Mort Zuckerman — head of U.S. News, not the Mark Zuckerberg, the guy at Facebook — was an Obama supporter in 2008.
Suffice it to say that he’s disappointed with the President’s accomplishments re: the economy.
His article President Obama’s Economic Programs Have Failed is worth reading in its entirety.
Here are a couple of data points from it …
- The pool of unemployed Americans is 15 million — that’s roughly equal to the entire population of the states of Connecticut, Delaware, Arkansas, Iowa, and Oklahoma.
- 25% of households include someone who is unemployed and looking for work.
- Among the jobless, a staggering 42% of the unemployed are long-term unemployed, without jobs for six months or longer.
- Since 2008, some 3 million people have dropped out of the job market. If they hadn’t, the unemployment rate would be about 10.8%.
- So-called structural unemployment has risen from 5 percent before the crisis to close to 7% today …. if so, many lost jobs that cannot be restored by boosting demand.
- Hiring today is at about 70% of the 2006 level … so, job seekers are only about one third as likely to find work as in 2006.
- Layoff announcements have risen 18% from a year ago, and hiring plans have dropped 82%.
- The U.S has lost 6 million blue-collar manufacturing jobs.
- 70% of job openings have been in mostly low-wage sectors, including healthcare, leisure, hospitality, and retail.
- Some 7.7 million workers are stuck in part-time jobs, with pay inadequate for entry into the middle class.
- 67% of the meager employment growth rate has been in the 55 and older age cohort.
- The jobless rate for workers ages 20 to 24 is over 13%; teenagers, 25%; Hispanic teenagers, 30.5%; and black teenagers, 37.9%.
- People with a college education face unemployment rates of about 4.2; those with a certificate from a community college or at least some college coursework have a jobless rate of 7.5%.
- People who did not finish high school have it worst at almost 13%.
- Two thirds of our employment is concentrated in 6 million small and medium-size businesses.
- The U.S. needs 1 million new businesses every year to keep us on the right track. Instead we have only about 400,000 firms starting up.
- Real per capita disposable income — adjusted for inflation — is down to $32,600 now versus $34,641 back in 2006.
- The ratio of total household debt to after-tax earnings is 117% — down from last year’s peak peak of 131%, but is still above the pre-bubble rate of 70%.
Zuckerman concludes: We are still in an era of deleveraging, rising savings rates, home price deflation, and squeezed real income, all of which will continue to affect consumer spending.”
Have a nice day …
The Homa Files 