Pensions Aren’t the Problem for State Budgets
This is a crosspost by AFSCME Secretary-Treasurer Lee Saunders from Huffington Post.
Rupert Murdoch’s Wall Street Journal, the Pravda of the 1 percent, is at it again, continuing its push to gut the retirement security of millions of middle class workers across the country while enriching the Wall Street moneymen who just three years ago took our economy over the cliff.
Virtually everyone agrees that our nation faces a retirement security crisis, but the Journal last week published a shameful op-ed calling for the elimination of pensions for nurses, firefighters, corrections officers and others who still have them. Having punched private-sector workers retirement in the gut, these folks won’t be happy until the whole concept of a secure retirement for working Americans is a thing of the past.
The typical AFSCME member — men and women who plow our streets, care for the sick, protect our children, clean our buildings and keep our communities safe — receives a pension of approximately $19,000 a year after a career of public service. The employees have earned and paid for these pensions. Employee contribution rates commonly amount to 3 percent to 10 percent of their paychecks. These contributions, combined with investment earnings, usually account for 75 percent or more of all pension benefit funding. Read the rest of this entry »
For 99 Percent, No Recovery in Jobs or Income
The nation’s so-called economic recovery hasn’t been one for either job growth or income, according to two new reports out today.
- Real median annual household income fell 3.2 percent from the official start of the recession in December 2007 to its end in June 2009, income then dropped another 6.7 percent over the next 24 months, according to the consulting firm Sentier Research (the firm charges for its report).
- There has been no net improvement in the number of job openings since March, the Economic Policy Institute (EPI) finds. Unemployed workers in August totaled 14 million and EPI economist Heidi Shierholz calculates the Job Seekers Ratio (the ratio of unemployed workers to job openings) was 4.6-to-1 in August, a deterioration from the July ratio of 4.3-to-one.
And Wall Street wonders why protesters are camped at its doors.
Wealth Gap Widens for Blacks, Latinos
The median net worth of white households is 20 times greater than that of black households and 18 times greater than that of Latino households, according to a new study by the Pew Research Center, which attributes the increase to the decline in the housing market and the ensuing recession. From 2005 to 2009, inflation-adjusted median wealth fell by 66 percent among Latino households and 53 percent among black households, compared with just 16 percent among white households. From Pew:
As a result of these declines, the typical black household had just $5,677 in wealth (assets minus debts) in 2009, the typical Hispanic household had $6,325 in wealth and the typical white household had $113,149.
Moreover, about a third of black (35 percent) and Hispanic (3 percent) households had zero or negative net worth in 2009, compared with 15 percent of white households. In 2005, the comparable shares had been 29 percent for blacks, 23 percent for Hispanics and 11 percent for whites.
June Job Growth Appalling: 18,000
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The nation gained a stunningly small number of jobs in June–18,000–while the U.S. unemployment rate rose from 9.1 percent in May to 9.2 percent last month, according to Department of Labor data released this morning. Analysts had predicted jobs would grow by 100,000 in June. This is the third consecutive month the unemployment rate has worsened and the worst unemployment rate of the year. Hiring by companies, which excludes government agencies, was the weakest since May 2010.
Employment was essentially flat in construction and manufacturing, while health care employment continued to grow (+14,000) as did employment in leisure and hospitality (+34,000).
Some 39,000 jobs were lost in the public sector, and Economic Policy Institute (EPI) economist Josh Bivens points out that the loss of public-sector jobs is a huge obstacle to growth. Nearly all of the 430,000 jobs that have been lost in the public sector during the current recovery have been lost at the local level. Local government employment is now 407,000 lower than it was at the beginning of the recovery, and almost half of those losses have been education workers.
But overall, hiring is “barely happening,” says EPI economist Heidi Shierholz.
Report: Equality = Prosperity
America is slowly recovering from the Great Recession and long-term economic growth depends on how well we integrate the poor and people of color into the mainstream economy, according to a brand new report.
It’s a simple matter of demographics say Sarah Treuhaft of the think tank Policy Link and David Madland of the Center for American Progress, co-authors of “Prosperity 2050: Is Equity the Superior Growth Model?”
Throughout the recession, the incomes of poor and lower- and middle-income families have stagnated and their quality of life has declined. That is especially true for people of color, who are rapidly becoming the majority population of the United States and will certainly be so by 2050. That means that our future prosperity will depend on people and communities that are currently being left behind.
While the majority of the workforce will soon be people of color, the report says, children of color often attend the worst schools and lack the quality teachers, curricula, classrooms, and extracurricular supports that help middle-class children succeed.
