What to Do About the Miserable February Job Numbers

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The big news of the day today is the fact that the economy shed 650,000 more jobs in February and the job loss numbers for the previous two months were revised upwards. The nationwide unemployment rate is now 8.1 percent, the highest in 25 years. Since December 2007, which is the technical start of the current recession, the economy has lost 4.4 million jobs.

We gathered the thoughts of Dean Baker and James Galbraith, two of the most prominent economists on the left. Baker makes it clear that not only are things bad, they are worse than expected:

The one piece of somewhat good news in this report is that wages are continuing to rise, with nominal wages rising at 3.5 percent annual rate over the quarter. However, everything else in this report is extremely bad. The economy is in a free fall with no obvious breaks in place. The recent forecasts used in analyzing the stimulus and the budget, which projected 8.5 percent unemployment for the 4th quarter, now look impossibly optimistic. The unemployment rate is likely to hit 8.5 percent by March and will almost certainly cross 9.0 percent by the early summer. Without substantial additional stimulus, it could cross 10.0 percent by year end. This report shows that recent economic projections were overly optimistic.

Galbraith suggests the following steps to spur recovery:

1. Increase Social Security 30 percent across the board
2. Declare a full holiday on the payroll tax.
3. Cut the age of eligibility for Medicare to 55.
4. Make general revenue sharing open-ended.
5. Do the National Infrastructure Fund, also open-ended.
6. Put a moratorium on all foreclosures, and turn over the problems to a new HOLC.
7. Unleash Sheila Bair on the banks.

Somebody mail this to the freaked out Obama economic team.

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WE'LL BE BLUNT

It is astonishingly hard keeping a newsroom afloat these days, and we need to raise $253,000 in online donations quickly, by October 7.

The short of it: Last year, we had to cut $1 million from our budget so we could have any chance of breaking even by the time our fiscal year ended in June. And despite a huge rally from so many of you leading up to the deadline, we still came up a bit short on the whole. We canā€™t let that happen again. We have no wiggle room to begin with, and now we have a hole to dig out of.

Readers also told us to just give it to you straight when we need to ask for your support, and seeing how matter-of-factly explaining our inner workings, our challenges and finances, can bring more of you in has been a real silver lining. So our online membership lead, Brian, lays it all out for you in his personal, insider account (that literally puts his skin in the game!) of how urgent things are right now.

The upshot: Being able to rally $253,000 in donations over these next few weeks is vitally important simply because it is the number that keeps us right on track, helping make sure we don't end up with a bigger gap than can be filled again, helping us avoid any significant (and knowable) cash-flow crunches for now. We used to be more nonchalant about coming up short this time of year, thinking we can make it by the time June rolls around. Not anymore.

Because the in-depth journalism on underreported beats and unique perspectives on the daily news you turn to Mother Jones for is only possible because readers fund us. Corporations and powerful people with deep pockets will never sustain the type of journalism we exist to do. The only investors who wonā€™t let independent, investigative journalism down are the people who actually care about its futureā€”you.

And we need readers to show up for us big timeā€”again.

Getting just 10 percent of the people who care enough about our work to be reading this blurb to part with a few bucks would be utterly transformative for us, and that's very much what we need to keep charging hard in this financially uncertain, high-stakes year.

If you can right now, please support the journalism you get from Mother Jones with a donation at whatever amount works for you. And please do it now, before you move on to whatever you're about to do next and think maybe you'll get to it later, because every gift matters and we really need to see a strong response if we're going to raise the $253,000 we need in less than three weeks.

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