Gertrude Schaffner Goldberg is Professor of Social Policy and Director of the Ph.D. Program at the Adelphi University School of Social Work and Chair of the National Jobs for All Coalition. Her latest book, an edited collection, is Poor Women in Rich Countries: The Feminization of Poverty over the Life Course, (Oxford University Press, 2010).
Marguerite G. Rosenthal, an Executive Committee member of the National Jobs for All Coalition, is Professor Emerita of Social Policy, Salem State University. Her writing has focused on social welfare history and social, economic and criminal justice.
The United States has an ongoing jobs crisis that has been crippling our people and our economy for nearly two years. In September 2010, 14.8 million people were officially unemployed, 15.7 million were either forced to work part-time or were jobless and no longer looking for work and another 16.3 million were the working poor. Thus, almost 47 million people were afflicted by unemployment or underemployment (see table 1). Moreover, the numbers multiply when the families of the unemployed are included.
