The economy is awesome again! Unemployment for the poor: 31% Unemployment for the rich: 3%

[Political Heretic]

:party:

Boeing CEO Jim McNerney succinctly summarized a recent study by Northeastern University's Center for Labor Market Studies regarding unemployment rates for different income brackets:

The Center analyzed the labor conditions faced by income-grouped U.S. households during the fourth quarter of 2009.

In the face of one of the worst economic environments in memory, those in the highest income groups had nearly full employment levels, with just a 3.2 percent unemployment rate for households with over $150,000 in income and a 4 percent rate in the next-highest income group of $100,000-plus.

The two lowest-income groups -- under $12,500 and under $20,000 annually -- faced unemployment rates of 30.8 percent and 19.1 percent, respectively.

The study - published in February - notes that the poor are suffering Depression levels of unemployment:

Workers in the lowest income decile faced a Great Depression type unemployment rate of nearly 31% while those in the second lowest income decile had an unemployment rate slightly below 20% .... Unemployment rates fell steadily and steeply across the ten income deciles. Workers in the top two deciles of the income distribution faced unemployment rates of only 4.0 and 3.2 percent respectively, the equivalent of full employment. The relative size of the gap in unemployment rates between workers in the bottom and top income deciles was close to ten to one. Clearly, these two groups of workers occupy radically different types of labor markets in the U.S.

The study is subtitled "A Truly Great Depression Among the Nation’s Low Income Workers Amidst Full Employment Among the Most Affluent".

http://www.washingtonsblog.com/2010/04/unemployment-for-those-who-earn-150000.html

[rfranklin]

1. Job Growth Plan: Fire one at $150,000 and hire five at $30,000...

Sounds like a winner to me. And you would increase tax revenues, because lower paid workers pay much more in taxes.

[Freddie Stubbs]

4. I doubt you would insist on that if you or a loved one needed surgery

Would you rather have the surgery performed by a board certified surgeon who makes six figures or by five community college educated medical assistants who make more modest salaries?

[rfranklin]

11. Would you apply that same principle to Wall Street traders?

No one said a word about doctors. But, on the other hand, I've had much better care from nurse practitioners than many M.D.'s.

[DCBob]

2. Looks like recovery will eventually make it to the poor/working class as well..

http://www.nytimes.com/2010/04/26/business/economy/26econ.html

[ipaint]

14. Would that mean another thirty years of stagnant wages, busted unions

and low paying service jobs. Yippee!

There hasn't been a real recovery for the working class, working poor and poor in my working lifetime.

[druidity33]

3. how does this work?

Has there been a study like this before? Has there been an increase in the number of unemployed poor people? Doesn't the fact that they are unemployed contribute (if not decide) which income category they're put in, making unemployed synonymous with poor?

I grew up middle class but have been poor. Currently i'm underemployed and have been looking for a decent job since the company i worked for went bankrupt last year. I doubt that i am included in these statistics, though my family couldn't survive on my income. Thank god the wife works in a growth industry (Green building) and has health care... a shitty plan, but it's there.

The Poor of this country desperately need someone who speaks for them...

i hope that someone appears soon.

:(

[Political Heretic]

5. Um, no unemployed is not synonymous with poor.

I appreciate your questions. First, while it is certainly true that if you are unemployed for an extended period of time, then your annual income could take a nose dive making you classified as "poor." However, most poor people work. In fact, they work multiple jobs.

Again, I have to reiterate, that's a really big flaw in reasoning to associated poverty with unemployment. The overhwelming majority of poor people in the United States work. Hard. Two or three jobs.

What this study (and several others like it which correlate findings) is pointing out is that unemployment hit the working poor the hardest - and exponentially so. It's the poor who overwhelming lost their jobs during this crisis, and its been the poor who are still without jobs now that the elite are touting our "recovery"

Thank you for your statement about the poor and the need for a voice. We need to speak with the poor, not for the poor, though I know what you mean. One of the best things that could be done, and a personal dream of mine, is to organize a project similar to what the Library of Congress does - getting Americans from all walks of life to record their stories for presrevation and posterity.

I'd like to find a way to organize a project to capture the "voice of poverty." Traveling around to communities all across the country of all different compositions, and sit down and let the poor tell their stories in their own words, develop an archive / repository of these stories and push them onto the media, the public, politicians, etc.

I would really like to do this - but I don't know how. I'm trying to think about how something like this could be funded and actually happen.

[druidity33]

7. i do understand that.

I was trying to point out that without a link to the study, that's what the study appears to imply. I have long been aware that you don't need to be jobless to be poor. But i am not the only one who would think that about the study either... from the comments at the blog linked:

"But, isn't it sortof a logical inevitability that unemployment amongst those in the higher income brackets is lower than for those in the lower brackets? How could you have $150,000 in income if you are unemployed? I suppose you could get it from 'unearned income' like investments, but if someone already has that setup they probably are not 'looking' for a job and will not go counted as unemployed.

