Is the American Dream burning up

Building a log cabin in New Hampshire

Fact #10

Wage growth remains extremely low.

-         “Persistent high unemployment also hurts wage growth for workers with jobs…Wages not adjusted for inflation have grown 1.8% over the last year, well below the growth rate of 2.6% at he end of the recession…With inflation growing faster on average than wages since the end of the recession, real wages are lower now than when the recession ended.”

Fact #9

Racial and ethnic minorities have fared worse that whites in both the recession and the recovery.

-         “At the official end of the recession, the unemployment rate for whites was 8.7%, which has declined somewhat to 8.0%. The unemployment rate for Hispanics at the end of the recession was 12.2%, which has declined by a lesser extent to 11.9%. Black workers have been hit the hardest: at the end of the recession the black unemployment rate was 14.9%, and it has increased to 16.2%.”

Fact #8

Unemployed workers continue to face near-record spells of unemployment.

-         “The share of unemployed workers who had been jobless for more than six months shot up from 17.6% in the first half of 2007 to 29.3% at the official end of the recession to over 45.6% by the spring of 2010, an all-time record… It is currently 45.1%. The fact that layoffs have abated in the recovery provides little relief to the already unemployed.”

Fact #7

“Underemployment” has also improved very little in the recovery.

-         “The number of workers who want a full-time job but have had to settle for part-time hours shot up from 4.3 million in the first half of 2007 to 9 million by the spring of 2009…and has not improved much this year (2011). If businesses had work to be done but were wary of making new hires, then they would ramp up the hours of their existing workers.”

Fact #6

The share of the working-age population with jobs has not yet improved.

-       “The unemployment rate, of course, has dropped somewhat, falling from its peak of 10.1% in October 2009 to 9.1% in May 2011. However, an improvement in the unemployment rate is only good news if a larger share to the potential workforce actually finds work, and that is not happening. The entire improvement in the unemployment rate over that period was due to would-be workers deciding to sit out the job search altogether and thus not being counted among the officially unemployed.”

Fact #5

The current problem is not that we lack the right workers; it’s that we lack enough job openings.

-         “Some have claimed that hiring has not picked up substantially because employers can’t find workers with the needed skills. If this were the case, we would expect some sectors to have more job openings than unemployed workers… There are no major sectors where that is happening.”

Fact #4

Most of the improvement seen in this recovery consists of a decline in layoffs, not an increase in hiring.

-         “Layoffs spiked dramatically during the recession, but have substantially slowed during the recovery. At this point workers are no more likely to get laid off than they were before the recession started…We have seen very little improvement in hiring, which is still roughly 25% below its 2007 average.”