Economic Indicators
Compiled by theProgressive Review
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2008 MAPS OF STARBUCKS & WALMARTS PER CAPITA IN U.S. DISTRICT CHRONICLES - Over 25 million households
in America do not have bank accounts, according to a study conducted
by the South Carolina Council on Economic Education, based in
Columbia, S.C. . . . 80 percent of those households are Blacks
(46 percent) and Hispanics (34 percent). 2007 THE SOUTH IS THE OTHER AMERICA FACING SOUTH - According to new figures released by the U.S. Census Bureau, our country still has a poverty problem: over 38 million U.S. Americans live below the poverty line, 13.3% of the population. What's striking is how completely the South dominates the list of states ravaged by poverty. Despite all those banks in Charlotte and all that Coke in Atlanta, eleven of the 15 states with the highest poverty rates are in the South: State & percent living in poverty: 1 - Mississippi, 21% 2 - Louisiana, 20.2% 3 - New Mexico, 18.4% 4 - District of Columbia, 18.3% 5 - West Virginia, 18% 6 - Texas, 17.5% 7 - Arkansas, 17.2% 8 - Alabama, 16.9% 8 - Kentucky, 16.9% 10 - Oklahoma, 16.4% 11 - Tennessee, 15.6% 11 - South Carolina, 15.6% 13 - North Carolina, 14.9% 14 - Montana, 14.6% 15 - Georgia, 14.5% Or another way to look at it: every Southern state except Florida and Virginia fall in the bottom 15. Some say the South is losing its regional distinctiveness in today's homogenized world. But the above statistics may point to another conclusion: the South still has defining features, and one of the big ones is poverty. http://southernstudies.org/facingsouth/2008/01/is-south-other-america.asp “There is one job we can’t afford on-the-job training for – that’s the job of our next president. That could be the costliest job training in history. Every day that’s spent learning the ropes is another day of rising costs, mounting deficits, and growing anxiety for our families. And they cannot afford to keep waiting. We need a president who understands the magnitude and complexity of the challenges we face – and has the strength and experience to address them from day one" - Hillary Clinton on the economy, November 2007 Leaving aside the still unanswered question of just which department of the government HRC ran during the Clinton administration uannounced to any of us, even if she was in charge of the economy, things didn't go anywhere near as well as the mythology has led us to believe. Here is a chart comparing the NASDAQ collapse at the end of the Clinton administration compared to the Dow during the 1929 crash. It was one of the bigger secrets the media kept from us. But then much of it occured in an election year.   By the time of the campaign, economic growth was in the third quarter of a downward trend that had actually peaked in the last quarter of 1999. When the GDP growth figures are combined with the similarly downplayed long-term stock market trendlines, it becomes clear that the "Clinton boom" was wearing out its welcome a year or more before the election.  .INDICATORS: ROBBER BARONS STILL DOING WELL CNN - The average CEO of a large U.S. company made roughly $10.8 million last year, or 364 times that of U.S. full-time and part-time workers, who made an average of $29,544, according to a joint analysis by the liberal Institute for Policy Studies and United for a Fair Economy. That gap is down from 411 times in 2005 and well-below the record high of 525 times recorded in 2000. But the comparison isn't exactly apples-to-apples, in part because IPS and UFE changed how they measured CEO options pay this year. . . The IPS/UFE report also compared U.S. CEO pay to that of leaders in other fields and other countries. The top 20 CEOs of U.S. companies made an average of $36.4 million in 2006. That's 204 times that of the 20 highest paid U.S. military generals, and 38 times that of the 20 highest-paid non-profit leaders. They also made three times more than the top 20 CEOs of European companies who had booked higher sales numbers than their U.S. counterparts. The pay gap numbers don't include the value of the many perks CEOs receive, which averaged $438,342, according to the report. Nor do they include the pension benefits CEOs receive. Senate tax-writers take on fund pay But even including all that, CEO pay can look like chump change next to private equity and hedge fund managers' pay. Those managers made an average of $657.5 million in 2006 - more than 16,000 times what the average full-time worker makes, and roughly 61 times that of the average CEO. PROGRESS REPORT - There are more Americans living in poverty today than there are total people living in the state of California, the most populous state in the nation. The number of poor Americans has grown by five million in the past six years, while inequality has reached historically high levels. In 2005, the richest one percent of Americans had the largest share of the nation's income -- 19 percent -- since 1929, while the poorest 20 percent of Americans had only 3.4 percent of the nation's income. Though the number of Americans in deep poverty has climbed slowly but steadily in the past three decades, a study by the American Journal of Preventative Medicine found that since 2000, "the number of severely poor has grown 'more than any other segment of the population.'" In 2005, 16 million people -- 5.4 