Unemployment makes dismal Labor Day

Labor Day 2009 offers little incentive for celebration. This summer-ending holiday comes amid the worst economic downturn in more than half a century. The national unemployment rate is 9.7 percent. North Carolina's rate is even higher.

Since the downturn began last year, almost 7 million jobs have been lost. What is more disturbing is the fact that a third of the jobless have been unemployed for more than six months. This marks a post-World War II high. If you look at who is unemployed, the picture grows bleaker. Older workers (those who have an especially hard time landing a new job, despite federal laws against age discrimination) have been particularly hard-hit by this recession, as have male breadwinners. It's not just the peripheral jobs — the positions added when things were sailing along smoothly — that have been eliminated, it's the core jobs that make a company's clockwork tick.

And although the stock market has begun to rebound, the economy is still shedding jobs. It's supposed to be good news that fewer jobs were eliminated last month than in previous months. Try to tell that to laid-off workers.

Sunday morning, the prescribed liturgy offered this prayer in recognition of the Labor Day Weekend: "We pray that all who labor receive just compensation, that the unemployed find meaningful work, and that all employers create workplaces where justice, fairness, and equity thrive. Hear us, O God." Divine intervention: It's all we have left.