America Loses 112,000 Jobs in May

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OK, technically that headline isn’t true. In fact, ADP estimates that employment grew by 38,000 jobs last month. But the American economy needs to generate about 150,000 new jobs each month just to keep up with the number of new workers entering the economy thanks to population growth. So just as you should adjust price levels for inflation, you should adjust new jobs for population growth. And on that scale, we lost about 112,000 jobs last month.

But quick! Medicare might start having funding problems in 2025 and Social Security might go into the red in 2040. Those are obviously the problems we should be dealing with right this second. And we should deal with them by cutting spending on a bunch of other programs because, um, um, um……

I forget. But I know there’s a reason. My TV keeps telling me there is. Something about the rest of the world forcing us to screw the poor and destroy our economy today in order to save it tomorrow. So let’s get on with the destruction.

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AN IMPORTANT UPDATE

We’re falling behind our online fundraising goals and we can’t sustain coming up short on donations month after month. Perhaps you’ve heard? It is impossibly hard in the news business right now, with layoffs intensifying and fancy new startups and funding going kaput.

The crisis facing journalism and democracy isn’t going away anytime soon. And neither is Mother Jones, our readers, or our unique way of doing in-depth reporting that exists to bring about change.

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