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The Census Bureau validated what middle-class Americans know all too well from their week to week, month to month struggle to make ends meet. The typical family is back to where it was in 1995. The analysis of annual data collected by the bureau indicates that median income in 2011 had fallen to $50,054, the fourth straight year of decline in well-being, and that's adjusted for inflation.
The advance figure for unemployment claims for the week ending September 8 was 382,000, up from the previous week's revised figure of 367,000. The four-week moving average was 375,000, up 3,250 from the prior week's average of 371,750.
Nobody is entitled to blow a trumpet because the unemployment rate for August can be headlined at 8.1 percent, down two digits from July's 8.3 percent. That's a drop brought about not by more jobs but because 360,000 people left the workforce. It muffles the fact that 5 million people have now been out of work for 27 weeks or more. That's roughly 40 percent of the unemployed. Another 2.6 million people were marginally attached to the labor force, and over eight million people have given up looking for a job, so they are not counted because they had not searched for work in the prior month.
A reality check is offered by the unemployment numbers the government calls U-6. It measures people who have applied for a job in the last six months and also includes people who are involuntary part-time workersgovernment-speak for people whose jobs have been cut back to two or three days a week or who are working part-time because they have been unable to find a full-time job. That number is almost 15 percent. Include the eight million people who have simply given up looking for a job and the real unemployment rate is closer to 18 or 19 percent.
Workers won't feel the labor market is recovering until hiring is occurring at a recovery level pace of at least 300,000 more hires per month than we are seeing now. And when it comes, there will be a cloud to that silver lining. The job openings are mostly low-wage jobs that haven't been exposed to global competition. More than 40 percent of new private sector jobs are in low-paying categories such as leisure and hospitality, bars, and restaurants.
Roughly 15 percent of the population, a record, representing over 46 million Americans, are in the food stamp program, compared to the 7.9 percent participation from 1970 to 2000. And about 400,000 people have been signing up each month over the past four years. In addition, a record 11 million-plus Americans are now collecting federal disability checks. Half of them have come on board since President Barack Obama took office. This is another sign of the Depression-like times that we are in.
The economy is slowing to a growth rate that will be close to zero in the second half of this year, according to a recent AEI report, which also notes that 2012 is the third year of stalled recoveries. No incumbent president has ever won re-election with unemployment rates as high as they are likely to be in November.
No President that had ancestors from Africa had been elected prior to 2008.
