Wages Aren't Keeping Up With Cost of Living In Florida

A report released by the Alliance for a Just Society finds that current wages do not keep up with the cost of living.

The National Job Gap: 7 Job-Seekers for Every Job that Pays Above the Low-Wage Threshold: For every projected job opening above a low-wage threshold of $15 an hour, there were 7 job-seekers in 2012.

Nearly 18 Million Job-Seekers Out of Luck: With 20.8 million job-seekers and 2.9 million projected job openings that pay better than $15 an hour in 2012, there were 17.9 million more job-seekers than jobs that pay above the low-wage threshold.

An Increasing Share of Low-Wage Jobs since End of Great Recession: In terms of actual employment rather than projected openings, the share of U.S. jobs that pay below the $15 an hour low-wage threshold increased from 36.55% in 2009 to 39.45% in 2012. There were 51.4 million low-wage jobs in 2012.

“Jobless Recovery” Masks Loss of Higher-Wage Jobs, Replacement with Low-Wage Jobs: The number of jobs in occupational categories with median wages above $15 an hour dropped by 4 million from 2009 to 2012, masked by an increase of 3.6 million jobs with median wages below $15 an hour.

Sen. Elizabeth Warren pointed out that the minimum wage hasn't kept up with productivity. If the minimum wage did keep up with productivity the minimum wage would be $22.00 hr.

President Obama Economic Speech At JAXPORT Tomorrow

Mark Knoller of CBS News tweets that President Barack Obama will deliver an economic speech tomorrow at the Jacksonville Port Authority.

Actually, Pres Obama delivers his next economy speech tomorrow afternoon at the Jacksonville Port (JAXPORT), FL.

— Mark Knoller (@markknoller) July 24, 2013

Obama will propose raising the more infrastructure spending to create jobs and raising the minimum. These are policies I supported. It appears that Obama has finally given up on the fantasy of a grand bargain and is taking his message to the people.

“Over the last six months, this gridlock has gotten worse,” said Obama. "I am laying out my ideas to give the middle class a better shot. Now it’s time for you to lay out yours.”

I'm glad that Obama is using the bully pulpit.

Income Inequality

The Hamilton Project has done a study on how income inequality social mobility and education. As you can see by the chart; Americans making less aren't moving above their economic status. In America the Haves have more and the have nots are getting poorer.

Figure 1 illustrates the diverging fortunes of children based on their family’s income, as measured by the U.S. Census Bureau. Children in families at the top of the income distribution have experienced sizable gains in their families’ incomes and resources since 1975. Children living in the top 5 percent of families, for instance, have seen a doubling of their families’ incomes. But such gains have been more modest for children in the middle of the distribution, and children living in lower-income families have experienced outright declines in incomes. In fact, in 2011 the bottom 35 percent of children lived in families with lower reported incomes than comparable children thirty-six years earlier.

The Hamilton Project compared a college education to other investments. The findings show it makes financial sense to further the education of young people.

What will hurt the future of education America's young people is the increase in student loan debt.

Over the past decade, the volume and frequency of student loans have increased significantly. The share of twenty-five-year-olds with student debt has risen by about 15 percentage points since 2004, and the amount of student debt incurred by those under the age of thirty has more than doubled (Lee 2013).

Despite these increases, the majority of students appear to borrow prudently. About 90 percent have loan balances less than $50,000, and 40 percent have balances under $10,000 (Fry 2012). Given that a college graduate can expect to earn, on average, about $30,000 more per year than a high school graduate over the course of his or her life, the returns to college appear to warrant the cost of student loans for most students.

House Republicans wanted to raise student loan rates from 3.4 to 8.5 and let rates fluctuate with increases in Tresury notes. Democrats wanted to wanted to lock in rates at 3.4 percent for another two years. House Speaker recessed without bringing up student loan rates. Boehner spent the week failing to pass the Farm bill.

We have one of the two major political parties helping cause income inequality by making college education too expensive for students.

