A couple of weeks ago, I noted a CNNMoney.com survey of economists who expect that unemployment will remain above 9 percent through 2011, and above 8 percent through Election Day 2012, which CNN described as a “rosier” long-term outlook. At the time, I noted that if those forecasts are accurate, by the end of 2012, we’ll have had more consecutive months with the unemployment rate above 8 percent since the beginning of 2009 than we had total months at that level in the 61 years from 1948 through 2008, and concluded that the DC political-media complex seems not to get how bad the economic situation is.
Here’s how bad it is: This chart shows the total number of months in which the unemployment rate was at least 8 (and 9) percent over two time periods: The 61 years from 1948-2008 and the two years from 2009-2010. (I went ahead and assumed unemployment will remain above 9 percent for November and December.)
From 1948 through the end of 2008, there were a total of twenty months in which the unemployment rate was at least 9 percent. By the end of this year, we’ll be at twenty consecutive months since early 2009, and counting.
This week, the Philadelphia Fed’s Survey of Professional Forecasters released a similarly grim assessment: “Unemployment is projected to be an annual average of 9.7 percent in 2010, before falling to 9.3 percent in 2011, 8.7 percent in 2012, and 7.9 percent in 2013. These estimates are higher than the projections in the last survey.”
And yet the political and media classes seem more concerned about the deficit than on the prospect of five consecutive years of unemployment in the 8-10 percent range -- despite the rather obvious fact that a lousy economy with high unemployment contributes to deficits, and a strong economy with low unemployment goes a long way towards cutting them.
But it isn’t just the budget deficit that seems to get more attention than a remarkably bad economy: So does whatever insane conspiracy theory Glenn Beck is promoting, and Sarah Palin’s insane tweets, and earmarks and ... let’s stop right there. Eliminating earmarks will do approximately nothing to fix the economy, and approximately nothing to reduce the deficit. Running up massive deficits by giving tax cuts to the wealthy, presiding over economic collapse, and waging multiple wars, then promising to eliminate earmarks, is like a teenager blowing his tuition money on hookers and cocaine, then saying he’ll cut down on bubble-gum purchases.
During White House press secretary Robert Gibbs’ press gaggle on Wednesday, he got nine straight questions about congressional Republicans blowing off a meeting at the White House (Sample: “Do you think they’re showing disrespect to the President? ... Were you with the President when he found out that it was being postponed? ... Do you know how he responded when he found out?”) And then several more questions later in the gaggle. Total number of questions using the words “economy” “job” or “unemployment”? Zero.
Now, that’s just one press gaggle, but it’s representative of how neither the political establishment nor the media establishment seems all that concerned about the economy. As David Roberts and Duncan Black noted this week, this simply is not sane:
It is insane, but it is not surprising. The rapid acceptance by the political/media class of extraordinary circumstances is one of the key developments of the past ten years. Remember when people only seemed to talk about the two wars we were fighting when they wanted to send more people to fight in them? How the media had to be dragged, kicking and screaming, to cover evidence that one of those wars was based on a series of lies? Remember how each new aspect of the Bush administration’s expansion of executive power -- complete with warrantless wiretapping of Americans, indefinite detention, torture, etc -- got an initial flurry of attention, then everyone just kind of moved on? One of the defining characteristics of the past decade has been the tendency of both pols and journalists to pay scant attention to things that should be huge stories. We’re fighting simultaneous wars? We torture people? Spy on Americans without court permission? Eh. That’s just how things are now.
So it really isn’t surprising that a catastrophically bad economy has been accepted as the new normal, too.
Now, let’s revisit that chart I posted above -- but this time, extend it through the end of 2012, based on the CNNMoney.com and Philly Fed survey of forecasters. Based on those forecasts, the chart below assumes that unemployment will remain above 9 percent through the end of 2011, and will be between 8 and 9 percent through the end of 2012.
If the economic forecasts are right, we’re going to have more months of the unemployment rate higher than 8 percent (and 9 percent) in four years than we did in the previous 61. From 1948-1968, a 7 percent unemployment rate was pretty bad -- it happened in less than 20 percent of those 732 months. Now we’re looking at four consecutive years above 8 percent unemployment; nearly three straight above 9. And it often seems politicians and the media would rather focus on anything else.