A look at how many jobs Black Friday cost the US economy

Just how bad of an idea was Black Friday for the US government? Well consider that in the middle of one of the worst recessions in US history, and with unemployment over 9%, the Department of Justice single-handedly added 50,000 people to the unemployment rolls -that’ an estimate that I will explain below.

If we take the standard number of 10,000,000 people in the US who play online poker for money and assume that a mere 1% of these players are earning a living by playing online poker -my guess is that in addition to that 1% a further 5-10% of participants win money and theoretically should be paying taxes on those winnings-than that means 100,000 people have lost their job thanks to the actions of the US government on April 15^th. Even cutting that number in half leaves 50,000 people suddenly cut-off from their source of income!

You see, the thing is, the vast majority of winning poker players pay taxes, as do all of the people who work in the poker industry. Basically for every professional poker player there is likely a corresponding person working in the poker industry -either as a writer like myself, an affiliate, or in some other capacity. So in addition to the poker players looking for work, there are also a number of people who have been working in the industry that has sprung up around the online poker sites who have also been left without a job.

So the prohibition of online poker is not only preventing jobs from being created in the US, but it has also ELIMINATED jobs from our economy, an economy that cannot afford to shed any jobs at this point. If you want to really pass a jobs a bill, Congress should make legalizing online poker a top priority; it will create nearly 100,000 jobs virtually overnight!

Fortunately, some politicians at both the State and Federal level have been working on online poker and online gaming bills, but the prospects for any of these bills to become law in the near future is a coin-flip at best.

There are also a number of online poker advocacy groups joining the fight. The Poker Players Alliance (PPA) was for many years the sole voice for online poker players, but now there are several other groups including FairPlay USA, iMEGA, US Digital Gaming, and the California Online Poker Association -with many of these groups having the backing and support of large Brick & Mortar casinos.