It's about as hard for a 20-something worker to find a job today as it was in 1986. The economy is growing at a slightly slower pace, but not by much. And yet young workers today are significantly more pessimistic about the possibility of success in America than their counterparts were in 1986, according to a new Fusion 2016 Issues poll reported in conjunction with the Washington Post — a shift that appears to reflect lingering damage from the Great Recession and more than a decade of wage stagnation for typical workers.

That rise in pessimism among millennials is concentrated among white people. It is most pronounced among whites who did not earn a college degree.

The Fusion poll replicated the questions from a Roper/Wall Street Journal poll of young Americans that was conducted in 1986... Both polls posed a series of questions about the American Dream: what it meant to individuals, whether it actually existed and, if it did, how hard it was to attain.

In the three decades between the surveys, pollsters found, share of young Americans overall who said the American Dream "is not really alive" grew sharply from 12 to 29 percent. Among white people, it nearly tripled from 10 percent to 29 percent. One in three white non-college graduates now say it is not alive, compared to one-fifth of white college graduates; the increase from 1986 was larger for non-graduates than for graduates.

The poll found no statistically significant change among young Americans of color over the decades. In 1986, they were about twice as likely as whites to say the American Dream does not exist. Now, the groups are about equally pessimistic.

But among the respondents who said the American Dream does mean something to them personally, whites were far more likely to say the dream has become harder to achieve compared to a generation ago. Just over 6 in 10 white college graduates said the dream had become harder to achieve, and 7 in 10 non-college graduates said the same, while 53 percent of non-white respondents said so.

According to John Williams of Shadow Stats, if we were to calculate unemployment using the same metrics as we did during the 1930's, or even the 1980's, we'd already be in Great Depression territory. Williams, who utilizes a reporting methodology that accounts for "long-term discouraged workers who were defined out of official existence in 1994," notes that the real unemployment rate is rapidly approaching 25%.

Now compare the above chart to similar measurements from the 1930's and you'll see just how bad things really are:

(via Casey Research)

It's so bad, in fact, that we have seen sustained unemployment exceeding that of the Great Depression for almost the entirety of Barack Obama's Presidency.

But how can it be possible to have a full-fledged recovery and record stock prices when nearly one-third of the adult population is not working?

If the government is to be believed, it's because our economy continues to grow at a pace of about 2%.

But once again, if we calculate the real growth rate and adjust for inflation, we see exactly why jobs are non-existent and getting worse every month.

The following chart made available by Williams shows that despite a positive "official" GDP growth rate being disseminated to the public, the reality is exactly the opposite. The U.S. economy is by all accounts shrinking and has been doing so for the better part of a decade:

We've already witnessed numerous shocks to the global economy over recent weeks and the prospects of any sort of stability just went out the window.

There is no recovery. There are no jobs. There is no growth.

The United States, regardless of what is being said by mainstream financial pundits or believed by their TV-watching myrmidons, is now (and has been for quite some time) in a recession.

What's worse is that most have no clue of how bad things really are or that they are witnessing America's Second Great Depression.

• Al-Qaeda gets an Oscar!
• White Helmets denied entry into US again, Hollywood dreams over

A handy list from The Duran:

• The proposal to award an Oscar to the netflix documentary on the White Helmets is as grotesque as the proposal to award the Jihadi connected group the Nobel Peace Prize.
• George Clooney pushes ahead with his feature film glorifying Al Qaeda-ISIS terrorist group The White Helmets.
• A bizarre video purportedly shows the Al-Qaeda linked White Helmets doing a mannequin challenge during a rescue effort.
• The attempts to defend the image of the "White Helmets" in the Syrian conflict becomes ever more farfetched as the truth about them becomes ever more widely known.
• The 'White Helmets' are not the impartial relief organisation Right Livelihood and alternative media sites like CodePink take them to be. Rather they are instruments in the information war which is being waged against the Syrian government.
• Assad interview, Syrian President debunks "barrel bombs" and "boy in Aleppo" White Helmet hoax.
• Netflix and Al-Qaeda working together to promote The White Helmets as hero group.
• "Boy in Aleppo" photographer is exposed as an ISIS sympathizer.

The Syrian cinematographer could not attend the ceremony because, despite having a visa, he was barred for entering the U.S. Whaddyaknow, the U.S. did something right! U.S. officials had reportedly discovered "derogatory information" about Khaled Khatib. The film's producer told AP that the decision was "sad and confusing". Ha! Yep, so confusing that an al-Qaeda operative was denied entry to the U.S.

• A comprehensive review of the many health benefits of smoking Tobacco
• The epidemic of junk science in tobacco smoking research
• Lies, Damned Lies & 400,000 Smoking-related Deaths: Cooking the Data in the Fascists' Anti-Smoking Crusade