Elusive full-time jobs which fell off a cliff in the Great Recession hold back couple from having the children they want

52% had a full time job on average in 2007, just 49% in 2025

 

 ... Clare Zakowski, a 28-year-old who works part time as a manager at a therapy practice, says she would welcome a federal paid family leave program, not that Congress is offering. She has always loved children; as a high schooler in Green Bay, Wis., she babysat and ran the activities for a summer camp. “I love their naïveté and innocence,” she told me. “I just think kids rock.” Ms. Zakowski has been with her boyfriend for over seven years, and children have been part of the discussion since the two first got together. But lately, she has been appalled by the manosphere, and worries about how A.I. will affect society. “The news every day is crazy, and it’s been that way for a while,” she said. “It just feels like we’re living in a really, really weird time.” Beyond paid leave (or universal health insurance, for that matter), she yearns for something deeper: a sense of security, something that she has yet to experience in America in her adult lifetime. “I feel like there’d have to be, I want to say a revolution, but basically big political change, like a moral awakening from everyone,” she said.

She had been looking for a full-time, higher-paying job to set herself up for parenthood, but found the search to be so stressful that she gave up. “I know there can be negatives to not planning ahead,” she told me, but “who even knows what the future holds?” ...

More. 

 

Birth dearth blamed on chaos and uncertainty produced by the Great Recession

 ... In the aftermath of the financial crisis of 2008, however, sometimes referred to as the Great Recession, births in Norway, Denmark, Sweden and Finland declined, and then declined some more, even as their economies recovered throughout the 2010s. Little about those nations’ family policies had changed, and as far as anyone could tell, men were still doing their share of the dishes. The same downward trend held in the United States, where births have fallen by about 23 percent since 2007, despite high rates of immigration until last year. Births have also been declining in East Asian countries, even though governments in the region have thrown buckets of money at the problem. And in France, despite its longstanding pronatalist policies. 

... What unites these disparate cultures, policy environments and demographics, researchers are now realizing, is young people’s inescapable and crushing sense that the future is too uncertain for the lifelong commitment of parenthood. Call it the vibes theory of demographic decline.

... The two generations currently of childbearing age bear the psychological and financial scars of coming of age amid world-scale catastrophes: Older millennials entered the labor market during the Great Recession; many watched their parents lose their jobs or homes. Members of Gen Z, whose lives were upturned by the Covid-19 pandemic, now find themselves competing against A.I. for entry-level jobs and even prospective partners. The man running America seems single-mindedly devoted to chaos at home and abroad. ...

More. 

In 2023 Trump claimed 15 million illegals were in America, then in 2024 he upped it to 16 and 18 million, and then finished the year at 21 million, and now it's 25 million

 For a decade from 2009-2019 illegal aliens in the United States were widely estimated at 11 million.

In April 2026 the foreign born civilian noninstitutional population over the age of 16 is 49.66 million, 6.14 million more than in April 2019 and down 780k from the March 2025 high.

Many millions of illegals will remain after Trump is gone, because he is neither serious nor competent.

 Trump: I Call Open Borders "Stupid Borders"--"25 Million People Came Into Our Country"

CNBC: AI has destroyed 342,000 information services jobs since the advent of ChatGPT in November 2022

... information services lost 13,000, part of a continuing trend that has seen the category down 342,000 jobs since November 2022, coinciding with the rise of artificial intelligence. That has equated to a loss of 11% of jobs during the period. ...

More. 

At 24.13%, foreign born employment as a percent of native born employment is still far higher in April 2026 under Trump II than it ever was under Trump I

 

The 3-year trend for the unemployment level in April 2026 is a rising trend

 

Trump's Dumbass Unemployment Rate climbs to 38.33% in April 2026

 

A new record 105.4 million eating but not working in Donald Trump's April 2026 America

 

48.67% had a full time job in April 2026

 Trump's economic boom isn't.

 

Trump's dumbass, incompetent deportation policy of prolonged ICE detention until they cry uncle and leave voluntarily is the mouse that roared

At this rate Trump will have to be president for 138 years to deport 9.5 million illegal aliens. 

 

80k voluntary departures in fourteen months is a drop in the bucket when there are millions of illegals here, but spending tens of billions of dollars to do it sure isn't.

 

Immigrants are giving up their cases and leaving the U.S. in soaring numbers: People facing the prospect of prolonged ICE detention are increasingly abandoning their claims for humanitarian protection and agreeing to depart voluntarily

 

... Immigration judges issued more than 80,000 “voluntary departure” orders from January 2025 through March of this year, according to court data obtained by the Vera Institute of Justice and shared with The Washington Post. ...