percent of all Americans -- had incomes below half the poverty line. The number of Americans living in such extreme poverty grew by over three million between 2000 and 2005, and the share of poor people living in extreme poverty is now greater than at any point in the last 32 years. Without urgent action, these numbers are on course to continue growing. The federal minimum wage has remained static for nearly a decade. At $5.15 an hour, it is at its lowest level in real terms since 1956. The federal minimum wage was once 50 percent of the average wage, but is now only 30 percent of that wage. If Congress were to restore the minimum wage to 50 percent of the average wage -- about $8.40 an hour in 2006 -- it would help over 4.5 million poor workers and nearly nine million other low-income workers. . US INCOME GAP GREATEST SINCE 1928 DAVID CAY JOHNSTON, COMMON DREAMS - Income inequality grew significantly in 2005, with the top 1 percent of Americans - those with incomes that year of more than $348,000 - receiving their largest share of national income since 1928, analysis of newly released tax data shows.The top 10 percent, roughly those earning more than $100,000, also reached a level of income share not seen since before the Depression. While total reported income in the United States increased almost 9 percent in 2005, the most recent year for which such data is available, average incomes for those in the bottom 90 percent dipped slightly compared with the year before, dropping $172, or 0.6 percent. The gains went largely to the top 1 percent, whose incomes rose to an average of more than $1.1 million each, an increase of more than $139,000, or about 14 percent. The new data also shows that the top 300,000 Americans collectively enjoyed almost as much income as the bottom 150 million Americans. Per person, the top group received 440 times as much as the average person in the bottom half earned, nearly doubling the gap from 1980. http://www.commondreams.org/archive/2007/03/29/163/ HOMELESSNESS BILL BRUBAKER, WASHINGTON POST - An estimated 754,000 people -- most of them minorities -- are homeless on any given night in the United States, according to a government survey presented to Congress . . . The report made it clear there are not enough shelters and transitional houses to accommodate all of the homeless people in the nation. In early 2005, there were 438,300 beds in shelters and transitional houses, the report said. However, HUD said there are an additional 209,000 beds in permanent houses for formerly homeless people. . . HUD officials said gathering data on homeless
people is important because it helps identify ways to help them.
. . About 65 percent of these people were men, and 19 percent
were military veterans. Fifty-nine percent of those surveyed
were racial minorities; 45 percent were black. A third of the
people who sought shelter during that three-month period had
families with children, and a quarter had a disabilities. PERCENTAGE OF POOR AMERICANS IN SEVERE POVERTY REACHES 32 YEAR HIGH TONY PUGH, MCCLATCHY - The percentage of poor Americans who are living in severe poverty has reached a 32-year high, millions of working Americans are falling closer to the poverty line and the gulf between the nation's "haves" and "have-nots" continues to widen. A McClatchy Newspapers analysis of 2005 census figures, the latest available, found that nearly 16 million Americans are living in deep or severe poverty. A family of four with two children and an annual income of less than $9,903 - half the federal poverty line - was considered severely poor in 2005. So were individuals who made less than $5,080 a year. The McClatchy analysis found that the number of severely poor Americans grew by 26 percent from 2000 to 2005. That's 56 percent faster than the overall poverty population grew in the same period. McClatchy's review also found statistically significant increases in the percentage of the population in severe poverty in 65 of 215 large U.S. counties, and similar increases in 28 states. The review also suggested that the rise in severely poor residents isn't confined to large urban counties but extends to suburban and rural areas. . . Nearly two out of three people (10.3 million) in severe poverty are white, but blacks (4.3 million) and Hispanics of any race (3.7 million) make up disproportionate shares. Blacks are nearly three times as likely as non-Hispanic whites to be in deep poverty, while Hispanics are roughly twice as likely. Washington, D.C., the nation's capital, has a higher concentration of severely poor people - 10.8 percent in 2005 - than any of the 50 states, topping even hurricane-ravaged Mississippi and Louisiana, with 9.3 percent and 8.3 percent, respectively. Nearly six of 10 poor District residents are in extreme poverty. http://www.commondreams.org/headlines07/0223-09.htm PADRAIC CASSIDY, MARKET WATCH - Net farm income in the United States is expected to total $58.9 billion in 2006, a 20% drop from last year, the Department of Agriculture said Thursday. A $4.7 billion drop in the value of livestock production, including a decline in the price for milk, are responsible, according to the updated forecast from the USDA.  2006. . . . INCOME SCORECARD 1979-2004 BOTTOM 60% OF AMERICANS: DOWN
5% DAVID CAY JOHNSTON, NY TIMES
- Despite significant gains in 2004, the The overall income declines .
