10-04-08, 9:16 am

John McCain was right about one thing. Jobs are being lost. This week the Department of Labor reported that 159,000 American workers lost their jobs in September, a five-year record. The Labor Department reported the ninth straight month of job losses, approaching 800,000 lost jobs in 2008.

Why was McCain right? During his Republican presidential primary campaign, he asked one audience, 'Have people lost jobs' due to the economic policies of free trade and low taxes for companies that move jobs out of the country which he has supported? 'Yes,' he inexplicably continued, 'they have, and they’re gonna lose jobs.” But McCain offered no solutions and appeared to suggest ignoring with the pain.

The Economic Policy Institute reported this week that weakening job numbers did not begin in 2008, despite Labor Department data. Bush administration trade policies, which McCain has steadfastly supported, 5.6 million jobs were lost or displaced, with 4 million of those lost jobs in manufacturing. Hardest hit were Michigan, Ohio, Texas, California and New York. But South Carolina, Alabama, Mississippi, New Hampshire, and North Carolina were among the biggest job losers as well.

Because manufacturing jobs are often the best paid, the losses in that sector reverberate throughout communities as local businesses soon follow suit, families move away, and the local tax base collapses, economists have pointed out.

Each of the 18 times John McCain echoed George W. Bush in declaring the 'fundamentals of the economy are strong' during his campaign, he has been wrong. Until the looming economic recession began to harm McCain's poll numbers, he seemed unconcerned with the fact that working families have been struggling for years.

By contrast, Barack Obama, in a speech this week in Grand Rapids, Mich., said that in addition to job losses, home values have plummeted, wages have flat-lined, and inflation is up. 'These are the quiet storms our families have been facing for months if not years,' he contended. In a separate statement later in the week, Obama added, 'this country can’t afford Senator McCain’s plan to give America four more years of the same policies that have devastated our middle-class and our economy for the last eight.'

This month's jobs numbers don't tell the whole story, however. The AFL-CIO reported this week that long-term unemployment has steadily worsened over the past few years. According to Labor Department estimates, the number of long-term unemployed people grew by 167,000 last month.

This is an immediate problem because about 750,000 unemployed workers are about to lose their unemployment benefits, throwing thousands of families into deeper crisis.

In a press statement this week, AFL-CIO president John Sweeney said, 'The middle class is collapsing. Across the country, more and more workers are facing long-term unemployment with little hope for finding any job, let alone one that pays the bills.'

Sweeney expressed disappointment that Congress spent its time this past week bailing out Wall Street while the needs of working families have been put on the back burner. An economic stimulus packaged aimed at working families, which passed by a wide margin the House on Sept. 26th, was blocked in the Senate by a Republican filibuster. The same Republicans fought to include in the Wall Street bailout package more tax breaks for the corporations that caused the financial crisis in the first place.

The labor movement has called for investing in job creation, helping working families renegotiate their mortgages, make their payments, and keep their homes, and for extending unemployment benefits for the jobless.

'Working people are suffering real economic pain, and if there is money enough for Wall Street, Congress and the president need to dig a little deeper and find the funds to take care of people who are shouldering the burden of this economy,' Sweeney concluded.

Emphasizing that no economic recovery can happen without addressing the needs fo working families, Barack Obama, in a statement this week, said, 'I also call on Congress to pass an immediate rescue plan for our middle-class that will provide tax relief, save one million jobs, and save our local communities from harmful budget cuts and painful tax increases.'

He further rejected the tax and trade policies John McCain supports in favor of direct investments in creating new jobs and providing relief to working families. 'Instead of Senator McCain’s plan to give tax breaks to CEOs and companies that ship jobs overseas,' Obama concluded, 'I will rebuild the middle-class and create millions of new jobs by investing in infrastructure and renewable energy that will reduce our dependence on oil from the Middle East.'

--Reach Joel Wendland at