Chart on Wages vs. Corporate Profits

This is the biggest failure of President Obama. The red line represents corporate profits. The blue line is wages. The corporate world has done well after the 2008 Wall Street crash. Wages have not kept up with cost of living expenses. Obama spent much of his first-term with an addictive need to be centrist. Sec. of Treasury Tim Geithner viewed aid for the middle class with contempt.

The economic team went round and round. Geithner would hold his views close, but occasionally he would get frustrated. Once, as [then chairwoman of the Council of Economic Advisers Christina] Romer pressed for more stimulus spending, Geithner snapped. Stimulus, he told Romer, was “sugar,” and its effect was fleeting. The administration, he urged, needed to focus on long-term economic growth, and the first step was reining in the debt.

Austerity measures would only strengthen a recession during an economic downturn. Economists Carmen M. Reinhart & Kenneth S. Rogoff predicted the economic crisis and that policymakers would hurt the recovery by implementing austerity policies. Geithner is too stupid to be Treasury Secretary.

Why the Occupy Wall Street Movement Exists

CNN Money reported this staggering figure on the bonuses of Standard & Poor 500 companies.

After two years of lower pay packages, chief executives at the nation's major companies enjoyed a 36.5% jump in pay last year, according to a leading survey of CEO compensation.

In the other America, census data reports more Americans are no longer middle class.

About 97.3 million Americans fall into a low-income category. Together with the 49.1 million who fall below the poverty line, they number 146.4 million, or 48 percent of the U.S. population.

The majority of Americans live below the poverty line. Meanwhile, CEO bonuses are getting bigger. This is why the Occupy Wall Street movement exists. Both political parties and the conservative base want to protect the status quo. The tea party movement claims to be founded to protest the bailout. The truth is they love corporate power. Cue Tim Nerenz, Ph.D.

You can’t be for the poor and against the things that end poverty.

You can’t be against the corporations who create the jobs they need to care for themselves. You can’t be against the Walmarts and Targets who sell quality goods at prices they can afford. You can’t be against the drug companies who treat their chronic diseases.

You aren't for the poor if you support government handouts for corporations and are against a safety net for the poor. Nerenz's libertarian heart would love nothing more than to end Medicare and Social Security. However, Nerenz goes on about how awesome the rich are. Never mind that the rich don't create the jobs he claims they do.

You can’t hate the rich and be for the poor. It is not your place to tell another how many steps forward out of poverty you will allow before you punish the next - nobody made you Simon. Each person decides for himself/herself how much is enough, how much to give back, who to give it back to, and in exchange for what. If you are unhappy with how your sister spends her millions, make millions of your own and do with them as you see fit.

Don't go hating Goldman Sachs for selling their investors garbage and then betting on their investors to lose. Goldman Sachs is creating jobs by laying off their own employees.

Side note: Nerenz got his PH.D from the online school Athabasca University. If I was Nerenz, I wouldn't brag about that PH.D.

Update: a comment says that Nerenz got his PH.D from Northcentral University. I will note that Northcentral University is also an online school with a worse reputation.

In 2011 the US Department of Education determined Northcentral was one of 75 institutions that had failed its 2009-2010 financial responsibility test, and would be required to post a letter of credit in order to for students to receive federal financial aid.

Along with Northcentral University, other schools that failed were Academy for Five Element Acupuncture, Biblical Theological Seminary, Florida Christian College and a host of other Christian schools. Remember this when Republicans say intelligent design should be taught in K-12 school.

Short answer: Nerenz is posing as a conservative intellectual with a garbage education.

David Axelrod Memo

President Barack Obama's political adviser David Axelrod sent out a memo to Democrats advocating for the passage of the American Jobs Act. The memo is preaching to the choir. That isn't a bad thing.

The Occupy Wall Street movement has created an opening for the Obama administration to push the jobs bill. The bill wasn't going to pass with Obama failing again at bipartisanship. The only slim chance this bill has of passing is if Republicans fear for their political survival. Republicans that vote against the bill will be labeled by Obama and the DNC as placing tax cuts for the rich above job creation.

David Axelrod Memo

Rick Scott: Don't Raise the Debt Ceiling

Gov. Rick Scott is either pandering to the tea party or is absolutely clueless about the effects not raising the debt ceiling would have on Florida.