. . came despite a series of tax cuts Very top households, which include
about 300,000 Americans, reported Over all, average incomes rose
27 percent in real terms over the The bottom 60 percent of Americans,
on average, made less than 95 The next best-off group, the
fifth of Americans on the 60th to 80th Only those in the top 5 percent
had significant gains. The average A third of the entire national
increase in reported income went to the http://tinyurl.com/yaxw9g PAY GAP FOR COLLEGE EDUCATED WOMEN WIDENED SLIGHTLY IN LAST DECADE DAVID LEONHARDT, NY TIMES - Throughout the 1980s and early '90s, women of all economic levels - poor, middle class and rich - steadily gained ground on their male counterparts in the work force. By the mid-'90s, women earned more than 75 cents for each dollar in hourly pay that men did, up from 65 cents 15 years earlier. Largely without notice, however, one big group of women has stopped making progress: those with a four-year college degree. The gap between their pay and that of male college graduates has widened slightly since the mid '90s. For women without a college education, the pay gap with men has narrowed slightly over the same span. These trends suggest that recent high-profile achievements - the first female secretary of state, lead anchor of a nightly newscast and, next month, speaker of the House - do not reflect what is happening to most women, researchers say. . . Last year, college-educated women between 36 and 45 years old earned 74.7 cents in hourly pay for every dollar that men in the same group did, according to Labor Department data analyzed by the Economic Policy Institute. A decade earlier, the women earned 75.7 cents. . DRUM MAJOR INSTITUTE 2006 INJUSTICE INDEX Wages that an average CEO earns before lunchtime: more than a full-time minimum wage worker makes in a year Ratio of the average U.S. CEO's annual pay to a minimum wage worker's: 821:1 Total compensation in 2005 of Barry Diller of IAC - Interactive, the highest paid CEO in the US today: $469 million Percentage of Americans who feel chronically overworked: 30 Years of unused vacation time that American workers collectively give back to their employers each year: 1.6 million Percentage of women earning less than $40,000 per year who receive no paid vacation time at all: 37 Payment per episode that Donald
Trump receives to host The Apprentice: Average amount that companies spend to recruit a new CEO from outside the company: $2,000,000 Probability that the newly hired CEO will either quit or be fired within the first eighteen months: 1 in 2 Estimated number of people lined up outside the new M&M store set to open in Times Square responding to ads for "on-the-spot" hiring for 200 jobs, 65 of which were fulltime: between 5,000 and 6,000 Starting salary that drew them there: $10.75 per hour Fee Paris Hilton is seeking to host a New Year's Eve party in NYC, Miami, or L.A.: $100,000 plus a private jet Amount that Ms. Hilton is set to inherit from the Hilton Hotel fortune: $350 million Number of times that Congress has reduced the estate tax since it last raised the federal minimum wage: 9 Number of workers who would directly benefit from an increase in the minimum wage: 5.6 million Number of very large estates that would directly benefit from a reduction in the estate tax: 8,200 Number of households using credit to cover basic living expenses: 7 in 10 Amount in tax breaks and subsidies that last year's energy bill paid out to the gas and oil industry during a period of record profits and higher prices at the pump: $6 billion Campaign donations that Senator Kay Bailey Hutchison, who voted for the energy bill, received from the oil and gas industry: $500,000, making her the top recipient of oil contributions in the 2006 election cycle Percentage of U.S. workers who are confident they will be able to live comfortably after retirement: 68 Percentage who have saved less than $25,000 toward their retirement: 53 Percent of African-American and Latino families that have zero or negative net worth, respectively: 31 and 38 Total Wal-Mart received in government subsidies, sometimes called "corporate welfare" by activists, in 2005: $3.75 billion Projected total in Christmas bonuses that the five largest investment banks in New York City will pay out in 2006: $36 billion Estimated additional amount U.S. workers would receive annually if all employers obeyed workplace laws: $19 billion Percentage increase in out-of-pocket medical expenses for the average American in the past 5 years: 93 Estimated amount the U.S. would save each year on paperwork if it adopted single-payer health care: $161 billion http://www.drummajorinstitute.org/library/article.php?ID=652 A family of three must have earned less than $15,577 in 2005 to be considered poor. 37 million people in America live below the poverty line, about the entire population of California. 