Newsweek Discovers 'Functional Unemployment' Is Real, Not a Wage Theft Feature
The article highlights a 'report' (one imagines whispered urgently from a think tank) that over 20 million Americans are underemployed, trapped in part-time gigs or jobs beneath their skill level. This isn't a new phenomenon, but a deliberate feature of a system that touts 'low unemployment rates' while simultaneously gutting unions and suppressing wages. It's the economic equivalent of claiming
you’ve solved hunger by replacing every meal with a single cracker. While Newsweek now 'warns' us about these numbers, they conveniently forget decades of cheerleading policies that enabled it: tax cuts for the wealthy, deregulation, and the relentless pursuit of 'efficiency' (read: less pay, fewer benefits). They report on the symptom while glossing over the systemic disease. One might almost ask
if the media's sudden concern springs from a fear that the functionally unemployed might actually start demanding functional solutions, rather than just 'choosing' not to work.