Today’s Labor Day and man I got the blues; I’m thinking about my own personal work-history. I am old enough to remember back to the early 1980’s when the unemployment on Labor Day in 1982 was 10.1%, whereas today’s is 9.7% even while the reported unemployment and underemployment rate is 17% of the workforce; in other words the officially unemployed is 9.7% but it goes way up when you add to that the part-time workers who really need full-time jobs and those unemployed who are so demoralized that they’ve stopped looking for jobs.

Being a student, as well as an active participant, in this particular niche in history I went back to look at the employment statistics and their aftermath in the late 1970’s and early 1980’s and found some strikingly severe differences. After the recession of 1979-’82 unemployment went down, from 10% in 1982 to a little over 7% two years later and a little over 5% by 1988. The prognosis this time, however, by all the “experts” is already much bleaker, as they proclaim that unemployment is likely to continue on its upward path for the next year or two before it begins to descend and my first question was why? And so I went back to study history’s lessons.

In 1982 the Chairman of the Federal Reserve was Paul Volcker and his primary goal was to break the back of inflation and he did so by raising the interest rates all the way to 21% and these were some rough years to be a carpenter and real estate agent, which I was both, but when they realized their goal they began lowering the interest rates systematically and the interest sensitive sectors of the economy like car sales and housing, as well as all businesses who extend credit, enormous employment factors in our economy, took off and we began the gradual march out of that recession.

Today’s recession, however, has been brought on by our financial crisis not only in the mortgage market but the credit market overall and the Fed has slashed interest rates as far as they can; meaning that sooner or later they will have to go back up. The only problem with that, as I see it, is that as we already have so many overextended households that will not be able to repay their debts that spending on anything but necessities like food and clothing will be sluggish at best and new jobs will not open up, as they must if we are to begin a recovery.

I am also seeing that many recent college graduates are having trouble finding jobs and what this will spawn is that they will be hired over less educated applicants but for less meaningful, less demanding and less skillful jobs and, not coincidentally, lower-paying jobs. Unemployed people, unless they can go back to school, or in some other way, learn or acquire a skill-set that is in demand will remain unemployed. Some Labor Day huh …? Well, I don’t have a crystal-ball but I do know that history also shows us that the resilience and spirit of the American worker has always helped us beat these recessions and so we have that hope and while there’s hope there’s life and who knows the future but God, who could always help us to work a miracle or two and then … well … I mean ... you never know do you? Here's hoping that hope indeed does spring eternal, on this Labor Day.