43 percent of the poor live in "deep poverty" ? half the poverty line. The highest percentage living in "deep poverty" since the Census Department began recording this data in 1975. 35 million Americans went without food in 2005. This year, the USDA changed the official classification of this growing population from "food insecure with hunger" to "very low food security." The number of hungry Americans is nearly equal in size to the combined populations of Arkansas, Connecticut, Delaware, Idaho, Iowa, Kansas, Maine, Montana, Nebraska, New Hampshire, New Mexico, North Dakota, Oklahoma, Oregon, South Dakota, Vermont and West Virginia. In 2004, 13 million children, or 17.8 percent were poor. http://www.ActionLA.org HIGHER TAXED COUNTRIES DO BETTER CBC NEWS - People who live in countries with higher taxes enjoy lower rates of poverty, have more equal income distribution, more economic security for workers and can expect to live longer, suggests a new study from a left-leaning think tank. Written by two Toronto tax law professors for the Canadian Centre for Policy Alternatives, the report, released Wednesday, is blunt. "Tax cuts are disastrous for the well-being of a nation's citizens," say authors Neil Brooks and Thaddeus Hwong. The study compares four high-tax Nordic countries (Sweden, Norway, Denmark, and Finland) with six low-tax Anglo-American countries (the U.K., U.S., Canada, Ireland, Australia and New Zealand). The four Nordic countries scored better than the lower-taxed countries on most of the 50 indicators measured in the report, including: Rate of poverty, equality of income distribution, and economic security for workers. . . GDP per capita. . . Rate of household saving and net national saving. . . Innovation, including percentage of GDP spent on research and development. . . Growth competitiveness as ranked by the World Economic Forum. . . Rates of secondary school and university completion. . . Rate of drug use. . . Leisure time. The more lowly taxed countries came out on top in seven of the 50 indicators, including their sense of freedom, their suicide rates and the number of people reporting they are very happy. http://www.cbc.ca/canada/story/2006/12/06/tax-policyalternatives.html CEOs EARN 262 TIMES PAY OF AVERAGE WORKER REUTERS - Chief executive officers in the United States earned 262 times the pay of an average worker in 2005, the second-highest level in the 40 years for which there is data, a nonprofit think-tank said on Wednesday. In fact, a CEO earned more in one workday than an average worker earned in 52 weeks, said the Economic Policy Institute in Washington, D.C. . . In 1965, U.S. CEOs at major companies earned 24 times a worker's pay. That ratio surged in the 1990s and hit 300 at the end of the recovery in 2000, according to EPI.   KEVIN G. HALL MCCLATCHY NEWSPAPERS - Over the past quarter-century, and especially in the last 10 years, America's very rich have grown much richer. No one else fared as well. In 2004, the richest 1 percent of households - 719,910 of them, with an average annual income of $326,720 - had 19.8 percent of the entire nation's pretax income. That's up from 17.8 percent a year earlier, according to a study by University of California-Berkeley economist Emmanuel Saez. The study, titled "The Evolution of Top Incomes," also found that the richest one-tenth of 1 percent of Americans - 129,584 households in 2004 - reported income equal to 9.5 percent of national pretax income. However, median, or midpoint, family income rose only 1.6 percent between 2001 and 2004, when adjusted for inflation, according to the Federal Reserve. Median family real net worth - a family's gross assets minus liabilities - rose only 1.5 percent during those four years. Those are very sluggish income-growth rates compared with the four years between 1998 and 2001, when