Job Jam

Work sure ain't what it used to be -- and that's not just because I am an HR Crone.  Hearing pundits praise an economy that is filled with the long-term unemployed makes my head hurt.  I'm not alone --Paul Krugman, in a NYT OP-ED titled "The Big Shrug" (6/10/13) makes a compelling case that other economists and policy makers are fiddling while Rome is burning. 

2 million fewer American jobs than 6 years ago?  Shrug.

7.6 % unemployment?  Shrug.

Scores of underemployed people with low wages?  Shrug.

Krugman says an acceptance of a 'New Normal' seems to create a powerful sense of inertia, and that the unemployed do not have a political voice.  Krugman also says there is nothing normal or necessary about mass long-term unemployment.

Meanwhile, in other news, a judge has ruled that Fox Searchlight Pictures violated labor laws by not paying production interns, which is likely to have a ripple effect on other industries who have come to extract free labor from desperate job seekers. 

On the flip side, Greece,the poster child for flawed economic policies, just laid off 3,000 people from a state-run tv and radio broadcaster, under pressure from the IMF for failing to make 'politically difficult decisions' -- ie, reduce the public sector.   But existing policies make it very difficult to fire people - and cases can spend years in courts, while idle workers continue to get paid. 

Someone has to be smart and powerful and determined enough to restore the value of jobs in the good old U.S.A.  Anybody?