Behind the Curve

According to rating agency Standard & Poor's, "there’s a 20% to 25% chance that the U.S. economy will suffer a double-dip recession."

If the following reports are any guide, I reckon the odds are closer to 100% that we are already in one.

"Older Workers Still Struggling After Great Recession" (Huffington Post)

Three years after the Great Recession officially ended, >boomers are still having a hard time making ends meet and finding jobs, according to a new AARP report.

The report, "Boomers and the Great Recession: Struggling to Recover," paints a grim picture of post 50s' mindsets when it comes to their financial well-being. A sample of "current or recent workers" ages 50 to 64 were contacted in October 2010, with a smaller group contacted again in August 2011 to see if boomers felt any differently about their prospects.

"The recession’s effects on older Americans were particularly severe for salary earners in their 50s and early 60s who were counting on more than a few years of additional earnings before retirement and were unlucky enough to lose their jobs."

An overwhelming number of older workers -- who, the study pointed out, have less time than their younger counterparts to recover from job loss or tumbling stock markets and housing values -- felt less secure about their finances.

"Older Workers Find Livelihood in Temping" (Reuters)

CHICAGO - Growing numbers of older Americans who have struggled to find work in the wake of the Great Recession are doing something they once considered unthinkable: They are taking temporary jobs.

And this is one of the best job moves they can make, according to Kerry Hannon, author of the new book "AARP Great Jobs for Everyone 50+" (Wiley).

"But I call it independent contracting, not temping," Hannon says. "It sounds more professional."

While the 5.9 percent unemployment rate for people over age 55 is considerably lower than the 8.1 percent national average, those out of work have a hard time finding full-time jobs, mostly because they are more expensive to hire.

Unemployed people over 55 were jobless an average of 52.7 weeks in August, compared with just 36.1 weeks for younger workers, according to the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics,

Temporary work is providing a solution. Just in the past year, the independent workforce has grown to 16.9 million from 16 million, according to research by MBO Partners. Forty percent of those contractors are 50 and older, and 10 percent are over 65, the Herndon, Virginia-based temporary employment company found.

"Americans Continue to Struggle Post-Recession" (USNews.com)

This week, we reported on the Pew Research Center’s findings that the 2000s were a lost decade for the middle class, as a result of declining household income and shrinking net worth over that 10-year period. Now, Pew reports that in the two years since the end of the Great Recession, Americans continue to shed resources.

In fact, the decline of household median income in the last two years matched the drop that occurred during the recession itself, Pew reports. In 2009, when the recession ended, median household income was $52,195, and in 2011 (the most recent year available), it was $50,054, a decline of 4.1 percent. Back in 2007, before the recession, median household income was $54,489. That leads Pew to conclude that “recovery from the Great Recession is bypassing the nation’s households.”

"Great Recession Still Slamming the Middle Class" (NBC News)

The poor stayed poor and the rich got richer, but the middle slipped a few more rungs down the economic ladder.

More than five years after the Great Recession began, the lingering impact of the worst downturn in a half-century continues to deplete the standard of living of middle-class American households.

Median household income, after adjusting for inflation, fell 1.5 percent last year to $50,054, according to the Census Bureau's annual report on income and poverty issued released Wednesday. The poverty rate, at 15 percent, remained stuck at the highest level since 1993.

"More Americans Added to Food Stamps Than Find Jobs" (The Weekly Standard)

An alarming data point from the minority side of the Senate Budget Committee: More Americans are being added to food stamps than are finding jobs. The data is detailed in this chart, provided by the committee:

As the chart shows, between April-June 2012 (the most recent three month block for which government data is available), only 200,000 jobs have been created while 265,000 individuals have been added to the food stamp rolls. Additionally, in that time period, 246,000 workers were awarded disability.

"Jobless Rates Increased In More Than Half The Country In August" (Business Insider)

Friday's unemployment report won't change that hiring is the foremost topic on everyone's mind.