median family income grew by 9.5 percent and median family real net worth grew by 10.3 percent. http://www.realcities.com/mld/krwashington/15912820.htm STUDY: VALUE OF A STAY AT HOME MOM: $134,121 ABC NEWS - A full-time stay-at-home mother would earn $134,121 a year if paid for all her work, an amount similar to a top U.S. ad executive, a marketing director or a judge, according to a study released on Wednesday. A mother who works outside the home would earn an extra $85,876 annually on top of her actual wages for the work she does at home, according to the study by Waltham, Massachusetts-based compensation experts Salary.com. To reach the projected pay figures, the survey calculated the earning power of the 10 jobs respondents said most closely comprise a mother's role -- housekeeper, day-care teacher, cook, computer operator, laundry machine operator, janitor, facilities manager, van driver, chief executive and psychologist. Employed mothers reported spending on average 44 hours a week at their outside job and 49.8 hours at their home job, while the stay-at-home mother worked 91.6 hours a week, it showed. http://abcnews.go.com/US/wireStory?id=1916891 HIGH HOUSING PRICES CAUSING NEW MIGRATION PATTERN STEPHEN OHLEMACHER ASSOCIATED PRESS - Americans are leaving the nation's big cities in search of cheaper homes and open spaces farther out. Nearly every large metropolitan area had more people move out than move in from 2000 to 2004, with a few exceptions in the South and Southwest, according to a report being released Thursday by the Census Bureau. Northeasterners are moving South and West. West Coast residents are moving inland. Midwesterners are chasing better job markets. And just about everywhere, people are escaping to the outer suburbs, also known as exurbs. "It's a case of middle class flight, a flight for housing affordability," said William Frey, a demographer at the Brookings Institution, a Washington think tank. "But it's not just white middle class flight, it's Hispanics and blacks, too." http://seattlepi.nwsource.com/national/1110AP_Fleeing_Big_Cities.html SAM ROBERTS, NY TIMES - Maine, Rhode Island, Maryland and Wyoming, which lost population to other states in the 1990's, have gained residents from elsewhere in the country since 2000. In five other states - Indiana, Minnesota, Utah, Mississippi and Oklahoma - the pattern was reversed: more people moved out than in from other states. . . In California, on average, 221,000 more people moved out every year than moved in from other states in the 1990's. From 2000 to 2004, the annual average net loss declined to 99,000 as more Californians moved inland from cities on the coast instead of moving to other states. San Bernardino has gained more migrants annually since 2000 than any other metropolitan area. CATHERINE KOMP, NEW STANDARD - According to a survey of 24 cities by the US Conference of Mayors, requests for emergency shelter assistance in 2005 increased by 6 percent. The survey also found the number of homeless families seeking shelter increased by about 5 percent, with about one in three reporting unmet needs due to a lack of existing shelter resources. http://newstandardnews.net/content/index.cfm/items/3026 TYPICAL WORKER HAS LESS THAN $25,000 SAVED FOR RETIREMENT EILEEN ALT POWELL AP - The Employee Benefit Research Institute's annual retirement confidence survey, released Tuesday, found that about 68 percent of workers are confident about having adequate funds for a comfortable retirement. . . At the same time, more than half of all workers say they've saved less than $25,000 toward retirement, according to the Washington, D.C., based research group. Even among workers 55 and older, more than four in 10 have retirement savings under $25,000. He said that the poor savings performance was especially troubling because it comes as many of the nation's employers are eliminating the defined benefit plans - better known as pensions - that have buoyed the retirements of current workers' parents and grandparents. Many companies also are eliminating retiree health care coverage or asking retirees to contribute more for it. . . As would be expected, older workers generally have more set aside than younger workers, with 12 percent of those 55 and older reporting account balances of $100,000 to $249,999, and 26 percent with accounts of $250,000 and up. ..