I've no doubt that the current economic situation disproportionately impacts those in the lower income brackets adversely. Is there a form of adversity that does not hurt the poor/weak/sick/disadvantaged more than the rich/strong/healthy/lucky? I'm not saying that there aren't a lot of rich people that committed a lot of fraud that ended up hurting a lot of those who were/are poor. I'm certain there were many. I just don't think the revelation that unemployed people tend to be poor, and poor people are more likely to be unemployed than rich people is all that startling. Perhaps your intent was to show that the overall unemployment figures are skewed positively by the wealthier classes doing A-OK, while the poorer classes are suffering levels of unemployment much higher than the broader reported numbers?"



As for a voice for the poor... i think a coordinated campaign to enlist the aid of an Important person would be a good first step. I'm thinking Michelle Obama, Oprah, Shaq, Madonna, anybody with one name will do. (bit of snark in those choices, mind) I'd also like to see coalitions among disparate groups that work for the poor... maybe an effort to highlight and support Legislative efforts that help the poor. Or just analyze current laws and programs to promote change that would positively affect the poor. More studies are needed too. Maybe a Committee in the House could take up writing a plan to eliminate poverty in the US?



The situation as is is untenable though. Too many people in this country are hungry and homeless (are any of those numbers in the study?) for it to be a smooth ride in the coming years. A little OT, but can you vote if you're homeless?


I appreciate the thoughtful response, btw.

:)

[sui generis]

9. There is a major factor that we don't discuss

Most of those "lower income" jobs were service or manufacturing core.

We have an administration that isn't doing anything at all different from the previous administration to make call centers in India more expensive to use than call centers in the U.S.

We still don't do ANYTHING to disincentivise manufacturing outsourcing because our very own progressives ironically believe that doing so would smack of kneejerk protectionism. We don't even attempt to manage balance of trade, and essentially we have created a system where there the U.S. consumer doesn't have enough capital to exercise economic choice in picking the more expensive domestically manufactured product.

If we want unemployment to drop in what are essentially "blue collar" and service industry jobs, we can't expect "small business" to step into the breach with what are essentially family-owned and operated service and specialized manufacturing. Obama is just bass ackwards in his economic thinking - we HAVE to manage deficit at our trade boundaries so that a call from an Indian call center costs MORE than from the U.S. or so that products manufactured abroad are taxed differently in the U.S. in such a way that the manufacturing companies have to change their pricing or else manufacture using a U.S. labor force to be competitive.

Until our administration starts actually looking out for local jobs the only jobs that CAN'T be outsourced are going to continue to be management and white collar jobs that don't do much more than manage overseas manufacturing and call centers, or else play petty tyrant small business owner politics.

[stray cat]

Lack of education and a track record of employment is a hurdle for many

and people will be preferentially hired who have more education and a better history of employment. More and more jobs require some sort of training or education

[fasttense]

10. A lack of money to buy an education is a hurdle for many.

Education does not come cheap in this American aristocracy. You pay and pay until you are so loaded with debt and shitty jobs to pay back that debt that you can't complete the hours of study required by that education. Even if you manage to graduate top in your high school class, it does not guarantee that you will be able to afford a college education.

But by pretending it's simply eduction and not wealth to buy that eduction, we can all pretend this country is still for "We The People" instead of merely for "We The Uber Rich People".

[stray cat]

6. Lack of education and a track record of employment is a hurdle for many

and people will be preferentially hired who have more education and a better history of employment. More and more jobs require some sort of training or education

[rfranklin]

12. The underemployment and unemployment of college graduates...

is also at Depression levels. Meanwhile, these young people have invested around $100,000 in their educations. The problem is that there just aren't enough lower level or starting level jobs being created. They are being sucked up by outsourcing and importation of lower paid workers.

[nickinSTL]

16. one of the reasons more jobs require more

education is because employers CAN require that. The job market is flooded with potential applicants.

My wife has 10 years of programming experience (learned on the job in the Air Force), but no college degree. As a result, she hasn't even been looked at seriously for a programming job since the early Bush administration.

Now, of course, the combination of being out of programming for so long and the lack of a college degree makes her nearly unemployable (and you know, no one wants to hire a programmer for crap jobs, apparently - she can't get jobs doing ANYTHING, it seems).

[fasttense]

8. "There was no labor market recession for America’s affluent."

That's a quote from the report itself.

But if the uber rich had been allowed to take the beating they so rightfully deserved by NOT bailing them out, then unemployment among the uber wealthy would equal that of the current bottom 50%.

But thanks to the bushes and Obama, the rich were spared and only the poor suffered. Now that's what I call a plutocracy.

Where is the bail out for us? Why were only the rich given all their money back, dusted off and sent back to creating more bubbles, while the poor suffered the repercussions of a bubble economy?

[grahamhgreen]

13. Obvious solution - tax the rich, give benefits to the poor. Unemployment is a fault of our system.

[Political Heretic]

15. kick.

[hack89]

17. His point is a valid one

education equals good jobs and good income.

[Trillo]

18. Well, the poor just need more education.

:sarcasm:

The OP is consistent with a class-based system.