In August, unemployment rates increased in 26 states — including 11 swing states in this year's election — 12 states remained unchanged and 12 states had decreased rates, according to the BLS report.

The numbers showed Nevada has the highest unemployment rate in the country at 12.1 percent, and North Dakota has the lowest at 3.0 percent.

"FedEx Total Package Shipments Point to Sharp Decline in GDP" (Pragmatic Capitalism)

Interesting data point here via Bloomberg Economics Brief:

CHART OF THE DAY:  From today’s “Bloomberg Economics Brief,” Bloomberg economist Rich Yamarone releases a chart showing that FedEx’s total U.S. package shipments may indicate a bleak outlook for economic activity. Is a recession in the cards?

Federal Express Cuts 2013 Profit Forecast on Economy, Fuel

FedEx Corp., an economic bellwether as operator of the world’s largest cargo airline, reduced its profit outlook for the second time this year, citing a slower economy. The shipper said its “2012 U.S. GDP growth forecast is 2.2 percent and 1.9 percent for calendar year 2013, which is 0.5 points lower than our fourth-quarter earnings forecast.” “Exports around the world have contracted and the policy choices in Europe, the U.S. and China are having an effect on global trade,” Fred Smith, chief executive officer of the company, said. The company’s ground-delivery business in the U.S., which offers a less expensive alternative to air delivery, posted a sales increase of 7.9 percent to $2.46 billion.

"WTO Cuts Global Trade Growth Outlook" (WA Today)

The World Trade Organisation (WTO) has slashed its 2012 global trade outlook, citing the eurozone debt crisis and weak growth in the US and China as key factors behind the downgrade.

Global trade is now expected to grow 2.5 per cent in 2012 compared with a previous forecast of 3.7 per cent, the WTO said in a statement released in Singapore on Friday.

It also cut its global trade growth outlook for next year to 4.5 per cent from 5.6 per cent.

‘‘The global economy has encountered increasingly strong headwinds since the last WTO Secretariat forecast was issued,’’ the WTO said. ‘‘Output and employment data in the United States have continued to disappoint, while purchasing managers’ indices and industrial production figures in China point to slower growth in the world’s largest exporter.

And finally, we have this:

"Uncertainty Is Adding to U.S. Jobless Rate: Fed Paper" (Reuters)

Uncertainty over the economic outlook has added between one and two percentage points to the U.S. unemployment rate since 2008, according to an estimate from the San Francisco Federal Reserve Bank.

The finding, published on Monday in the regional Fed bank's latest Economic Letter, quantifies for the first time the drag that uncertainty has had on the economy since the Great Recession.

"Had there been no increase in uncertainty in the past four years, the unemployment rate would have been closer to 6 percent or 7 percent than to the 8 percent to 9 percent actually registered," wrote San Francisco Fed research advisors Sylvain Leduc and Zheng Liu.

The Fed sent short-term interest rates to zero in December 2008 to counter the deep recession, and bought trillions of dollars of bonds to further lower long-term interest rates.

Hmmm. Perhaps that last paragraph tells us all we need to know about where much of the uncertainty is coming from: the Fed itself.

In this weekend's podcast, I will explore the success -- or lack thereof -- of Bernanke & Co.'s pointless machinations and explain why I think "The Fed's Days Are Numbered."

Stay tuned.

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Comments

[Tom]

It's obvious to anyone paying any attention at all that things have not gotten any better and, in fact, continue to get worse. Between the fictitious "recovery" and the stats you point out above - standards of living for most Americans continues to drop, forcing hard choices going in to winter.
With gas prices rising every day now, the effect on food prices won't be far behind.

i've noticed that it's really hard to find a decent sandwich for under $10 anymore and that, as in mortgages, commercial real estate doesn't seem to be climbing out of the hole either. Fed policy is a bad joke (on us) and isn't going to solve anything in the long run. At this point, i'm waiting for the lights to go out and it stays that way, because that's where we're headed.

