Hard Times

Our measure of how bad is it in this economy for a broad swath of Americans can be analyzed by asking three basic questions: Are people working, are they making any money, and do they have any money in reserves? To answer these questions and more, below are some shocking facts!

First, are people actually employed? The glum employment situation continues to unravel and on the summer jobs front, 16 – 19 year olds are facing the worst environment since 1954, before their parents were even born. In 2007, 51 percent of graduating college students had jobs lined up before graduation. This year, less than 20 percent had jobs. Because they can’t find work, the youth of America are staying at home with their parents (maybe forever) and parents can be categorized as “payrents”.

The number of unemployed workers reported in the “headline” unemployment rate of 9.5 percent is now 15 million, but only seven million are eligible and collecting unemployment insurance benefits. Each week, when initial unemployment claims of over 600,000 are announced, it’s a virtual certainty that a million people have actually lost their jobs, considering 400,000 workers are out of the work force and not eligible to file. When a million jobs a week are lost, there is no way our current economy can replace them!

In America, only about 60 percent of workers are eligible to file for unemployment benefits. The rest are part-time, contract workers, and those that worked only a short time and don’t qualify to receive benefits.

An alternative measure of unemployment reported by the Bureau of Labor Statistics (“BLS”) shows a 16.5 percent unemployment rate. This measure, called the U-6, includes workers who would like a job but have stopped looking, and part-timers who want full-time work (there are approximately nine million part-timers seeking full-time employment). Unemployment and underemployment are massive.

Second, is anyone making any money? With 28 million people working part-time and 10 million self-employed (this includes dog walkers, yoga instructors and independent contractors, such as real estate sales agents), 38 million Americans in the work force are working but not making that much. Many firms and state and local governments have also begun to cut payroll hours and eliminate overtime altogether. The weekly hours worked were at their lowest level ever recorded in the BLS survey – if you don’t work, you don’t get paid! But the survey is very likely still overestimating personal income (hourly wages are multiplied by hours worked to give a good indication of income), so another way to measure income is to examine tax collections. If you are working part-time or are self-employed you’re counted as working in the survey, but if you’re not paying taxes, it’s because you didn’t make any money! State income tax receipts from January 2008 – April 2009 were down 26 percent from the year before, and money wired back to homes in Mexico from America is down 20 percent.

Read more….