HELEN LACHS GINSBURG is Professor Emerita of Economics, Brooklyn College-CUNY. She is co-chair of the Columbia University Seminar on Full Employment, Social Welfare and Equity and is a co-founder of the National Jobs for All Coalition. MARGUERITE G. ROSENTHAL is Professor of Social Work, Salem State College in MA where she teaches the social policy curriculum, including a course that focuses on child and family policy in the United States.
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.
[Note: This is a corrected version of the footnoted article that was earlier posted on the web.]
