A quick correct:
The benefits average 309-Dollars a week. Not a month.
Source:
http://www.google.com/hostednews/ap/article/ALeqM5hLKyB9H7lUpiALFVlU7RRJa9-EfwD9H2V3180

This saddens but does not surprise me, so many people have been displaced due to the inability of the government to act in a proactive way. Many have no prospects for jobs, and the statistics seem to only count those who currently receive unemployment, not those who either fall through the cracks or have reached the maximum benefit allotment.

I have not worked in two years, and have just recently accepted a position at McDonalds, mind you I have a graduate degree, teaching experience, as well as an extensive background in accounting, yet I need to work in order to support my children. I no longer qualify for the 152.00 a week unemployment benefits because I accepted a job that was to go permanent but did not. This placed me outside of the window to qualify for the extension.

It's sad that some people will find this news.

Couldn't it be that jobs are a lagging indicator? In the graph, profits go down before jobs do, so it might make sense that they rise before jobs do.

I'm with circadianwolf - this is nothing new - in fact isn't it just plain obvious?

I believe one of the key functions of recessions in capitalism as we practice it is to instill fear and a sense of uncertainty in the workforce - a stick used to force and then normalize long-term wage and benefit concessions and spur increased productivity which certainly benefits corporate America. The lessons recessions teach the workforce about being grateful just to have a job would be lost if public and economic policy worked to soften the blow.

Yeah, I think this just confirms what a lot of people are seeing around them on a daily basis. While it is interesting, angering and terrifying, it isn't terribly new.

"Martin Hart-Landsberg, at Reports from the Economic Front, offers a provocative hypothesis."

Provocative hypothesis? Only if you haven't cracked open a newspaper in the past 30 years.

The U.S. has been in a *hidden* recession for the past three decades. We've seen glimpses of this fact in the mid 70s and in the late 80s-early 90s. The actual physical wealth (tangible assets, access to goods, resource production and extraction) of the country has stagnated or diminished (relative to population growth) in that period. Most people remained ignorant to the profound changes the U.S. economy was undergoing because financial and monetary aggregates exploded in that time period. It made it seem like people were generating wealth even though it was on-paper only and didn't correspond to changes in the physical economy. That kept people appeased but it was fundamentally unsustainable and now we're reaping the rewards. The tertiary sector went from being focused on supporting the primary and secondary sectors of the economy and acting as a distribution chain to being "wealth" generating itself, which is preposterous.

We need unemployment benefits extended, in some kind of *permanent* fashion. Europe has had to deal with (relatively) high levels of permanent structural unemployment for a while now. We are too now, unless we start inflating bubbles and heading into fantasy land again. Long-term though, we need to restructure the entire monetary system. Make it so that it rewards wealth-production and not legalized gambling that allows millions to appear out of thin air.

A tangential point related to unemployment - let's say we have 10-15% structural unemployment in the U.S. right now. That might seem like an aberration from the mean considering it's not TOO high from the perceived norm of 4-5%. I actually think this percentage will KEEP growing thanks to automation, technology, new efficiency standards and so on. It is not inconceivable that by the end of the century 50% of the working-age population could manage and run the global economy. That means we're going to have to rethink the capitalism schema that says that you have to work to survive.

I got my masters (in Urban Public Health) at a university surrounded by the urban blight brought on when the local car factory closed down. I became convinced that the root of most of the problems we studied is lack of jobs for low-skill workers. The simple fact is, that it's not "The Poor" we will have with us always, it's "Those who will never get more than their GED" we will have always.
We have lost our living-wage manufacturing jobs, and it's not likely we'll get them back until the rising worker expectations in Asia and India brings the cost of factories and overseas shipping higher than USA living wage costs and land freight here in the US. But while those low-skill/living wage jobs are gone, the proportion of the people who need those jobs are still here.
We need to focus both on keeping the current jobless housed and fed, while doing everything we can to foster growth of new jobs.
Steps we could take:
1- Keep the jobless funded so we can keep them fed and clothed
2- Stop gearing our education system to make perfect employees.
Give Federal grants to foster school programs teaching inventing,
small business skills and basic accounting certification for normal
everyday kids (not just "gifted' or "charter") by grade 12.
3- Open small business incubators and invention workshops in communities around the country, complete with patent advisers, etc. with free classes for everyone interested. Make it easy for our citizens without homes to mortgage for capital or connections to bring new ideas to market. Include tax incentives and loans tied to invention owners signing contracts agreeing to keep manufacture of their product in the US.

We need to create small business jobs where the owners care about the communities they employ and serve. Lord knows the current corporations don't care what happens to Main Street, as long as they show a profit on Wall Street.

I've got to echo circadianwolf on this. In my words:

"DUH!"

Especially related to this phrase in the article "Economic policy is not responsive to workers’ needs. Instead, it is heavily driven by what is best for corporations."

Isn't this the foundation of capitalism? I can make money at the expense of the workers? This premise appears to me to be the basis of how capitalism works; we are not a community, but instead individuals striving to do best for ourselves, rather than realizing that what is best for all of us is better for "society" as a whole.

Idealistic, I know, but this is how I feel.

But corporations ARE people, haven't you heard? They're the new and improved people, with more rights and political clout, but without any of the tiresome needs for food and existential meaning. With corporations competing with humans for the status of "person," my money is on the former.

Can none of you take an integral and see that profits were reduced more in the recession?

I'm late to the party but...

I think that companies have learned to do more with less (layoffs in response to the recession, automation, offshore outsourcing) and are seeing greater profits because of it. There's no need to hire when you're breaking the backs of your existing staff "who should be grateful to have a job" (to echo another commenter).

I see hoards of people at restaurants and I have a hard time finding parking spots when shopping--people are spending money, just not as much as they used to because they're actually being responsible whether by choice or because their credit cards have been capped. Fewer dollars spent per transaction = further reason not to create new jobs.

Unemployment desperately needs reform. The above commenter didn't qualify for it when she needed it. Yet I have more than one friend who has collected unemployment while traveling the world for months and even a year, sending out applications to jobs they had no intent of taking. There's too much entitlement.These friends felt entitled to collect unemployment because they paid into it. Many feel entitled to make the same salary (was it ever really deserved?) to pay for the house and things they felt entitled to (could they afford them in the first place)? I don't think teachers should have to work at McDonalds but I also don't think they should have to get a comparable teaching job or else be forever supported.

I would love to see small business grants to stimulate job and economic growth. Close corporate tax loopholes and then offer more incentives for job creation and bringing jobs back onshore. I think that would be helpful.