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Unemployment numbers continue to rise in the United States as the potential for a ‘jobless
recovery’ takes hold. In this video, TRNN Producer Jesse Freeston speaks with Jeannette Wicks-
Lim of the Political Economy Research Institute about the report she released on Labor Day which
shows the problem goes beyond the crisis. The report points to Department of Labor data from
2006, before the US went into recession, which forecast the US economy would not add any
‘decent paying’ jobs between 2006 and 2016. The forecast can be seen as a continuation of a trend
that began in 1975 when workers stopped getting wage increases in concert with increases in their
productivity. Wicks-Lim concludes that from an economist perspective, the best proven way for
worker’s to affect this structure in their favor is through increasing the unionization of the workforce.
Wicks-Lim’s report was supported by the AFL-CIO.
