16 Million Americans Who Should be Working, Aren't

Prior to the recession, nearly 65 percent of working-age Americans (not in the military or in prison) had jobs. Now it’s down to 58%. The difference is 16 million people who should be working, but aren’t — about the same as the entire working-age population of Australia. The slight increase in employment during the past few months barely tracks the natural increase in population.

...People are hurting, and badly. The official unemployment rate may have fallen, slightly, but the real unemployment rate — the number of working-age Americans who aren’t working — rose from about 12% before the 2008 crisis, to about 23%, and hasn’t come down. That includes people who have retired early because they can’t find work, spouses who used to earn a second income but have gone back to homemaking because work isn’t available, self-employed people whose businesses have collapsed, young people who live in their parents’ basement because they can’t afford tuition and can’t find work. _Spengler

The article linked above contains several informative charts that provide visual time trends.

The American skankstream media will pull out all the stops to help President Obama win re-election in November. But when the media message conflicts with the "in your face reality" which average Americans must contend with, the final outcome in the poll booth remains in doubt.

Obama will also get a lot of help from labour unions and Democratic Party election officials at the local and state levels. Help that will probably, at times, cross over the line of legality. But that's politics, the US Democratic Party way.

It is not just the future of the US that will be at stake. The global economy has scant chance of recovery as long as the US is stuck in an ongoing Obama recession.