"The impact would be minimal," Scott said.

The markets have already started to panic about the debt ceiling not being raised.



Despite this Scott says the markets will be just fine.

"I don't think anybody knows, because it's never happened," he said. "I believe the markets understand where the federal government is. They understand where the spending is, so I think the market has already priced it in."

Several states will go broke without federal revenue. Scott's own internal report shows that health care services would be shutdown. There is uncertainty in what other Florida agencies would have to shutdown. Scott's solution is don't raise the debt ceiling.

Scott was thrown off in the CNN interview when it was pointed out to him the debt is not current spending but repayment previous borrowed money from past bills created by Congress. Scott also sticks to the talking points. When Scott is forced off the talking points he sounds clueless. Scott is so clueless that he is advocating that the United States breaks the 14th amendment and not pay its debt.



Update: Adam Weinstein has harsh words for Scott's appearance on CNN.

Scott's latest crusade is to argue against any rise in the federal debt ceiling—an issue in which he has no official say, and whose basic economic consequences he seems to grasp not one jot. (This week, Scott said Florida would see no effects from a US default; his opponent in last year's gubernatorial race, former state CFO Alex Sink, called his statement "clueless...That's Florida Budgeting 101.") The beleaguered guv took his case to CNN today, and managed to get himself yelled at by two anchors. At one point, Ali Velshi gave up. "Why is this difficult for you to understand, governor?"

Futures Market Down

The futures market is taking a big dive. Wall Street is officially in panic mode. Congress needs to raise the debt ceiling ASAP.

Moody's Reviewing Federal Government's Credit Rating

Moody's Investors Service is reviewing the United States AAA ratings. Interest rates will increase if the Treasury Department loses its AAA rating.

Moody's reasons for doing the credit review.

The review of the US government's bond rating is prompted by the possibility that the debt limit will not be raised in time to prevent a missed payment of interest or principal on outstanding bonds and notes.

As such, there is a small but rising risk of a short-lived default.

Moody's considers the probability of a default on interest payments to be low but no longer to be de minimis. An actual default, regardless of duration, would fundamentally alter Moody's assessment of the timeliness of future payments, and a Aaa rating would likely no longer be appropriate. However, because this type of default is expected to be short-lived, and the expected loss to holders of Treasury bonds would be minimal or non-existent, the rating would most likely be downgraded to somewhere in the Aa range.

Fact: if the federal government defaults will pay more to bondholders. The federal government will go into greater debt. The Republicans negotiation position of bringing the federal government to the brink of default is not a fiscally conservative position. The current Republican Party position is fiscal nihilism.

Unemployment Will Continue

This is a Federal Reserve graphic of what unemployment will look like in the next few years. There is no light in the near horizon. Part of the problem aggregate demand. The poor and middle class have less money to spend. That is why the GDP has been hovering under 3 percent this year.

Obama has sought the advice of CEOs from Fortune 500 companies. What they have been telling Obama is corporate tax cuts are needed. This isn't a change of position. While progressives believed that Obama was their knight; Obama said during the 2008 campaign that he would consider cutting corporate taxes. Obama's focus on job creation has been to appoint David Cote, CEO of Honeywell, and John Lechleiter, CEO of Eli Lilly & Co. to the Jobs and Competitiveness Council. The chair of the council is Jeffrey Immelt, CEO of General Electric. GE paid zero taxes in 2010. GE also received $3.2 billion tax return.

Obama has appointed men that are using their White House position to push for more corporate tax cuts.

fomcprojtabl20110622

It's the Economy, Obama People

Economist Brad Delong served in the Clinton administration. Delong knows several people in the Obama administration and is amazed by how out of touch they are.

When people in the White House ask me whether I think Obama's SOTU address should be about tax reform or Social Security reform (i.e., 2/3 Social Security benefit cuts, 1/3 tax increases offered by the administration--and God alone knows what happens after that), I want to say: Why not make the SOTU address about jobs and economic recovery?

