The national unemployment news is grim – 533,000 jobs lost in November, with the September and October numbers revised downward. Over 1.2 million jobs have been lost in the last 3 months.

The California figures are even worse. The US unemployment rate is at 6.7% but we blew past that long ago – 8.2% as of October 31 and likely to be significantly higher after November’s numbers are in.

Those figures don’t paint a picture of the true distress in California. The California Budget Project reported that 2.3 million Californians are underemployed or outright unemployed – many who have jobs are working part-time when they’d rather work full-time, or have begun to give up their job search.

This is exacerbated by the erosion of the safety net:

Government programs in place [during the last major recession, 1981-82] to cushion and counter recessions have been scaled back sharply, raising questions about whether they are up to the task as the economic outlook darkens today.

Unemployment insurance is not as generous now. Yet the unemployment rate is at 6.5 percent and some forecasters say it could top 8 percent next year. It hit 10.8 percent in the early 1980s.

This is also the first severe economic slump since President Bill Clinton overhauled the welfare system and made it tougher to qualify for, and keep receiving, benefits. Many people who lose their jobs now and fall into poverty may not qualify for public assistance. Other programs designed in part to counter hard times – like job training and housing subsidies – have also been cut back.

Here in California the erosion of that safety net has been severe. Unemployment benefits have been cut. Health care subsidies are being cut. Education, which is necessary to provide workers with job retraining and to producing entrepreneurs, creators, and inventors, is being cut. Senior citizens are seeing their drug and even housing benefits cut, which places the burden on their families.

And the Republicans’ demand for massive spending cuts threatens to dramatically increase the ranks of the unemployed in California. If the budget deficit is solved by spending cuts, in whole or even in part, the result is likely to be an outright Depression in California.

Government’s job is to provide counter-cyclical economic stimulus. Spending cuts are what’s known as pro-cyclical – they exacerbate a slide into recession rather than counter it. Spending needs to be increased right now to bolster the safety net and ease the worsening recession.

As the California Budget Project explained, citing leading economists like Joseph Stiglitz, “tax increases on higher income families are the least damaging mechanism for closing state fiscal deficits.”

That kind of framing needs to be placed at the center of the state budget discussion – a discussion that itself is really about the economic future of this state.