Figures converted to 2006 dollars JEN HABERKORN, WASHINGTON TIMES - The number of Hispanic-owned businesses in the U.S. is climbing three times faster than the national average for all businesses, according to Census Bureau figures released yesterday. Hispanics owned almost 1.6 million companies in 2002, a 31 percent jump from five years earlier. By comparison, the total number of U.S. firms rose 10 percent to nearly 23 million companies. http://insider.washingtontimes.com/articles/normal.php?StoryID=20060321-093258-2932r  MEXICAN WORKERS JULIANA BARBASSA, AP - A January 2005 survey by researchers at the University of California at San Diego found that 37 percent of undocumented immigrants returning to Mexico had stayed in the United States longer than they expected. About 79 percent of those interviewed said they knew someone who had remained in the United States because of more stringent border enforcement. Among those who returned to Mexico last winter, 77.3 percent said they returned home less frequently during the past five years because it was becoming too difficult to evade the U.S. Border Patrol, too expensive to pay a smuggler to help them cross back or too dangerous, the university study showed. Other research suggests a trend. In 1998, about 45 percent of the nation's farm workers said they had spent time out of the country within the previous year, according to the National Agricultural Workers Survey. By 2002, 28 percent of farm workers in the country said they had spent time outside the U.S., the survey said. http://www.washtimes.com/culture/20060202-111842-2803r.htm INCOME INEQUALITY GROWING CBPP - In most states, the gap between the highest-income families and poor and middle-income families grew significantly between the early 1980s and the early 2000s, according to a new study by the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities and the Economic Policy Institute. The incomes of the country's richest families have climbed substantially over the past two decades, while middle- and lower-income families have seen only modest increases. This trend is in marked contrast to the broadly shared increases in prosperity between World War II and the 1970s. In 38 states, the incomes of the bottom fifth of families grew more slowly than the incomes of the top fifth of families between the early 1980s and the early 2000s. In these 38 states, the incomes of the richest grew by an average of $45,800 (62 percent), while the incomes of the poorest grew by only $3,000 (21 percent) In only one state - Alaska - did the incomes of the low-income families grow faster than the incomes of the top fifth. In 39 states, the incomes of the middle fifth of families grew more slowly than the incomes of the top fifth of families between the early 1980s and the early 2000s. In no state did the income gap (degree of income inequality) between middle- and high-income families narrow during this period. Within the top fifth of families, the wealthiest families enjoyed the highest income growth over the past two decades. In the 11 states that are large enough to permit this calculation, the incomes of the top 5 percent of families rose between 66 percent and 132 percent during this period. This is faster than the income growth among the top fifth of families as a whole in these states- and much faster than the income growth among the bottom fifth of families in these states, which ranged from 11 percent to 24 percent. The five states with the largest income gap between the top and bottom fifths of families are New York, Texas, Tennessee, Arizona, and Florida. Generally, income gaps are larger in the Southeast and Southwest and smaller in the Midwest, Great Plains, and Mountain states. Income gaps tend to be larger in states where incomes in the bottom fifth are below the national average, and to be smaller in states where incomes in the bottom fifth are above the national average. The five states with the largest income gaps between the top and middle fifths of families are Texas, Kentucky, Florida, Arizona, and Tennessee. http://www.cbpp.org/1-26-06sfp.htm SAVINGS RATE LOWEST SINCE DEPRESSION AP - Americans' personal savings rate dipped into negative territory in 2005, something that hasn't happened since the Great Depression. Consumers depleted their savings to finance the purchases of cars and other big-ticket items. The Commerce Department reported Monday that the savings rate fell into negative territory at minus 0.5 percent, meaning that Americans not only spent all of their after-tax income last year but had to dip into previous savings or increase borrowing. The savings rate has been negative for an entire year only twice before - in 1932 and 1933 - two years when the country was struggling to cope with the Great Depression, a time of massive business failures and job layoffs. HOUSING FORECLOSURES KIMBERLY BLANTON, BOSTON GLOBE - The number of foreclosure notices filed against Massachusetts homeowners last year reached their highest level since the housing bust of the early 1990s, as homeowners fell behind on their mortgages and lenders began the process of taking back the properties. Homeowners who stretched their finances to the limit to buy a home found it more difficult to make their payments on variable-rate mortgages as interest rates rose, but they were less able to refinance their loans at more attractive rates -- or sell and pay off their debts -- because the value of their homes fell or remained flat. . . Last year, there were almost 11,500 foreclosure filings in Massachusetts Land Court, where most notices are filed by banks and mortgage companies against the homeowners, according to Foreclosures Mass