Roubini: Prescription please

From NYUlocal.com, the latest from the gloomy Mr. Roubini:

Likening our fate to one of the apocalyptic films on Dan’s list is probably a more optimistic outlook on the future of civilization than NYU Stern Professor Nouriel Roubini’s latest column about the economic crisis for NY Daily News.

He predicts unemployment will rise throughout 2010 and plateau at 11% for at least two years. Roubini cites the weak labor markets as a possible catalyst for a (terrifying) double dip recession. To avoid imminent doom, he advocates “a bold prescription that increases the fiscal stimulus with another round of labor-intensive, shovel-ready infrastructure projects, helps fiscally strapped state and local governments and provides a temporary tax credit to the private sector to hire more workers.”

What’s he basing all this off? Well, I’ve hidden the facts listed in his article after the jump to give fair warning to anyone who isn’t a freshman: it’s grim reading if you plan on entering the job market before 2013.

# On top of the 7.5 millions full-time jobs that have already vanished, the sum of reduced hours for people who managed to cling onto employment accounts for the equivalent of another 3 million jobs lost.

# There are about six applications for every one job availability.

# Jobs lost in construction, manufacturing and finance are probably gone for good.

# The US is losing an average of 200,000 jobs a month, which is 50,000 more than during the last recession.

# Official unemployment is 10.2%, but you take into account those who have simply given up on finding a job or are forced to work part-time, it is actually around 17.5%.

# Unemployment continued to rise for 18 months after the recession.