US Is In the Weakest "Recovery" Ever

The current US job market is unlike anything economists have ever seen and it's scaring the crap out of people. At this point in an economic "recovery" employers are supposed to be adding jobs and hiring new people. That is simply not happening, at all. In fact, only 18,000 jobs were added in June, a fraction of the 300,000+ jobs needed to begin shrinking the US unemployment problem.

The really spooky thing is that economists don't really understand what's going on. Just a few months ago most experts believed the US economy would be heating up significantly by the second half of 2011. The opposite seems to be happening an nobody really knows why.

According the the current statistics, over 16% of Americans who want to work are either unemployed or under-employed (working part-time jobs for example). A big problem is that employers are still very reluctant to begin hiring in big numbers the way they did before the Great Recession that began in 2008. They prefer to make current employees work harder and longer. As a result, both worker productivity and US corporate profits are through the roof!

Many companies, including small business owners, don't want to begin hiring again until they're sure American consumers are going to be spending on products and services. Also, new technology and computer software is allowing managers to get more work out of fewer employees.

The fact that the politicians in Washington DC are playing "chicken" with the US debt ceiling definitely isn't helping the situation. The US economy would almost surely head back into a deep recession if the world believes there's even a chance America could default on its huge debts. Europe's debt problems and China's inflation-fighting programs are also causing employers to adopt a "wait and see" hiring strategy.

Learn some mo': Analysis: Flat jobs data signal weakest recovery in decades