The Next Phase of My Evaluation

In yesterday's post-cum-psychological profile, "Economic Rorschach Test," I wanted to know the first thing that popped into your head after hearing that Geithner, Paulson, and Greenspan agree the economy is recovering.

In the next phase of my professional evaluation -- after all, if these guys have the gall to consider themselves economic experts then I see no reason why I can't be considered a psychological expert -- I'd be interested in learning how you feel after reading recent reports about our so-called "recovery," as follows:

"Rash of Retirements Pushes Social Security to Brink" (USA Today)

WASHINGTON — Social Security's annual surplus nearly evaporated in 2009 for the first time in 25 years as the recession led hundreds of thousands of workers to retire or claim disability.

The impact of the recession is likely to hit the giant retirement system even harder this year and next. The Congressional Budget Office had projected it would operate in the red in 2010 and 2011, but a deeper economic slump could make those losses larger than anticipated.

"Things are a little bit worse than had been expected," says Stephen Goss, chief actuary for the Social Security Administration. "Clearly, we're going to be negative for a year or two."

...

Social Security took in only $3 billion more in taxes last year than it paid out in benefits — a $60 billion decline from 2008, according to federal data. The slide in revenue occurred sooner than Social Security actuaries had expected, for three reasons:

• Payroll tax revenue that was growing at a 4.5% average annual clip along with wages flattened out in 2009 because of rising unemployment and pay raises that largely disappeared.

• The number of retired workers who began taking benefits increased by 20%; those taking disability jumped by 10%.

• Monthly benefits were raised 5.8% because of a spike in energy prices the year before.

"Hard Times Push More Women to Strip Clubs" (Atlanta Journal-Constitution)

She’s stunning, even in sweats. But Leilani Burkhead’s got her work cut out for her. It’s 9 p.m. on a weeknight, time to hit the stage at Atlanta’s Magic City strip club.

She slips out of her sweats and half-jokingly mumbles something about getting geared up to work the room.

It’s an about-face from a few years ago when money rained down on dancers at this and other Atlanta adult-entertainment clubs like free-flowing Dom Perignon. Like the rest of the economy, adult dance clubs feel the pinch. The sluggish economy and closer police scrutiny have put about a dozen out of business in the past decade. And the regular patrons aren’t so regular anymore.

But that hasn’t slowed the would-be dancers lining up to apply for the $350 permit to work in the city’s 19 clubs, Atlanta police say. Among the usual aspiring actresses and dancers, there are more college students, single mothers trailing toddlers, health and office professionals and even a few age-defying grandmothers — all looking for well-paid work in a city with unemployment above 10 percent.

“We have them coming in daily looking for work,” says Michael “Lil Magic” Barney Jr., the 28-year-old general manager of Magic City, a downtown Atlanta fixture founded by his father.

While there are no hard numbers, Atlanta police say they’ve seen a spike in applications for adult-entertainment permits in the past year or so due to the recession and the recent change in Georgia law that allows nude dancers to be as young as 18.

“We’re seeing younger applicants,” said Detective Kamau Chinyelu, an investigator with the Atlanta Police license and permit unit. “We’re seeing quite a few that have lost their jobs and are now making career changes.”

"Long-Term Unemployed Still Wait for Recovery to Arrive" (USA Today)

Curtis McKenzie keeps hearing that the economy is getting better, most recently with news that unemployment fell to 9.7% in January.

But he's still waiting for the recovery to reach his doorstep in Tulsa. McKenzie, 40, has been out of work since he was laid off from a $60,000-a-year job at a small technology company last March. "The only jobs I have been offered won't even allow me to cover bills," he says. "You build a lifestyle around the job you think you're going to have forever." McKenzie, his wife and two boys don't go out much anymore. They think twice about visiting friends to watch football, which would mean spending money on gasoline, beer and snacks.

Millions of Americans are sharing McKenzie's pain: In January, a record 6.3 million people — 41.2% of the unemployed — had gone without jobs at least 27 weeks. The average unemployed American has been jobless more than 30 weeks, another grim record, the Bureau of Labor Statistics reported on Friday.

"It's a deep recession," says Kevin Hassett, director of economic policy studies at the conservative American Enterprise Institute. "Everything's been unusually bad."

The Economic Policy Institute figures there are 6.4 jobless people for every job opening. "It's a cruel game of musical chairs," says Lawrence Mishel, president of the liberal think tank.

"Women Now a Majority in American Workplaces" (New York Times)

For the first time in recorded history, women outnumber men on the nation’s payrolls.

This benchmark is bittersweet, as it comes largely at men’s expense. Because men have been losing their jobs faster than women, the downturn has at times been referred to as a “man-cession.”

Women’s new majority in the nation’s workplaces comes decades after women first began trading in their aprons for pantsuits in droves, and it reinforces expectations that women will continue on the path to pay parity.

“Important milestones remain to be achieved, but women’s surpassing 50 percent of employment is something that historians will note for years to come,” said Casey B. Mulligan, an economics professor at the University of Chicago who has been tracking the recession’s effects on both sexes.