Perhaps the Obama administration need to watch the documentary The War Room. The movie chronicles the successful 1992 Bill Clinton campaign. James Carville wrote the words "the economy. Stupid." Many Americans are either unemployed or underemployed. President Obama needs to talk about the economy and jobs. If Obama claims the tax cuts will stimulate the economy then he and the American people will be sadly disappointed.

Why the Lame Duck Session is Important to Obama

Newt Gingrich went on cable news to show his compassionate conservative side. Gingrich declared unemployment insurance is "money for doing nothing." There are a lot of people not working because job growth has been miserable. The Department of Labor released the unemployment numbers. It ain't pretty.

The unemployment rate edged up to 9.8 in November, and nonfarm payroll was little changed (+39,000), the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics reported today. Temporary help services and health care continued to add more jobs over the month, while employment fell in retail trade. Employment in most major industries changed little in November.

This is why I laughed when Rick Scott said the Affordable Health care Act would be a job killer. Retail is affected when the economy takes a downturn. People have less money to spend. People get sick, regardless of economic conditions. Government money is being pumped into the private heal care system at a greater rate because of so-called Obamacare. The law will mandate millions of more Americans buying health insurance. This means more people getting check-ups and treatment. Scott didn't exactly turn down Medicare money when he ran Columbia/HCA. As the $1.7 billion fine levied by the Justice Department would indicate.

The lack of job growth has gotten so bad that Federal Reserve chairman Ben Bernake in quietly asking Congress to pass more stimulus. It is unheard of for a Federal Reserve chairman to advocate the passage of legislation.

Treasury Sec. Tim Geithner is negotiating with Republicans on extending the tax cuts. Given the way the Obama administration has been horrible at negotiating it would not be surprising if no unemployment extension is passed. Repubicans are playing chicken with the Democrats. Wanna guess which side will win?

Sadly, Democrats have poll numbers supporting extending unemployment benefits and letting the tax cuts for those making above $250,000 expire. Bloggers Joy-Ann Reid and Benjamin Kirby will stress that progressives must support Obama even though the president is allegic to policies progressives support. (Not an exciting GOTV message for 2012). Progressives should not support Obama when his fiscal policies hurt millions of Americans.

Right now Obama has American support for ending the upper-income bracket Bush tax cuts and extending unemployment. The Fedrral Reserve chairman is publicly backing more stimulus spending. The lame duck session is Obama's best chance to accomplish these legislative priorities and he is negotiating away his best opportunity. Things will only get worse when John Boehner officially becomes House Speaker.

If Republicans snatch victory when Obama has the advantage then the only reason to support him is because he is not a Republican. Obama has the offer more than not being Sarah Palin if he wants to get re-elected.

Republicans Set to Derail Financial Reform

Bank of America is ecstatic about Republicans taking control of the House of Representatives.

"We had been disappointed with a number of legislative outcomes with the past Congress, and so we look forward to better outcomes with this Congress," said Peter Garuccio, a spokesman for the American Bankers Association in Washington.

In April of this year, Mitch McConnell and John Cornyn came to Wall Street and asked for more campaign contributions to the Republican Party. Bank of America spokesman Garuccio it would be huge if Republicans can repeal Durbin Amendment. The amendment barred credit card fees to retalers.

Eric Cantor has vowed to cut funding so regulations can not be properly enforced.

CANTOR: The House has the power of the appropriations process and the leverage that comes with that essentially puts us in a position to deny the administration funding for promulgating the regulations that carry through the missions of these two bills…And that’s what the American people are expecting. They want us to focus on job creation first they results.

BARTIROMO: So that’s what you’re going to do? You’re going to deny funding then? That’s one of your tools in the toolbox, deny funding?

CANTOR: Well, it is a check that this public is looking for on this runaway agenda of this administration. They don’t want to see any more spending, especially if it promotes policies that kill jobs. That’s what you’ve got, both with the Obamacare bill and the Dodd-Frank bill.

Cantor claims the Dodd-Frank bill is a job killer. How many jobs did Wall Street created when mortgage-backed securities, credit default swaps and subprime loans all blew up?





