Protester holds sign during an Occupy Wall Street rally in New York's Washington Square in early October (Photo: Reuters)
"People are really angry, and I get it. If I were unemployed now, I'd be really angry too," said Michael Neal, a vice chairman of the largest US conglomerate, who runs its GE Capital unit.
"I am sympathetic to it," he said on Thursday. "Look, I've got a 21- and 19-year-old son, they might march with them. There are a lot of unhappy people right now, and there's not a lot going on that gives you much reason to be inspired."
Unemployment in the United States has hovered at or near 9 per cent for more than two years, and many US companies that slashed large numbers of jobs during the recession have been unwilling to hire in large numbers because of weak demand for their products and services.
"I don't know what you could do differently," Neal said. "You've got to run your business, right? I don't know that you go just start hiring people that you wouldn't do in the ordinary course. I'm not paid to do that."
The protests, which started with the "Occupy Wall Street" movement in New York, have spawned groups in Boston, Philadelphia, Houston and Washington D.C. Much of their ire is directed at banks, which received significant federal support during the recession.
"I'm glad I'm not in lower Manhattan," Neal said.
Worries about the US and European economies made big and mid-sized companies unlikely to take on large numbers of new workers in the near future, he said.
"I think people are in the process of dialing back 2012 expectations and that will bleed into whatever they were planning," Neal said. "It's one of the reasons unemployment is high, it's because people aren't bringing people back. People don't feel good about the planet right now, whether it was the debt ceiling or Greece, pick your poison."
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