopkins nursing grads often got hired, sight unseen. The reason: hospitals desperately need nurses. Now Narayan doubts there ever was a nursing shortage.

Narayan: I’m like “What shortage? I can’t get a job.” That’s really the case. I’d cry but I can’t. I just want to laugh about it.

There are still job openings for nurses. But vacancy rates nationwide are lower than they have been for years, says Peter Buerhaus. The Vanderbilt University professor is lead author on a recent study of the nursing labor market. He says in the last two years a record number of nurses have returned to full-time hospital work.”

And this is occurring because men have taken on a large part of the layoffs and many women are having to go back to work to recoup lost hours for their family balance sheet.  That is the case in the nursing profession.  Many experienced nurses who might have worked a few shifts are now taking on more shifts to make up for lost hours by their spouses:

“That’s the story with Cynthia Yates. She’s been a nurse for 23 years. She’s trying to rebuild her family’s savings, in part because of her fiancee’s career.

Cynthia Yates: He’s in real estate. So one of us had to have a steady position.

Yates used to be a freelance nurse for the Greater Baltimore Medical Center. Better pay, more flexible hours than being on the hospital’s payroll. But last summer, her hours started to get cut, as staff nurses gobbled up the time. Yates says by fall, the situation got grim.”

It’s all about the jobs.  Without a stabilizing employment picture there is little hope for a sustained recovery.