As Unemployment Goes Up,

so does the incidence of poverty. Now one in six Americans is living in poverty:

The social catastrophe resulting from the financial collapse of 2008 does not yet register in any of these statistics. With official unemployment at nearly 10 percent, and the real rate far higher, the unemployment crisis is the worst the nation has experienced since the Great Depression. Hundreds of thousands of workers are exhausting their modest unemployment benefits.

Meanwhile, for those fortunate enough to have jobs, wages have fallen at a rate not seen in nearly two decades, and the workweek has shrunk to its shortest on records dating back to 1960. At the same time, productivity is increasing—by a 6.6 percent annualized rate in the second quarter. And working class Americans have seen the two largest sources of their personal wealth—home values and retirement plans—decline sharply.

For these reasons, there can be little doubt that when statistical analysis is carried out for 2009, it will reveal a sharp increase in poverty.