The great American jobs machine is faltering, and it is time for Washington to pay attention. Participation in the workforce is falling, the pace of job creation is anemic, and long-term unemployment remains stubbornly high. Many newly created jobs pay less than those that disappeared during the Great Recession, so real wages are stagnating, and median household income is no higher than it was a quarter of a century ago.
There’s a major crisis building as baby boomers envision golden years that shine the way their parents’ did. One big problem: They don’t have the financial resources or huge generational cohort behind them to support their retirement dreams.
Other studies have shown that idle young adults are missing out on a window to build skills they will need later in life or use the knowledge they acquired in college. Without those experiences, they are less likely to command higher salaries and more likely to be an economic drain on their communities.
On both sides of the Atlantic, and in advanced Pacific Rim economies like Singapore and Japan, the swift decline of childbirth drives some of the world’s most serious social problems. Virtually all Americans understand at this point that the crises in our public and private pension systems and in old age programs like Medicare are largely a result of the baby bust. Our entitlement programs were based on the assumption that each generation would be larger than the last. As that assumption has been proven untrue, many of our most important social programs are becoming unaffordable.
As late as the 80s, California was democratic in a fundamental sense, a place for outsiders and, increasingly, immigrants—roughly 60 percent of the population was considered middle class. Now, instead of a land of opportunity, California has become increasingly feudal. According to recent census estimates, the state suffers some of the highest levels of inequality in the country. By some estimates, the state’s level of inequality compares with that of such global models as the Dominican Republic, Gambia, and the Republic of the Congo.
About two-thirds of Californians with assets of $1 million or more actually feel better off now than before the 2008 financial crisis, a report from BMO Private Bank said. And roughly the same portion say they expect the economy to continue its recovery in the next year.
The American Community Survey (ACS) and the Puerto Rico Community Survey (PRCS) ask respondents age 1 year and over whether they lived in the same residence 1 year ago. For people who lived in a different residence, the location of their previous residence is collected. The state-to-state migration flows are created from tabulations of the current state (including the District of Columbia and Puerto Rico) of residence crossed by state of residence 1 year ago. Tables of ACS state-to-state flows are available going back to the 2005 ACS – the first year of full implementation of the survey. People living in group quarters (e.g. adult correctional facilities, nursing facilities, college/university student housing, and military quarters) were added to the sample for the first time starting with the 2006 ACS.
The rich and educated are more likely to marry, to marry each other, and to produce rich and educated children. But this virtual cycle turns vicious for the poor.
The nation’s statistical agencies are preparing to downsize economic reports tracking local economies and foreign investment in the U.S., as part of a new wave of budget cuts that is forcing the agencies to re-evaluate how they allocate resources in order to maintain the most prominent economic data.
In all, states welcomed more than 8.9 million new residents in 2012. Census data released last week paints a portrait of each state’s new crop of residents, showing significant variation across different demographic groups.
Teenagers and young adults are still mired in dire levels of unemployment in Los Angeles County, years after the recession officially ended. New estimates from the U.S. Census Bureau reveal that last year, the unemployment rate for Angelenos ages 20 to 24 had stagnated at 19%. Joblessness was even higher for Angelenos between the ages of 16 and 19, with 41% of those in the labor force still unemployed, according to the new estimates from the American Community Survey.
As California marks the Labor Day holiday, there’s a slow-motion debate over the strength of its recovery from the worst recession since the Great Depression and thus its prospects for improving employment.
When I started following the research on child well-being about two decades ago, the focus was almost always girls’ problems—their low self-esteem, lax ambitions, eating disorders, and, most alarming, high rates of teen pregnancy. Now, though, with teen births down more than 50 percent from their 1991 peak and girls dominating classrooms and graduation ceremonies, boys and men are increasingly the ones under examination. Their high school grades and college attendance rates have remained stalled for decades. Among poor and working-class boys, the chances of climbing out of the low-end labor market—and of becoming reliable husbands and fathers—are looking worse and worse.
A report by the California Budget Project says the addition of 750,00 jobs over the past three years has still left much of the state in double-digit unemployment.
For the fourth consecutive summer, teen employment has stayed anchored around record lows, prompting experts to fear that a generation of youth is likely to be economically stunted with lower earnings and opportunities in years ahead.