According to seasonally unadjusted data released on Friday by the Labor Department, women held the majority of nonfarm payroll jobs in January. They also did so during February, March, November and December of last year, but the shift emerged only on Friday when the Labor Department revised its 2009 data. Women’s slender lead was highest last month, when they held 50.3 percent of the nation’s nonfarm payroll jobs in the raw numbers.

Over the last few decades, women have been steadily claiming a greater share of the nation’s payrolls. In 1964, the first year for which the government began collecting this data, less than a third of the nation’s nonfarm payroll jobs were held by women.

But it was the recession that finally pushed women into the majority.

As in previous recessions, male workers have borne the brunt of the job losses in the last two years. Since the recession began in December 2007, men have lost 7.4 million jobs on net, whereas women have lost 3.9 million jobs.

In other words, both sexes are worse off than they were before the downturn, but men have suffered more.

The types of jobs held by men and women help explain the shift. Men are more likely to work in industries like manufacturing, which rise and fall with the economic cycle. Women are more likely to work in government, health care and education, among the safest categories in a downturn. Health care employment has been among the strongest of any type during the recession.

"Recession Pushes Teens, Young Adults to the Edge" (Chicago Tribune)

DETROIT - On one of the coldest days of the new year, Antonio Larkin found himself without a place to stay -- again.

So the 22-year-old called a familiar number and was greeted by a familiar voice: "You wait there. We'll be there to get you."

When outreach manager Stephanie Taylor and other staffers from Covenant House Michigan pulled up, Larkin was standing in the gray snow outside his ex-girlfriend's apartment building; his world's possessions in three, beat up travel bags.

Larkin is among the untold thousands of Detroit's teens and young adults struggling to get by in a disastrous economy that has left their families without jobs or homes. Making matters worse is the organizations that help them are grappling with tough financial issues of their own.

Some are cutting programs, others are scaling back on how many people they serve, but none of them is giving up.

"Biting Recession Leaves Ever more Americans Hungry" (Reuters)

The number of Americans receiving emergency food from the largest U.S. hunger-relief charity and its partners rose 46 percent from 2005 to 2009, according to a report released on Tuesday.

"Feeding America" said 37 million people, including 14 million children, needed emergency food aid each year, more than 10 percent of the U.S. population of 300 million. It based the figure on 61,000 interviews and 37,000 surveys of local charitable agencies.

That compares to 25.3 million people in 2005, when the group released its last quadrennial study.

"The findings of this study are nothing short of tragic," said Feeding America chief executive Vicki Escarra. "We have to find a way to feed people in the land of plenty."

The United States is the world's top corn and soybeans exporter as well as a major beef exporter.

Escarra was especially worried about the effects of hunger on children. It affects not only their health but their ability to succeed in school, she said.

Although the U.S. economy returned to growth in the second half of 2009 after nearly two years of recession, unemployment has remained stubbornly high at 10 percent. Feeding America reported last September that unemployment has played a major role in rising demand for emergency food.

"This is a real challenge for America," said Dennis Smith, director of the Northern Illinois Food Bank. "Hunger has become almost epidemic in this country."

"Annual Poll of Freshmen Shows Effect of Recession" (New York Times)

The recession hit this year’s college freshmen hard, affecting how they chose a school as well as their ability to pay for it, according to an annual nationwide survey released Thursday.

Over all, students were more likely than previous freshmen to have a parent who was unemployed and less likely to have found a job that might help pay for college.

About two-thirds of incoming students said they had “some” or “major” concern about their ability to pay for their education. The percentage of those with “some” concern — 55.4 — was at its highest level since 1971.

The number of students taking out loans was at its highest in nine years, at 53.3 percent.

“We expected that, given what we were seeing last year in the economy, we would see some significant changes in how finances were impacting people’s ability to pay,” said John H. Pryor, director of the Cooperative Institutional Research Program at the University of California, Los Angeles, which conducts the survey.

“What was more surprising,” he said, “was that it goes beyond just that into other areas. Everywhere we turned, whether it was how you chose your college or what do you think you are going to do in college, everywhere the finances piece popped out.”

"AP: More Migration Has Meant More Economic Stress" (Associated Press)

Influx of new residents as recession started worsened its effects, AP review of IRS data shows

Christy Nameche moved with her family to Kendall County, Ill., in 2007, joining thousands of other hope-filled newcomers who made the county No. 1 in population growth in the nation that year.

Nameche liked the farms around her new neighborhood, the fact that she could see the stars at night and the chance to raise her two children with other young families who were pioneering this far-flung Chicago suburb.

Like so many other families, their timing was off.

Just two years later, the developer of Nameche's new neighborhood has gone bankrupt, some neighbors face foreclosure, many lots sit empty and the long-awaited conversion of an adjacent field into a town park is stalled. Kendall County is struggling, another once-booming American locale gone bust.