Not a single job was created the year of the Wall Street meltdown. Cantor and other Republicans (and to a lesser extent Democrats) ignore the Wall Street flash crash on May 6th of this year. U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission and the Commodity Futures Trading Commission released a joint report to the Senate. The report illustrates how unstable the market still is.

Between 2:40 p.m. and 3:00 p.m., approximately 2 billion shares traded with a total volume exceeding $56 billion. Over 98% of all shares were executed at prices within 10% of their 2:40 p.m. value. However, as liquidity completely evaporated in a number of individual securities and ETFs,11 participants instructed to sell (or buy) at the market found no immediately available buy interest (or sell interest) resulting in trades being executed at irrational prices as low as one penny or as high as $100,000. These trades occurred as a result of so-called stub quotes, which are quotes generated by market makers (or the exchanges on their behalf) at levels far away from the current market in order to fulfill continuous two-sided quoting obligations even when a market maker has withdrawn from active trading.

Republicans argue for no regulation. That is a fiscal policy only an anarchist could get behind.

Sen. Shelby Wants to Gut Financial Reform

Richard Shelby would most likely become chairman of the Senate Committee on Finance if Republicans take over the Senate. Shelby made it clear to ABC News that he plans to gut the Financial Reform bill.

"The bill is so sweeping and such a game changer in many ways that it's incumbent upon us to revisit it," Shelby said at the Reuters Washington Summit.

Yes, things were working so well before. That is why taxpayers were left paying for the bank bailout. Financial institutions were taking huge risks with naked credit default swaps. AIG sold too many naked CDS. AIG was unable to pay all the financial institutions that bought CDS. AIG nearly went under and other troubled financial institutions could not get the CDS revenue owed to them.

Federal Reserve Chairman Ben Bernake and Tresury Sec. had this revealing conversation about AIG.

On Wednesday, September 17th, a day after the Fed agreed to inject eighty-five billion dollars of taxpayers’ money into A.I.G., Bernanke asked Paulson to accompany him to Capitol Hill and make the case for a congressional bailout of the entire banking industry. “We can’t keep doing this,” Bernanke told Paulson. “Both because we at the Fed don’t have the necessary resources and for reasons of democratic legitimacy, it’s important that the Congress come in and take control of the situation.”

Shelby wants to maintain the status quo.

"I don't believe it's good for business, it's not good for the financial sector and ultimately I don't believe it's going to be good for credit for a lot of people who need it. It's gonna cost," Shelby said.

I have no problem with the free market and people making money. My concern is systemic risk that could cause a depression. There is a difference between encouraging free market growth and reckless financial practices. Shelby would be encouraging the latter.

Shelby has set his sights on the newly created Consumer Financial Protection Bureau.

"The consumer agency bothers me the most," said Shelby, who failed to reach a compromise with Democrats and voted against the bill. "I thought the creation of it and the way it was created was a mistake," he said.

Notice Shelby didn't offer an alternative to make sure that consumers aren't vulnerable to shady financial practices. It is absolute insanity for Republicans to think different results will be achieved using the same faulty financial practices.

Shelby saves his most wingnuttery attack for Elizabeth Warren.

"I believe she's got a big ax to grind and she's sharpening that ax," said Shelby. "I don't think that you need somebody in a position like that with all these preconceived ideas and I believe she has a lot of them."

Warren is serving the American people and not special interests. Warren hasn't been afraid to put Treasury Sec. Tim Geithner in the hot seat. Sen. Chris Dodd has been against Warren's nomination. Warren is scaring members of both political parties. She must be doing something right.

Fiscal Illness

"That Wall Street view of itself as a victim has prompted much of the private murmurings and the unfortunate — or worse — outburst from Stephen A. Schwarzman, who likened the administration’s plan for taxes on private equity to “when Hitler invaded Poland in 1939.” Mr. Schwarzman later apologized for the “inappropriate analogy.”

Now Mr. Loeb, who manages about $3.4 billion at his firm, Third Point Partners, has articulated in a more thoughtful way what a lot of others in finance and business are saying.