[Tom]

(i wanted to add this, but hit the submit button too soon)
http://www.blacklistednews.com/21_Facts_About_America%27s_Decaying_Infrastructure_That_Will_Blow_Your_Mind/21611/0/38/38/Y/M.html?utm_source=twitterfeed&utm_medium=twitter
21 Facts About America's Decaying Infrastructure That Will Blow Your Mind
(from article)
#1 The American Society of Civil Engineers has given America's crumbling infrastructure an overall grade of D.

#2 There are simply not enough roads in the United States today. Each year, traffic jams cost the commuters of America 4.2 billion hours and about 2.8 million gallons of gasoline.

#3 It is being projected that Americans will spend an average of 160 hours stuck in traffic annually by the year 2035.

#4 Approximately one-third of all roads in the United States are in substandard condition.

#5 Close to a third of all highway fatalities are due "to substandard road conditions, obsolete road designs, or roadside hazards."

#6 One out of every four bridges in America either carries more traffic than originally intended or is in need of repair.

#7 Repairing all of the bridges in the United States that need repair would take approximately 140 billion dollars.

#8 According to the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, our decaying transportation system costs the U.S. economy about 78 billion dollars annually in lost time and fuel.

#9 All over America, asphalt roads are being ground up and are being replaced with gravel roads because they are cheaper to maintain. The state of South Dakota has transformed over 100 miles of asphalt roads into gravel roads, and 38 out of the 83 counties in the state of Michigan have transformed at least some of their asphalt roads into gravel roads.

#10 There are 4,095 dams in the United States that are at risk of failure. That number has risen by more than 100 percent since 1999.

#11 Of all the dam failures that have happened in the United States since 1874, a third of them have happened during the past decade.

#12 Close to half of all U.S. households do not have access to bus or rail transit.

#13 Our aging sewer systems spill more than a trillion gallons of untreated sewage every single year. The cost of cleaning up that sewage each year is estimated to be greater than 50 billion dollars.

#14 It is estimated that rolling blackouts and inefficiencies in the U.S. electrical grid cost the U.S. economy approximately 80 billion dollars a year.

#15 It is being projected that by the year 2020 every single major container port in the United States will be handling at least double the volume that it was originally designed to handle.

#16 All across the United States, conditions at many of our state parks, recreation areas and historic sites are deplorable at best. Some states have backlogs of repair projects that are now over a billion dollars long....

More than a dozen states estimate that their backlogs are at least $100 million. Massachusetts and New York's are at least $1 billion. Hawaii officials called park conditions "deplorable" in a December report asking for $50 million per year for five years to tackle a $240 million backlog that covers parks, trails and harbors.

#17 Today, the U.S. spends about 2.4 percent of GDP on infrastructure. Meanwhile, China spends about 9 percent of GDP on infrastructure.

#18 In the United States today, approximately 16 percent of our construction workers are unemployed.

#19 China has plans to build 55,000 miles of highways by the year 2020. If all of those roads were put end to end, it would be longer than the total length of the entire U.S. interstate system.

#20 The World Economic Forum ranks U.S. infrastructure 23rd in the world, and we fall a little bit farther behind the rest of the developed world every single day.

#21 It has been projected that it would take 2.2 trillion dollars over the next 5 years just to repair our existing infrastructure. That does not even include a single penny for badly needed new infrastructure.

(there's more)

[sharonsj]

"Independent contracting" is another way of screwing workers. It means you only get paid for a limited time period, you have no benefits like sick days or health insurance, you are responsible for all taxes, you don't qualify for unemployment insurance, etc. Plus you usually use your own equipment and car.
And it's just another way for corporations to shift costs onto workers.

The new normal for America is impoverishment. I don't see how the Fed's latest move will change anything (other than give more money to the banks). And the politicians don't want to deal with any of the country's problems. No wonder most people are angry but it's a shame they don't understand who and what they should be angry about.

[Alex Gold Goldman]

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