Fast growth from 2007 to 2008, the early part of the recession, turned out to be a strong predictor of problems as the recession dragged on, according to an Associated Press analysis of recently released Internal Revenue Service migration data, which compares where taxpayers filed their returns from one year to the next.

"Homeowners Rent Out Rooms to Stave off Foreclosure" (San Jose Mercury News)

Reeling from the recession's one-two-three-punch of job woes, climbing mortgage payments, and evaporating equity, desperate Silicon Valley homeowners are dipping into a nearby income stream to avoid foreclosure:

That bedroom just down the hall.

While renting out a room has been around for years, especially in the South Bay's Latino neighborhoods, sharing a home in order to save it has become an increasingly popular way to hang on to the front-door keys to the American dream.

"I'm up against a wall and I had no other place to turn for income," said Rafael Porras, a 50-year-old waiter who began renting out a room in his downtown San Jose condo this month after he was squeezed by pay cuts at work and a mortgage payment about to rise. "But I had to do it because I don't want to walk away from this place. My credit's excellent, and without good credit, you're nobody."

Whether they've rented out rooms in the past to make ends meet, or a job loss has prompted them to tap into their inner landlord for the first time, many people say their rental income is the only thing keeping them from losing their homes. And for many homeowners — even those whose property is worth less than their loan amount — losing their home is not an acceptable option.

If your answer to my question is something along the lines of "disgusted with all those idiots who claim to know what is going on," consider yourself normal.

Comments

[Small Town Gal]

What frustrates me about these stories is how incredibly stupid they are. You notice, especially with them all strung together, that they all follow precisely the same format -- it's like there is a mad lib out there, and "journalists" just fill in the blanks for the story in question. First, introduce us to some individual to humanize it. Quote some schmuck who says that the individual is in a common position. Toss in some misinformation, hash, and propaganda. Voila! News.

The ones about women in the workforce and about social security were especially bad at attributing motivations, trends, and effects in completely the wrong places. The one about women in the workplace was actually offensive. The only jobs left in this economy are part time, service, low-paying crap that typically goes to women because we've got fewer choices. it's the final leg in the destruction of the middle class, and they made it sound like women were taking men's jobs! The stupid: it burns.

[roger]

The squabbling and almost barbaric behavior of politicians
is prof enough that this economy is no longer manageable
As usual the experts feed us with an explanation of the
end product, what is not told (because they have no understanding
of it) is the process and development of this crisis,that
really started right after ww2.
I do believe big changes are in the making.
Possibly Europe will become much more socialistic, while in the
US the great danger is fascism.Glad I'm an old man!

[roger]

@Small town Gal
part time, service, low-paying crap that typically goes to women because we've got fewer choices. it's the final leg in the destruction of the middle class, and they made it sound like women were taking men's jobs! The stupid: it burns.
YOU ARE 100% RIGHT

[HSpencer]

A lot of folks were simply caught with their pants down in this big recession. They weren't looking and taking into account that the lifestyle they were living was really not sustainable. Many who "were aware" of the big cookie crumbling, and were living a moderate and financially safe lifestyle, became caught up as well due to the meltdown of the financial irresponsibility of both lenders and buyers. For these people things should have and would have worked out fine if not for unemployment. Our economy is based on the stereotypical family of four. The family of four need:
Homes, cars, food, clothing, health insurance, school supplies, and a mox-nix of other items, but MOSTLY A JOB TO PAY FOR THEM. When their credit tightens,and layoffs come, all of the above are unattainable. When the listed items become unattainable, the sellers of such items wind down and lay off workers. It is a lose-lose scenario. Once it starts down, it runs faster and faster clearing all other goods and service industries out of the way as well. In other words the flow of life is interrupted, like turning off the water at a faucet a turn at a time until the water is off.
America ran on an illusion of wealth. It is now running slowly on desperation for the middle class. A middle class that was living life without posting a guard. Few were paying attention, and embracing the frugality of living that America was originally built on. What we need is a plug in the dike of unemployment, and a return of the FHA235 home loan program for a 1400 square foot house. That house served well for the Cleaver's in 1970 and will again in this decade.

[Marion Shaw]

The solution is simple.time honored and well established in historical precedence:

Start World War III.

[Matt]

Still not getting better. When I have a paying job I feel positive about tomorrow.

[Robert Morrison]

With over 30 MILLION citizens receiving food stamps how can anyone be going hungery in America???
You think people like Ms. Escarra have a hidden agenda here tugging on heartstrings with bogus claims?
I spend $550 a month on food for my family. If I were on foodstamps I'd get to spend $640!!!
I sure wouldn't starve on foodstamps.

[CrisisMaven]

Nice collection of articles, thanks! No, there is no recovery, it's just that doctors injected painkillers, no the poor patient tries to walk on his broken leg as he doesn't feel it for awhile. After that, he's coming crashing down (http://crisismaven.wordpress.com/2010/02/08/bloom-of-doom-v-we-have-control-of-the-ship-we-have-a-plan/).