“We have given a great deal of thought about the impact that public policy has on individual companies, industries and the economy generally,” he said. Third Point has sold its investments in big banks as a result of “regulatory headwinds”; got rid of its stake in Wellpoint, which Mr. Loeb described as “a statistically cheap stock owned by several hedge funds, but which we saw as being overly exposed to unpredictable government regulation”; and taken a short position against for-profit education companies as a result of “the government’s increased willingness to use its regulatory muscle.”

Mr. Loeb’s views, irrespective of their validity, point to a bigger problem for the economy: If business leaders have a such a distrust of government, they won’t invest in the country. And perception is becoming reality."

- "Why Wall Street Donors Are Deserting Obama", New York Times

Translation into English: Wall Street investors were perfectly OK with holding equities in banks that over-leveraged themselves to the point where they almost brought down the entire American economic system. If the government hadn't stepped in to remove debt from balance sheets of the banks, their financial house of cards would have collapsed. But when that very same government wants to regulate the banks so unstable situations like this never happen again, then Wall Street investors step back and say, "Woah! It's too risky to invest in banks, and it's all Obama's fault!

Of those who think this makes sense, exactly what mental illness do they suffer from?

While my political stances remained on the left, as I've progressed through adulthood, my notions for taking action in politics have shifted from the hard left to more moderate positions. In early adulthood, I took the easy way out: If everyone just believed what I believed, then society would be great! But as I grew up, I realized many people were never going to harbor the same positions I have. That's just the way it is.

Many of those people, it turns out, have lots of money.

For a society to function properly, everyone must play nice with each other. I may not agree with the lifestyles of those who think they need to make multi-millions of dollars per year to be happy, but my personal biases against them shouldn't infringe upon their rights. And this is a good thing.

Under the capitalist system we teach school children that we purportedly live under, those who want to be millionaires create jobs for the rest of us. They get to be super rich because we work for them, and in turn, I get a house, car, 3.4 kids, and big ass TV with one zillion cable channels out of the deal. (This deal hasn't shaken out well for me. So far, I got the car, but people keep hitting it.) This is the unwritten social contract of the American dream. It's certainly not the deal that Marx wanted, but hey -- fuck him and his cat. I'll take the deal. And I'm willing to play nice with those I disagree with if they keep up their end of the deal.

Society risks breaking down, though, when the rich choose not to keep up their end of the deal. The rich have every right to make as much money as they want. But what happens when the investment behavior of the rich becomes reckless? Well, we all should know what happens because we're living through it right now.

The passage I quoted from the New York Times is only quotable because of its surreal quality. Read it over a couple more times. Swish it around in your brain for a couple minutes. Ask yourself if the comedic ethics of Monty Python took over American society when our backs were turned?

Remind yourself that the previous sentence I wrote is a serious question.

If the New York Times has summarized the mindset of Wall Street investors -- and I'm afraid they have -- then Wall Street is certifiably nuts. But the Street holds the money; hence the power. For any economic legislation to be effective, it must address Wall Street greed encroaching into the right of employment for willing working class Americans. In short, legislation must combat Wall Street's attempt to erode the social contract which insures the American dream. Why? Because, despite what the investors on Wall Street think, they can't make as much money as the middle class is employed and happy.

One day, maybe Wall Street will realize that they need us as much as we need them.

A Side Effect of Florida's Bad Economy

"The State of Working Florida 2010" report noted the decline in Florida's economy from December 2007 to April 2010. Birth rates have fallen 8 percent since 2007. A Pew Research Center report found 72 percent of parents do not plan on having more children because of the financial burden. None of this is surprising given the current economic outlook. It is rather unsettling.

Update: the Brookings Institute examines fertility rates. Birth rates still exceeded deaths in 2009. Fertility rates fell to 2.1 percent in 2009. The numbers are still better than the lows of the mid-1970s. Fear not. Americans are not about to become extinct.

The State of Working Florida 2010

Florida International University released economic department released a must read "The State of Working Florida 2010" on Labor Day. The report takes a devastating look on how the recession has damaged Florida's economy. Reading the report is the economic equivalent of staring at a car wreak. The numbers are ugly. A disturbing trend that happened before the depression and is now taking place in Florida and the rest of America is the rich get richer as the poor get poorer.

