Census: No Sign of Economic Rebound for many

English: US Census map of poverty across US (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

Depending on education, race, income and even marriage, not all segments of the population are seeing an economic turnaround.

Poverty is on the rise in single-mother families. More people are falling into the lowest-income group. And after earlier signs of increased mobility, fewer people are moving as homeownership declined for a fifth straight year.

"We're in a selective recovery," said William H. Frey, a Brookings Institution demographer who analyzed the numbers.

Nearly 2.2 million children were poor in California last year, the most of any state, but the child poverty rate was highest in Mississippi, where more than 1 in 3 children was poor. Nationwide, child poverty stood at 21.8 percent, unchanged from the previous year.

"Stubbornly high child poverty rates in the wake of the Great Recession suggest we have not yet turned the corner three years after its official end," said Marybeth Mattingly, director of research on vulnerable families at the University of New Hampshire's Carsey Institute.

The numbers also reflect widening economic inequality, an issue President Barack Obama has pledged would be a top priority of his administration to address. Upward mobility in the U.S. has been hurt by a tight job market and the longer-term disappearance of midskill jobs due to globalization and automation.

The new census data shows that lower-income households are a steadily increasing share of the population, while middle- to higher-income groups shrank or were flat. Read more >>

U.S. workers have endured "a decade of flat wages," study says

More than 1,500 people stood in line at the carpenters union in New York City just for a chance to land an apprenticeship. Some of the applicants were in line a week for jobs that start at $45 an hour.

"You're not going to be a doctor or a scientist; you can't beat this blue-collar job," said one job-seeker named James. "You know, this is a great job, and that's why there's lots and lots of people here because, you know, they just don't hand out jobs like this every day."

A majority of U.S. workers have experienced a decade of flat wages, according to new research by the left-leaning Economic Policy Institute. It found the median weekly wage last year was $768. That's the same as 12 years earlier when adjusted for inflation. Over that same period, wages fell for 70 percent of workers.

Economists place much of the blame on a labor market that hasn't recovered from the Great Recession. "I've had friends that went to four years of college, did four years of college, and graduated and waited years to even get a job," Craig Carr said. Read more >>

America's second-largest employer is a temp agency

Behind Wal-Mart, the second-largest employer in America is Kelly Services, a temporary work provider.

Friday's disappointing jobs report showed that part-time jobs are at an all-time high, with 28 million Americans now working part-time. The report also showed another disturbing fact: There are now a record number of Americans with temporary jobs.

Approximately 2.7 million, in fact. And the trend has been growing.

In the first quarter of 2013, U.S. staffing companies employed an average of 2.86 million temporary and contract workers, or 2 percent of all non-farm employment in the United States, according to the American Staffing Association. This represents a 2.9 percent growth from the same period in 2012. For just the month of June, there was a 6.7 percent growth in the number of staffing jobs than last year.

Temp jobs made up about 10 percent of the jobs lost during the Great Recession, and because of high turnover (the average length of temp employment is 3 months before a worker moves on to a permanent job), one in 10 non-farm workers were employed by a US staffing firm at some point during the past year, according to ASA. In fact, nearly one-fifth of all jobs gained since the recession ended have been temporary. Read more >>

Why America's middle class is losing ground

When Debbie Bruister buys a gallon of milk at her local Kroger supermarket, she pays $3.69, up 70 cents from what she paid last year.

Getting to the store costs more, too. Gas in Corinth, Miss., her hometown, costs $3.51 a gallon now, compared to less than three bucks in 2012. That really hurts, considering her husband's 112-mile daily round-trip commute to his job as a pharmacist.

Bruister, a mother of four, received a $1,160 raise this school year at her job as an eighth-grade computer teacher. The extra cash -- about $97 a month, before taxes and other deductions -- isn't enough for her and her husband to keep up with their rising costs, especially after the elimination of the payroll tax break. Its loss shrunk their paychecks by more than $270 a month.

"If you look at how much prices are going up, you get in the hole really quick," Bruister said. "It's a constant squeeze."