Report: New U.S. Jobs Are Low-Wage
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More than a million private-sector jobs were added to the U.S. economy during the past 12 months, but they were mainly mid- and lower-wage jobs, a new report from the National Employment Law Project (NELP) finds.
The heavy growth in industries like temporary employment services, restaurants and retail and in nursing and residential care facilities, which pay median wages below $13 an hour, suggests that not only are there fewer job opportunities overall now than before the recession, there are fewer well-paying jobs.
While lower-wage industries constituted 23 percent of job loss, they accounted for 49 percent of recent growth. Higher-wage jobs that pay $19 an hour or more made up 40 percent of the job loss, but only 14 percent of job growth.
The Recession Is Officially Over—But Not the Misery
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In case you missed it, the recession is over. Really. In fact, it was over about 15 months ago, according to the National Bureau of Economic Research (NBER), a panel of academic economists based in Cambridge, Mass. They say the recession lasted 18 months, starting in December 2007 and ending in June 2009. That was the longest of any recession since World War II.
Ann Brenoff, writing at WalletPop, explains why you may be excused if you didn’t notice the end of the recession.
There are only a few pesky problems with that declaration: What to do with those 14.9 million or so people who still don’t have jobs (more if you count those who have given up looking out of futility)? Or the foreclosure plague that has wiped out entire communities? Or the fact that food banks are stressed to the breaking point with hungry families? Or that more than a few people can’t remember what the inside of a shopping mall looks like and panic when they misplace a grocery coupon?
‘What Do We Want? JOBS’
Eleanor Arlook, Labor 2010 Florida field communications director, sends us this report.
“What do we want? JOBS! When do we want them? NOW!”
On a warm afternoon this week, chants from a group of protesters echoed through the sparsely filled plaza in front of the Orange County (Orlando, Fla.) court administration building. During the lunch hour, either not many people were taking lunches—or there were just not many people working. In the midst of a Jobs Emergency, it’s sadly likely the latter. Those who were in their offices heard the frustrated cries of “Justice” and “We Need Jobs NOW” creeping through the windows, bouncing through the halls as a nagging reminder that if change does not come now, their job may be next.
The Wednesday protest included Jobs With Justice, the Florida AFL-CIO, AFSCME, Florida Organized Now and the Florida Consumer Action Network, bringing attention to the jobs crisis affecting a record number of Floridians. With nearly 12 percent unemployment, the crisis here is real and immediate action is necessary. Activists participated yesterday in a “die-in” in Orlando as part of a national day of action demanding that politicians stop blocking real recovery. The die-in represented all of the dreams and jobs that have died due to this crisis that Wall Street created.
Target Wall Street Greed, Not Public Employees
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Too often when economic times get tough, scapegoats are found in the wrong places. Wall Street greed and double-dealing sparked much of the nation’s recent near-financial collapse, yet many in the chattering classes instead are attacking public employees for this rolling recession.
Economist Dean Baker puts the situation in perspective:
Fifteen million people are not out of work because of generous public employee pensions. Nor is this the reason that millions of homeowners are underwater in their mortgages and facing the loss of their home. In fact, if we cut all public employee pensions in half tomorrow, it would not create a single job or save anyone’s house. The reason that millions of people are suffering is a combination of Wall Street greed and incredible economic mismanagement.
Study: Recession Has Hit More than Half of Us
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Since the recession began 30 months ago, more than half of all adults in the workforce—55 percent—say that they have either been unemployed, taken a pay cut, had their work hours reduced or have become involuntary part-time workers, according to a new survey by the Pew Research Center’s Social and Demographic Trends Project.
The survey shows the impact of the recession goes far beyond the 9.5 percent of the workforce that is unemployed and the 16.5 percent underemployed. About a third of respondents—32 percent—said they have been unemployed for some period of time during the recession.
The prolonged recession—the longest in recent history—has left a big mark on the country, Paul Taylor, the Pew project director, told ABC News:
What this report demonstrates is the breadth and depth of the impact of this recession on the American public. It’s hit almost everybody in one way or another, and two and a half years after it began, people are still feeling the effects. This is still very much with us.
The survey points to the immediate need for action to create jobs and stem the economic hemorrhaging. But Republicans in Congress have refused to act to create jobs, stop layoffs and help the jobless. Writing today on Huffington Post, AFL-CIO President Richard Trumka says we need a job-centered approach to strengthening the economy. Read Trumka’s Huffington Post column “Jobs Should Come First” here.