The gap between top and bottom earners increased again after the previous year’s decline. The top 20% earned 3.55 times what the bottom 10% earned per hour.

So much for trickle down economics.

Florida needs to create 900,000 to get back to the less than stellar pre-recession employment numbers of December 2007. Many people who are employed are forced to take part-time jobs. 18.4% are underemployed. Long-term unemployment has increased. There is no bright side to the FIU report. Below are the numbers.

Employment

* The unemployment rate in Florida reached an all time high in March 2010 of 12.3%, three times what it had been before the recession started.

* African Americans had the highest unemployment rate, averaging 15.4% in 2009, compared to 11.6% for Hispanics and 8.9% for Non-Hispanic Whites. African Americans also had the highest increase in unemployment, adding 7 percentage points, compared to 4.2 percentage points and 3.8 percentage points respectively.

* By April 2010, Florida was missing over 900,000 jobs.

* Workers who have managed to keep their jobs are on average working fewer hours. Average weekly hours per employee fell from 35.4 in 2007 to 35.0 in 2009.

* Underemployment, which includes people who are not working enough hours and who are discouraged from looking for work, has risen from an average of 8.0% in 2007 to 18.4% in 2009, or almost one in five workers.

* Over a third of the unemployed (37.2%) have been out of work longer than 6 months in Florida.

* Men have higher unemployment levels than women for the first time due to heavy losses in industries such as construction, which are heavily male, and less impact on sectors where women tend to be employed such as Education and Health Services.

Wages

*Wages for the top 20% of earners increased by 1.6% in 2009 while wages for the bottom 20% remained flat.

* The median hourly wage for very low-wage earners, the bottom 10%, declined from $8.02 to $7.97 per hour from 2008 to 2009.

* The gap between top and bottom earners increased again after the previous year’s decline. The top 20% earned 3.55 times what the bottom 10% earned per hour.

* The gap between men’s and women’s wages widened back to 2004 levels. Women’s wages dropped from $15.16 per hour in 2008 to $14.25 in 2009 while men’s wages remained essentially flat at close to $17.00 per hour.

* Wages for African American workers dropped by $0.51 per hour (3.85%), while wages for Hispanic workers remained flat and increased for White non-Hispanic workers by $0.19 (1.13%).

* In 2008, the gap between wages for minority and White workers was at its narrowest point since the early 90’s for Hispanic workers and since the early 80’s for African Americans. But the recession has erased these gains, most significantly for African American workers who went from 78.6 percent of White worker’s wages in 2008 to 74.8 percent in 2009.

Jobs

* From December 2007, when the recession officially started, to March 2010, Florida lost an average of 28,000 jobs per month, or almost 1,000 jobs per day.

* Construction jobs started declining in Florida in July 2006, 17 months before the official start of the recession. In total, the construction industry lost 331,900 (48.3%) jobs between July 2006 and January of 2010.

* Of the other major industries in the state, Professional and Business Services lost 142,500 jobs, Manufacturing lost 82,500 jobs, Retail trade has lost 105,800 jobs, and Leisure and Hospitality has lost 74,000 jobs.

* The only industry which did not lose jobs from 2007 to 2009 was Education and Health Services, which grew by 3.3%, adding 33,900 jobs.

* Through the first 6 months of 2010, employment in Florida has grown at an annualized rate of 2.3%. At this rate, it will take over 4 years for employment in Florida to return to pre-recession levels.

Eating words is Rich

Frank Rich, 2/14/2009:

The G.O.P. doesn’t recognize that it emerged from the stimulus battle even worse off than when it started. That obliviousness gives the president the opening to win more ambitious policy victories than last week’s. Having checked the box on attempted bipartisanship, Obama can now move in for the kill.

