The forgotten many: America's unemployed

Newspapers in Oregon have been trumpeting that unemployment in the state is now down to 9.6%
But, other than to spin any such positive story, the media has gone dead:

Major U.S. newspapers have increasingly shifted their attention away from coverage of unemployment in recent months while greatly intensifying their focus on the deficit, a National Journal analysis shows.

The analysis -- based on a measure of how often the words "unemployment" and "deficit" appear in major publications -- portrays a dramatically shifting landscape of coverage over the past two years, as the debate over how to fix the federal deficit has risen to prominence and the question of how to handle still-high unemployment has faded from the media's consciousness. ...

Mentions of unemployment have been dwindling since they spiked to 154 in the month ending August 15, 2010; over the month ending Sunday, there were 63. ...

That major newspapers and other media outlets have covered the deficit with greater intensity in recent months should come as no surprise given the focus of the politicians and policymakers they cover. The declining mentions of unemployment are perhaps more surprising, as the issue remains salient for millions of Americans.

The 9.6 percent in Oregon or the nationwide 9% is an under-count in many ways.  When looking at the entire labor force, unemployment is at 16.5 percent.

Of course, there is an entirely separate discussion to be had on what happens to the labor-age population that has been incarcerated?  "The overall unemployment rate among men would be about 8 percent higher if those in prison were out and experiencing the same labor market as others of their race and age. By expanding our prison population, we have reduced the unemployment numbers."

It is not only the journalistic media that has forgotten the unemployed--the literary and entertainment media, too, has apparently shut itself off:

Hollywood and the publishing industry have learned just one historical lesson from the Depression: people want entertainment in tough times.
The Grapes of Wrath, the films of King Vidor, even socially conscious gangster films from Warner Brothers were only a fraction of Hollywood's output then. The Depression was also the era of Fred and Ginger, Nick and Nora, screwball comedy and Busby Berkeley.
That hasn't changed. Writers, film-makers, game designers all want to eat - and that's the market they have to create for.
A line of poetry by T S Eliot composed at the same time Steinbeck was writing Grapes of Wrath, and Agee and Walker were having their report spiked, says it best. "Humankind / cannot bear too much reality."
But humankind has to live in the real world with other human beings. And if writers and artists won't put a human face on the jobless numbers, who will?