There are now 3.4 million fewer private-sector jobs in the U.S. than there were a decade ago

The employment situation in the United States is much worse than even the dismal numbers from last week’s jobless report would indicate . . . private employers added just 71,000 jobs during the month and that the unemployment rate remained flat at 9.5 percent . . . the reason the unemployment rate was not higher was because 181,000 workers left the labor force . . . . Over the past three months . . . 1,155,000 unemployed people dropped out of the active labor force and were not counted as unemployed. Even ignoring population growth, if these unemployed had not dropped out of the labor force, simple arithmetic shows that the official unemployment rate would have risen from 9.9 percent in April to 10.2 percent in July, rather than — as it has — fallen to 9.5 percent. Because of normal growth in the working-age population, the labor force increases by roughly 150,000 to 200,000 people per month. If those folks were factored in . . . unemployment now would be even higher than 10.2 percent.

http://www.nytimes.com/2010/08/10/opinion/10herbert.html?ref=columnists

That's according to liberal New York Times opinion writer Bob Herbert, which means that's the "progressive" Democratic consensus opinion on the issue.

If self styled "progressives" believe that we're short 3.4 million jobs, and that real unemployment continues to get worse, why do they continue to oppose efforts to secure our borders against the continued invasion by millions of illegal immigrants looking for work?