In the wake of the Great Recession, millions of middle-class people are being pinched by stagnating incomes and the increased cost of living. America's median household income has dropped by more than $4,000 since 2000, after adjusting for inflation, and the typical trappings of middle-class life are slipping out of financial reach for many families. Read more >>

Women face host of obstacles to retirement

Financial experts and studies say that the gender pay gap is not disappearing -- women continue to earn less than men and are less likely to save for retirement. In addition, the Great Recession has forced many women back into the job market at a time they thought they would be enjoying retirement.

"Many older women are frightened," says Heidi Hartmann, president of the Institute for Women's Policy Research. "They just never thought that they could be in their 50s or early 60s and not have a job. They have seen their savings, their home value and their retirement all decline because they've had to use it to live. And they don't know how to rebuild it." Read more >>

U.S. bank failures through 2015 will drain $19 billion from FDIC

Image via WikipediaU.S. bank failures through 2015 will drain $19 billion from the Federal Deposit Insurance Corp. fund for covering losses from shutdowns, the agency said in an update of its reserve ratio projections.

The $19 billion figure reported by the FDIC today is a decrease from the estimated $23 billion needed to cover bank failures in 2010, reflecting both the slowing rate of bank shutdowns and the impact of assessment increases imposed by the FDIC to bolster the Deposit Insurance Fund.

The fund, pushed into deficit by the wave of failures stemming from the 2008 credit crisis, turned positive as of June 30 after seven consecutive quarters of negative balances.

“The assessment that the insurance fund remains on the path to recovery and on track to meet the goals established by Congress is welcome news,” FDIC Acting Chairman Martin J. Gruenberg said in a statement. “As we seek to stay on track, it’s important to always be mindful of the challenges we face and ongoing risks to the insurance fund.”

Under current projections, FDIC assessment rates will boost the insurance fund to 1.15 percent of insured deposits in 2018, according to the agency’s statement. The regulator is required by the Dodd-Frank Act to increase the ratio to 1.35 percent by Sept. 30, 2020.

Today’s report shows that the FDIC may have gone farther than it needed to in increasing assessments, according to James Chessen, chief economist for the American Bankers Association. More...

Another reason not to hire - rising unemployment taxes

Companies have yet another reason not to boost hiring: rising unemployment taxes.

Employers around the nation are getting socked with higher state unemployment tax bills as states are forced to shell out more than $1 billion in interest payments this month. More than 30 states have had to borrow billions from a federal fund to cover unemployment benefits for their jobless residents in recent years.

And this is only the first of two tax spikes employers are contending with, on both the state and federal level. Come January, companies in 24 states could have to shell out between $21 and $63 more per employee in federal unemployment taxes.

These hikes are the latest in a series of unemployment tax increases as states look to replenish their unemployment trust funds devastated by the Great Recession.

Last year, employers paid 27.8% more in state jobless taxes, said Doug Holmes, president, UWC Strategic Services on Unemployment & Workers' Compensation, a business trade association.

"Unemployment taxes, which were a relatively low bottom-line cost in 2008, are now becoming a significant cost," Holmes said. "It discourages companies from electing to hire new employees." More...

Manufacturing employs less than 9 percent of the US workforce

Reuters
For more than two decades, Jon Clark has been buying and selling machinery, primarily generators, from defunct American manufacturing plants.

When a manufacturing plant dies, for a while it becomes a hive of activity as a "multibillion dollar industry" strips it of equipment to be "rebuilt, recycle and reused elsewhere."

Based in Texas, the 63-year-old originally hails from Liberal, Kansas ("I'm the most conservative thing ever to come out of Liberal") and says after years of seeing a consistent number of plants shutting down, he was urged in 2003 to open a bimonthly publication that would document those closures in the United States and Canada.

"We figured we could have maybe anywhere up to 25 plant closings around the country per issue," Clark said. "It turns out we grossly underestimated the scale of the closures."

Since then Plant Closing News (PCN), as the publication was named, has regularly featured 75 or more plant closings per issue, or 150 per month. Clark said PCN has seen around 10,000 plant closings since 2003, which is "probably not even half the real total."

The machinery that comes out of those plants often ends up being shipped to developing countries, representing a gradual hollowing out of America's manufacturing capacity.

