| 2000 - 2009 -- The Lost Decade |
| As The Washington Post reported over the weekend (1/2-3/10), the entire past decade “was the worst for the U.S. economy in modern times.” There was no net job creation — none — between December 1999 and now. None!
Source: "An Uneasy Feeling" By BOB HERBERT - NY Times - January 4, 2010 For average Americans, the last 10 years were a lost decade. At the end of President George W. Bush’s eight years in office, American households had less money and less economic security, and fewer of them were covered by health care than 10 years earlier, the Census Bureau reported in its annual survey. The poverty rate in 2008 rose to 13.2 percent, the highest in 11 years, while median household income fell to $50,303. Ten years earlier, adjusted for inflation, it was $51,295. Of course this reflects the ravages of a horrid recession. But the decline started before the collapse in the housing and financial sectors -- and it was calculated, in the eyes of some. Harvard economist Lawrence Katz called it “a plutocratic boom.” If anything comes close to defining the era, that would be my nomination. President Bush cut $1.3 trillion in taxes — and the biggest beneficiaries by far were the top 1 percent of earners. At the same time, Wall Street was inflated by the helium of a regulation-free economy that eventually gave us Bernie Madoff and banks begging for bailouts. One more detail caught my eye in these new economic reports on the lost decade. People in their prime earning years -- age 45 to 54 -- took the biggest hit in the last years of the Bush Administration, their median income falling by $5,000. And the region that suffered most -- the South. Working people are always the last to get aboard the gravy train, and the first to be used in campaigns that will not advance their cause. And with these demonstrators, and the hucksters trying to distract them from real issues, history repeats itself. Where was the Tea Party movement when the tax burden was shifted from the high end to the middle? Where were the patriots when Wall Street, backed in Congress by Senator Phil Gramm of Texas, rewrote securities laws so that the wonder boys of Lehman and A.I.G. could reduce home mortgages to poker chips at a trillion-dollar table? Where were the angry “stiffs” when the banking industry rolled the last Congress -- majority Democrat, by the way -- into rewriting bankruptcy law, making it easier to keep people in permanent credit card hock? Where were they when President Bush started the bailouts, with $700 billion that had to be paid on a few days’ notice -- with no debate -- to save global capitalism? They were nowhere, because they were clueless Source: "Working Class Zero" by Timothy Egan - NY Times - 09/16/09 U.S. households' net worth [was] $53.1 trillion in the second quarter [of 2009.] [H]ousehold net worth was still well below the $65.3 trillion peak recorded in the third quarter of 2007, which was shortly before the start of the recession in December 2007. Source: "U.S. Household Wealth Up For First Time Since 2007" By REUTERS - NY Times - September 17, 2009 [I]n 2007, ... the inflation-adjusted purchasing power of the minimum wage had fallen to its lowest level since 1955. Though two increases were enacted amid contentious debate, the inflation-adjusted value of the current $7.25 minimum wage is below what it was in 1968. Source: "Why We Fight the Tire War With China" By Marie Cocco - truthdig.com - Sep 16, 2009 Last week, the Census Bureau released a statistical report on the last year of George W. Bush’s presidency. The numbers were brutal. On every indicator, Americans lost ground during the Bush era. The median income slumped. The poverty rate increased. The percentage of Americans without health insurance rose. Source: "The Self-Correcting Presidency" By ROSS DOUTHAT - NY Times - September 20, 2009 The Kaiser study, conducted jointly with the Health Research and Education Trust, an affiliate of the American Hospital Association, found that the average premium for a family [health insurance] policy offered at work rose above $13,300 in 2009 — up from $5,800 in 1999. The average employer paid more than $9,800 of that, while the workers contributed more than $3,500. The workers were also hit with larger co-payments and deductibles, while their policies often offered fewer benefits. Source: "The Numbers and Health Care Reform" - NY Times - September 22, 2009 During the last recession, in 2001, the number of jobless people reached little more than double the number of full-time job openings, according to the Labor Department data. By the beginning of this year [2009], job seekers outnumbered jobs four-to-one, with the ratio growing ever more lopsided in recent months. Job seekers now outnumber openings six to one, the worst ratio since the government began tracking open positions in 2000. According to the Labor Department’s latest numbers, from July [2009], only 2.4 million full-time permanent jobs were open, with 14.5 million people officially unemployed. Source: "U.S. Job Seekers Exceed Openings by Record Ratio" By PETER S. GOODMAN - NY Times - September 26, 2009 September [2009] was the 21st straight month of job loss — the longest unbroken stretch of losses since record-keeping began in 1939 — bringing to 7.2 million the number of positions that have been axed since December 2007. And that understates the damage. During the recession, the economy has failed to create another 2.7 million jobs that were needed simply to employ new workers — like high school and college graduates, immigrants and stay-at-home parents who want to go back to work. In September [2009], the employment rate for all workers -- defined as the share of the population with a job -- fell to 58.8 percent, its lowest level in more than 25 years. For adult men, who have been particularly hard hit by job loss in this recession, the employment rate fell to 67 percent, its lowest level since the government began keeping track in 1948. Before this recession, that rate had never dropped below 70.5 percent. Of the 15.1 million people who are now officially counted as unemployed, over a third have been out of work for 27 weeks or longer, the highest percentage of long-term unemployment on record. Source: "Wanted: Leadership on Jobs" - NY Times - October 3, 2009 According to an analysis of government data by the Economic Policy Institute, the unemployment rate for college graduates under 27 so far this year averaged 7.1 percent, nearly double what it was in 2007 and the highest yearly average in the 30 years this data point has been tracked. Source: "Jobs Wanted, Any Jobs at All " By N. R. KLEINFIELD - NY Times - October 9, 2009 Nationally during that period, according to the Center for Labor Market Studies at Northeastern University in Boston, “the employment rate of males 16-19, 20-24, and 25-29 were at their lowest values over the past 61 years for which national employment data are available.” That’s for men of all ethnic groups. Source: "Igniting the Growth of Jobs" By BOB HERBERT - NY Times - October 9, 2009 |
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