Corp., which compiles and tracks filings. That is a 32 percent increase from 2004, pushing the number of filings on record to its highest level since 1993, when a once-booming housing market was in a tailspin. http://www.boston.com/news/local/articles/2006/01/30/housing_slowdown_squeezes_borrowers/ DAY LABORERS STEVEN GREENHOUSE, NY TIMES - The first nationwide study on day laborers has found that such workers are a nationwide phenomenon, with 117,600 people gathering at more than 500 hiring sites to look for work on a typical day. The survey found that three-fourths of day laborers were illegal immigrants and that more than half said employers had cheated them on wages in the previous two months. The study found that 49 percent of day laborers were employed by homeowners and 43 percent by construction contractors. They were found to be employed most frequently as construction laborers, landscapers, painters, roofers and drywall installers. The study, based on interviews with 2,660 workers at 264 hiring sites in 20 states and the District of Columbia, found that day laborers earned a median of $10 an hour and $700 month. The study said that only a small number earned more than $15,000 a year. The professors who conducted the study said the most surprising finding was the pervasiveness of wage violations and dangerous conditions that day laborers faced. . . Forty-nine percent of those interviewed said that in the previous two months an employer had not paid them for one or more days' work. Forty-four percent said some employers did not give them any breaks during the workday, while 28 percent said employers had insulted them. HOMELESSNESS NATIONAL HOMELESS - In 2005, 71 percent of the 24 cities surveyed by the U.S. Conference of Mayors reported a 6 percent increase in requests for emergency shelter. Even while the requests for emergency shelter have increased, cities do not have adequate shelter space to meet the need. In the 24 cities surveyed, an average of 14 percent of overall emergency shelter requests went unmet, with 32 percent of shelter requests by homeless families unmet. Over the course of the year, 3.5 million Americans experience homelessness. The number of people living on the streets threatens to grow as thousands of people are now homeless as a result of Hurricane Katrina. City ordinances frequently serve as a prominent tool to criminalize homelessness. Of the 224 cities surveyed for our report: 28% prohibit "camping" in particular public places in the city and 16% had city-wide prohibitions on "camping." 27% prohibit sitting/lying in certain public places. 39% prohibit loitering in particular public areas and 16% prohibit loitering city-wide. 43% prohibit begging in particular public places; 45% prohibit aggressive panhandling and 21% have city-wide prohibitions on begging. The trend of criminalizing homelessness appears to be growing. Of the 67 cities surveyed in both NCH and NLCHP's last joint report in 2002 and in this report: There is a 12% increase laws prohibiting begging in certain public places and an 18% increase in laws that prohibit aggressive panhandling. There is a 14% increase in laws prohibiting sitting or lying in certain public spaces. There is a 3% increase in laws prohibiting loitering, loafing, or vagrancy laws. Another trend documented in the report is increased city efforts to target homeless persons indirectly by placing restrictions on providers serving food to poor and homeless persons in public spaces. http://www.nationalhomeless.org/publications/crimreport/summary.html  OF THE MIDDLE CLASS  2005 . . . - Inflation-adjusted hourly and weekly wages are still below where they were at the start of the recovery in November 2001. Yet, productivity-the growth of the economic pie-is up by 13.5%. - Median household income (inflation-adjusted) has fallen five years in a row and was 4% lower in 2004 than in 1999, falling from $46,129 to $44,389. - The indebtedness of U.S. households, after adjusting for inflation, has risen 35.7% over the last four years. - The level of debt as a percent of after-tax income is the highest ever measured in our history. Mortgage and consumer debt is now 115% of after-tax income, twice the level of 30 years ago. - The personal savings rate is negative for the first time since WWII. - The United States has only 1.3% more jobs today (excluding the effects of Hurricane Katrina) than in March 2001 (the start of the recession). Private sector jobs are up only 0.8%. At this stage of previous business cycles, jobs had grown by an average of 8.8% and never less than 6.0%. - More than 3 million manufacturing jobs have been lost since January 2000. - The number of people living in poverty has increased by 5.4 million since 2000. - The child poverty rate increased from 16.3% in 2001 to 17.8% in 2004. - Family health costs rose 43-45% for married couples with children, single mothers, and young singles from 2000 to 2003. - Last year, the percent of people with employer-provided health insurance fell for the fourth year in a row. Nearly 3.7 million fewer people had employer-provided insurance in 2004 than in 2000. http://maxspeak.org/mt/archives/001849.html UNION CITY - CEO pay is rising at an astronomical pace while workers' wages are dropping or stagnating, according to new reports. The average CEO made 431 times the salary of a production worker in 2004, up from 301-to-1 in 2003 and 24-to-1 in the mid-1960s, according to a report by the Economic Policy Institute. While CEOs get richer, workers are producing more and taking home less pay. Worker productivity increased 4.7 percent during the third quarter of 2005, according to the federal Bureau of Labor Statistics, while real hourly wages and benefits decreased by 1.4 percent, compared with an even higher 3.1 percent decrease in the previous quarter. http://www.aflcio.org/corporatewatch/paywatch/index.cfm 