"The only thing that doesn't get recycled or reused is the people," Clark said. "What do you do with someone who is 50 years old who has been doing the same thing for 30 years? We treat people now like disposable resources and just like that we throw them away."

"All of a sudden we decided that it was more economically viable to shut all these plants down," he added. "I'm sorry, but I think we've taken this too far."

"The golden rule used to be do unto others as you would have them do unto you," said the born-again Christian. "Now the rule is he who has the gold, makes the rules."

THE AFTERMATH

In downtown Saginaw, a few miles from the fading sign in the Texan Restaurant's parking lot there is a handful of architecturally impressive but mostly dead high-rise buildings, a reminder of the high tide of manufacturing-based prosperity that crested here in the 1960s and has receded ever since.

Spray-painted on one building are the words "All gone to look for America," a riff on Paul Simon's song "America": "Michigan seems like a dream to me now, it took me four days to hitchhike from Saginaw, I've gone to look for America."

The Great Recession took a chunk out of America that is unlikely to come back.

Manufacturing generates just over a tenth of America's economic output and employs less than 9 percent of the workforce. Yet it accounted for more than 26 percent of the 8.4 million layoffs in the downturn, according to the U.S. Department of Labor.

There are pockets of strength in the sector, including construction and mining equipment makers like Caterpillar Inc or the world's largest farm equipment maker Deere & Co.

But executives in those areas have been candid about the fact that fresh improvements in productivity during the downturn mean many of the 2.2 million manufacturing workers who lost their jobs will not be rehired. And much of the hiring they plan to do will be overseas to serve developing markets. More...

Time Lapse Video Of U.S. Unemployment Rates

Updated 03.27.10, The Decline: The Geography of a Recession by LaToya Egwuekwe (OFFICIAL)

How a New Jobless Era Will Transform America

Don Peck
The Great Recession may be over, but this era of high joblessness is probably just beginning. Before it ends, it will likely change the life course and character of a generation of young adults. It will leave an indelible imprint on many blue-collar men. It could cripple marriage as an institution in many communities. It may already be plunging many inner cities into a despair not seen for decades. Ultimately, it is likely to warp our politics, our culture, and the character of our society for years to come.

Late last year, the average duration of unemployment surpassed six months, the first time that has happened since 1948, when the Bureau of Labor Statistics began tracking that number. As of this writing, for every open job in the U.S., six people are actively looking for work.

All of these figures understate the magnitude of the jobs crisis. The broadest measure of unemployment and underemployment (which includes people who want to work but have stopped actively searching for a job, along with those who want full-time jobs but can find only part-time work) reached 17.4 percent in October, which appears to be the highest figure since the 1930s. And for large swaths of society—young adults, men, minorities—that figure was much higher (among teenagers, for instance, even the narrowest measure of unemployment stood at roughly 27 percent). One recent survey showed that 44 percent of families had experienced a job loss, a reduction in hours, or a pay cut in the past year.

There is unemployment, a brief and relatively routine transitional state that results from the rise and fall of companies in any economy, and there is unemployment—chronic, all-consuming. The former is a necessary lubricant in any engine of economic growth. The latter is a pestilence that slowly eats away at people, families, and, if it spreads widely enough, the fabric of society. Indeed, history suggests that it is perhaps society’s most noxious ill.

The worst effects of pervasive joblessness—on family, politics, society—take time to incubate, and they show themselves only slowly. But ultimately, they leave deep marks that endure long after boom times have returned. Some of these marks are just now becoming visible, and even if the economy magically and fully recovers tomorrow, new ones will continue to appear. The longer our economic slump lasts, the deeper they’ll be.

If it persists much longer, this era of high joblessness will likely change the life course and character of a generation of young adults—and quite possibly those of the children behind them as well. It will leave an indelible imprint on many blue-collar white men—and on white culture. It could change the nature of modern marriage, and also cripple marriage as an institution in many communities. It may already be plunging many inner cities into a kind of despair and dysfunction not seen for decades. Ultimately, it is likely to warp our politics, our culture, and the character of our society for years. More...

