The Unemployment Crisis

The WSWS takes a look at the recent poll by the New York Times, which surveyed how the unemployed were coping with their situation:

It is not only the unemployed who are suffering. A separate Times/CBS poll, also conducted in early December, found that about one third of US workers say that their pay was cut last year as a result of the economic crisis.


And a recent Zogby International poll found that an astonishing 72 percent of Americans already consider themselves poor or can imagine themselves becoming poor (20 percent and 50 percent, respectively). And about half of Americans say they worry about money "most or all of the time."


"What they're saying is that they're one, two or three paychecks away from poverty," said John Zogby, the CEO of the polling company. "This has a huge implication."


Dennis Jacobe, chief economist of polling firm Gallup, said "people do not feel safe." Workers "compare the stock market rally to the economy they are experiencing, there is an atmosphere of unreality," Jacobe said. "Wall Street gets theirs and the average American doesn't. There is a sense of unfairness and confusion."