Frank Rich, 9/12/2010:

NO, he can’t. President Obama can’t reverse the unemployment numbers by Election Day. He can’t get even a modest new stimulus bill past the Party of No, and even if he could, there would be few jobs to show for it until (maybe) 2011. Nor can he rewrite the history of his administration. Its signal accomplishments to date are an initial stimulus package that was overrun by the calamity at hand and a marathon health care battle as yet better known for its unseemly orgy of backroom wrangling than its concrete results. While that brawl raged, the White House seemed indifferent to the mounting number of Americans being tossed onto the Great Recession scrapheap.

Oh Frank, Frank, Frank...

Just Don't Call It A Stimulus Package

President Barack Obama is proposing to extend the research and development tax credit. The problem is the tax credit for R&D would cost an estimated $100 billion in tax revenue. Obama is hoping the R&D tax credit will spur development. The President will have to figure what he will have to cut to help reduce the deficit. The White House is also considering infrastructure spending and to free up credit for small businesses.

Elizabeth Warren, chair of the Congressional Oversight Panel explained to Steve Chiotakis why there is such difficulty for small businesses to get loans.

Chiotakis: So Professor, if small businesses generate, what, two of three jobs in this economy, doesn't this fly in the face of the necessity of bailing out the banks in the first place?

Warren: Well you know, that's really the irony here isn't it? Remember, in the fall of 2008, Secretary Paulson went to Congress and the American people and said, we need this $700 billion bailout, because if we put the money into the banks, that's how it will make it on into the real economy. And the evidence shows that simply didn't happen; we put the money into big Wall Street banks and that's where it stayed.

Treasury Sec. Tim Geithner extended TARP until October of 2010. However, small businesses are still having a tough time getting loans. Geithner has not been able to get small banks to paticipate. The Independent Community Bankers of America gave Geithner a list of demands that must be meant before these banks will paticipate. Why doesn't Geithner just set up a temporary loan guarantee funds for small businesses? The small banks don't want to take the financial risk. Small businesses can get loans through the federal government to expand and hiring extra labor.

Duncan Black and Mike Konczal question how much job creation and economic growth will come from R&D tax credits. The H. Lee Moffitt Cancer Center & Research Institute in Tampa received $20 million in stimulus money. Director Thomas Sellers told TBO.com that the stimulus money is helping Moffitt produce fifty patent a year and five start-up companies.

As a longterm policy, helping spur research is smart. It isn't going to turn the economy around. What this tells me is Geithner and Obama's economic team has run out of ideas.

Paul Krugman on the Federal Reserve

Paul Krugman tells Jeffery Brown the Federal Reserve and the Obama administration is not doing enough to help the economy. Krugman explains that policymakers have become complacent.

We need to do something to make this economy stronger, not five years from now, not 10 years from now, but now. We need to prop this up. Yes, it's true that the aftermath of financial crises is usually a long period of poor economic performance. But that's not something to just accept.

We're supposed to do something different. When Japan had a somewhat similar situation in the 1990s, after its bubble burst, American economists, American officials were caustic about the unwillingness of the Japanese to take strong action to deal with their problem, the way they were just sitting there. And now we're doing the same thing.

We are turning Japanese in our economic policy. This is not something we should be accepting. This is -- it's very easy for comfortable people, like all of us, right, in this discussion to say, well, you know, these things take time. Not necessarily. And -- and we should be trying to do better, not just sitting and accepting this prolonged period, when -- when productive workers, men and women who want to work, can't find jobs.

Former John McCain campaign economic advisor Douglas Holtz-Eakin pushes the nonsense that the free market will take care of all. Holtz-Eakin was annoying during the campaign and his solution is during nothing about what is being described as a growth recession. The economy is slowly starting to grow but not enough to offset unemplyment. I recently read an economic report explaining how unemployment may increase.

So, take the tax increases off the table. Don't rely on government spending. Let the private sector drive this thing. And it's not imaginary to -- to look at things the administration wants credit for, increased emphasis on clean technologies, increased health I.T. Those aren't stimulus. Those are costly changes in the American economy they're trying to do in the name of stimulus. That's not helpful.

Encouraging the free market to invest in clean energy technology. Holtz-Eakin does not like free market solutions when they are proposed by Democrats.