ABC, NBC and CBS spent nearly a year promoting "Obama's stimulus cavalry"

President Barack Obama's $787 billion stimulus plan was the most expensive bill in history. Still, it received strong media support - blazing the way for the controversial bill to pass. Network journalists didn't just back the bill during that debate. Once it had passed, ABC, NBC and CBS spent nearly a year promoting "President Obama's stimulus cavalry," as NBC's Lisa Myers put it.

That much money was supposed to enter the economy through many different channels. Typically, where stimulus dollars went, journalists followed. They roamed the nation looking for proof the stimulus was succeeding, and sometimes proof it wasn't.

The Business & Media Institute analyzed 172 stories about the stimulus from Feb. 17, 2009, when the bill was signed, to Jan. 31, 2010. In those stories, the three evening news shows turned to proponents nearly three times as often as opponents of the plan (269 to just 111). Reporters called the Obama program or its many offshoots "good news," or turned to others whose positive views on the stimulus went further, with one calling the program a "lifesaver."

"It's the government that`s going to have to pull us out of this recession," Anthony Mason of CBS "Evening News" said on March 6. That was a consistent theme for the journalists involved. With the economy beaten down by the Great Recession, Americans needed Obama and the government to fix things and boost employment.

Anchor Katie Couric added to that theme when she introduced the story. "In a moment, we'll be telling you about all the jobs the stimulus plan is creating, but first why those jobs are so desperately needed."

That pro-stimulus approach impacted the reporting. All three broadcast networks promoted the stimulus prior to the vote. The same news media that backed Barack Obama during the election then turned to his "bold" push for a stimulus plan. Two broadcast networks - ABC and NBC - showed particularly strong support for the president by relying on pro-stimulus voices by a more-than 2-to-1 ratio (139 to 56). As reporter Scott Cohn told the NBC "Nightly News" audience about a struggling Indiana community. "Economic stimulus isn't just a political debate around here. It could be a matter of survival."

In the year following the passage of the stimulus package, network journalists embraced both the spending and the programs that went along with it. Story after story detailed how a few hundred thousand dollars or a few million dollars would aid essential programs and, in Obama's words, "save or create" millions of jobs.

That was what viewers of ABC's "World News with Charles Gibson," CBS "Evening News" and NBC "Nightly News" heard for almost a year. Those three favored pro-stimulus speakers 71 percent to 29 percent (269 to just 111).

NBC was the worst of the three networks. It relied on stimulus supporters in its stories by more than a factor of 3-to-1 (110 supporters to just 31 critics). At the same time, NBC only included any sort of criticism of the $787 billion plan in 43 percent of its stories.

While CBS included some criticism of the stimulus in three fourths of its stories (30 out of 40), the network still found several ways to boost the president. During an April 29 broadcast, Anthony Mason described Obama in laudatory terms. "As he's tried to lead the country through the crisis, President Obama has offered both caution and hope."

Another CBS story celebrated how D.C. had turned into a new financial capital. Mason told viewers about "matchmaking sessions to link them with government agencies giving out stimulus money." He even quoted Washington power broker and "King of K Street" Thomas Hale Boggs Jr. who seemed thrilled that the "total pie is way over $2 trillion" to grab for clients. As Mason added, "Government officials like these at the Transportation Department can't give it out fast enough."

That report included only mild criticism of the feeding frenzy.

ABC's coverage of the stimulus also ignored critics more than half the time, but lacked CBS's blatantly positive comments about the plan or the president who promoted it.

Even when reporters showed some of the obvious flaws of the stimulus program, they still depicted it as "working." NBC's Lisa Myers pointed out one of the marketing angles of the Obama bill including signs crediting new work to the government. "At this road project in Maryland a sign tells all who pass by that the money for repaving came from the stimulus package." She went on to say that the Obama administration has urged states to put up such signs, even though they "can cost as much as $1,200."

But Myers then followed with a more typical report including three people, two supporting the program and just one opposed.

The pro-stimulus position of the three networks was almost identical to the one taken leading up to the passage of the bill. Then both ABC and NBC showed particularly strong support for the president by relying on pro-stimulus voices by a more-than 2-to-1 ratio (139 to 56). That 71 percent total was the same percentage of pro-stimulus voices these two networks used throughout the year (183 positive to just 74 critics). More...