While Fed Chair Janet Yellen painted a somewhat optimistic picture of an “improving” unemployment situation at her presser Wednesday, she and her Fed cohorts ought not to be too impressed with themselves.
Outside the Beltway, most Americans just aren’t buying into the faux jobs “recovery,” whereas Washington believes “a job is a job is a job.”
Certainly most Americans realize the quality of a job matters significantly because it determines the size of the paycheck. Yes, Washington, the size of a paycheck actually matters.
So, while 217,000 people were hired in May, down from 282,000 in April, the misleading unemployment rate stayed at 6.3 percent.
And very little is reported about the compensation and quality of these jobs.
Nowhere does it report if a foreman at a manufacturing plant who was laid off and used to make $65K, with full medical and a matching 401(k), was only after some time able to find work as a line supervisor making $40K with partial medical and a non-matching 401(k).
There is, however, one place where some of this very important information is captured: in the US Household Median Income report from the Census Bureau.
You see, since the “financial crisis” ended almost six years ago, median household income has yet to make it back to the levels of 2008; as a matter of fact, it’s the same level as in 1995, as measured in 2012 dollars.
Yes, you read that correctly: 1995. Check the US Census data if you wish — it is Table H-8_2012.
In 2008, US household median income was $53,644. Per the most recent Census Survey, 2012 household income had fallen to $51,017.
Not very good. And this is while we were making our “recovery,” years after hitting the bottom.
Americans are falling behind year after year as the quality of the jobs we create here continues on its downward spiral.
We deserve better, and we’re willing to work for it. Size matters in America, and no place more than in our paychecks.