United states of hardship

from David Ruccio

The Center on Budget and Policy Priorities has put together a brief snapshot of hardship in America, using end-of-November figures in five important areas:

• 1.6 million people were homeless in 2009 and spent at least part of the year in a shelter; nearly 325,000 of them were children. 
• 44 million people were poor in 2009, 19 million of whom had incomes below half of the poverty line (half of the poverty line corresponds to an income of $5,478 for an individual and $10,977 for a family of four).
• 50 million people lacked access to adequate food at some point in 2009 because they didn’t have enough money for groceries.  Nearly 18 million people lived in households where one or more people had to skip meals or take other steps to reduce their food intake because of lack of resources.
• 51 million people lacked health coverage in 2009.
• 15 million people were unemployed as of October, 6 million of whom had been looking for work for more than half a year.

Since then, the official unemployment rate (U3) has risen to 9.8 percent and the real unemployment rate (U6) stands at 17 percent. The average duration of unemployment now stands at 33.8 weeks, and 6.3 million people have been without a job for over 27 weeks.

Meanwhile, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics, those with a job have been falling further and further behind. Although nonfarm business sector labor productivity increased 2.5 percent during the third quarter of 2010 compared to a year ago (as output increased 4.3 percent and hours worked rose 1.7 percent), real hourly compensation only increased 0.2 percent. Thus, unit labor costs fell by 1.1 percent.

Things are even worse when it comes to nonfinancial corporations, since productivity increased 4.5 percent and unit labor costs fell 3.2 percent. The result? Unit profits increased by 31.2 percent.

Jacob Marley would certainly recognize these United States of Hardship.