STEVEN GREENHOUSE
Looks Like a Recovery, Feels Like a Recession
Mon Sep 1 14:17:31 2003
67.1.138.79

From The New York Times, 9/1/03:
http://www.nytimes.com/2003/09/01/national/01LABO.html

Looks Like a Recovery, Feels Like a Recession

By STEVEN GREENHOUSE

Even though the recession ended nearly two years ago, polls show that
American workers are feeling stressed and shaky this Labor Day because
the nation continues to register month after month of job losses and
wages are rising more slowly than inflation.

One factor above all has fueled the insecurity: the nation has lost
2.7 million jobs over the last three years.

The recovery has been so weak since the recession ended in November
2001 that the nation's payrolls are down one million jobs from when
economic growth resumed.

Indeed, the current economic expansion is the worst on record in terms
of job growth.

The average length of unemployment, more than 19 weeks, spiked this
summer to its highest level in two decades.

"American workers are doing very badly," said Carl Van Horn, director
of the Heldrich Center for Workforce Development at Rutgers
University.

"All the trends are in the negative direction. There's high turnover,
high instability, a reduction in benefits and a declining loyalty on
the part of employers. At the same time, expectations for productivity
and quality are going up. It's a bad situation from a worker's
standpoint."

In August, a Gallup poll found that 81 percent of Americans thought
now was a bad time to find a quality job, tying March for the highest
percentage since Gallup began regularly asking the question two years
ago.