ACCORDING TO A NEW Census Bureau report, there are 18.6 million self-employed Americans who earn $829 billion a year. In 1941, 41% of the graduating class of Harvard Business School went into manufacturing and 15% went into marketing. In 2005, 30% of the graduating class went into finance and 28% into consulting. SCIENCE DAILY - Hunger in American households has risen by 43 percent over the last five years, according to an analysis of US Department of Agriculture) data. The analysis, completed by the Center on Hunger and Poverty at Brandeis University, shows that more than 7 million people have joined the ranks of the hungry since 1999. The USDA report, Household Food Security in the United States, 2004, says that 38.2 million Americans live in households that suffer directly from hunger and food insecurity, including nearly 14 million children. That figure is up from 31 million Americans in 1999. California, Texas, Arkansas, Missouri, North Carolina, New Mexico, Oklahoma and South Carolina all have food insecurity and hunger rates that are significantly higher than the national average. The lone bright spot in the nation is Oregon. Once considered to have the worst hunger in the country, Oregon has shown significant decreases in food insecurity and hunger since 1999-2001. http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2005/10/051029093925.htm
A USA TODAY SURVEY has found 727,000 homeless people nationwide. RICH AND POOR
IN AMERICA NY TIMES - The share of the nation's income earned by those in this uppermost category has more than doubled since 1980, to 7.4 percent in 2002. The share of income earned by the rest of the top 10 percent rose far less, and the share earned by the bottom 90 percent fell. Next, examine the net worth of American households. The group with homes, investments and other assets worth more than $10 million comprised 338,400 households in 2001, the last year for which data are available. The number has grown more than 400 percent since 1980, after adjusting for inflation, while the total number of households has grown only 27 percent. . . President Bush said during the third election debate last October that most of the tax cuts went to low- and middle-income Americans. In fact, most - 53 percent - will go to people with incomes in the top 10 percent over the first 15 years of the cuts, which began in 2001 and would have to be reauthorized in 2010. And more than 15 percent will go just to the top 0.1 percent, those 145,000 taxpayers. The [NYT] analysis also found the following: - Under the Bush tax cuts, the 400 taxpayers with the highest incomes - a minimum of $87 million in 2000, the last year for which the government will release such data - now pay income, Medicare and Social Security taxes amounting to virtually the same percentage of their incomes as people making $50,000 to $75,000. - Those earning more than $10 million a year now pay a lesser share of their income in these taxes than those making $100,000 to $200,000. . . One way to understand the growing gap is to compare earnings increases over time by the vast majority of taxpayers - say, everyone in the lower 90 percent - with those at the top, say, in the uppermost 0.01 percent (now about 14,000 households, each with $5.5 million or more in income last year). From 1950 to 1970, for example, for every additional dollar earned by the bottom 90 percent, those in the top 0.01 percent earned an additional $162, according to the Times analysis. From 1990 to 2002, for every extra dollar earned by those in the bottom 90 percent, each taxpayer at the top brought in an extra $18,000. According to the Census, 300,000 black Americans fell into poverty in 2002, making the poverty level among blacks today a whopping 24.3 percent. While the median income of African-American households was 65 percent of whites' in 2000, it slipped to 62 percent by 2003. And according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics, "unemployment among blacks hit a historic low of 7.1 percent in 2000, but has grown to 9.9 percent or higher since January 2002." [Progress Report] WHO'S DONE BEST 1983-2003 THESE CHARTS SHOW THE CHANGE IN MEAN SALARIES OF VARIOUS GROUPS BETWEEN 1983 AND 2003 The gap between the lowest paid group and the highest - about five times - stayed about the same during the period. Onb a percentage basis women college grads clearly did best while black males without a college degree did best. Source: Census & Economic History Service. 
STATE OF THE UNION 2005 BY THE NUMBERS ON UNEMPLOYMENT: ON PERSONAL DEBT: ON HEALTH CARE: ON RISING GAS
PRICES: COLLEGE COST
FUNDING FOR PUBLIC
SCHOOLS FALLING WAGES RISING HOUSING
COSTS WORKPLACE INEQUITY - About half of the increase in the median income of people of color from 1996 to 2000 was wiped out in the following three years. For the first time in 15 years, the average Latino household now has an income that is less than two-thirds that of the average white household. After slowly increasing from 55% of white income in 1988 to 65% in 2000, black median income fell again to 62% of the white median in 2003. - Throughout the 1990s, poverty rates fell across the board, declining fastest for African Americans and Latinos. But since 2000, more than one third of that progress in reducing poverty among African American families has been erased, as 300,000 African-American families fell below the poverty line from 2000 to 2003. Percent of men
over 65 still in workplace, 1950: 50% [Washington Post] |
