Jobs Statistics: Depressing

Reuters  takes a look at government pay data statistics for 2010.  In a word it was just awful.  {Excerpt with my highlights}

Anyone who wants to understand the enduring nature of Occupy Wall Street and similar protests across the country need only look at the first official data on 2010 paychecks, which the U.S. government posted on the Internet on Wednesday.  The figures from payroll taxes reported to the Social Security Administration on jobs and pay are, in a word, awful.

These are important and powerful figures. Maybe the reason the government does not announce.....their release or writes about them each year — is the data show how the United States smolders while Washington fiddles.   There were fewer jobs and they paid less last year, except at the very top where, the number of people making more than $1 million increased by 20 percent over 2009. {Some highlights}

-The median paycheck — half made more, half less — fell again in 2010, down 1.2 percent to $26,364. That works out to $507 a week, the lowest level, after adjusting for inflation, since 1999.

-The number of Americans with any work fell again last year, down by more than a half million from 2009 to less than 150.4 million.

-More significantly, the number of people with any work has fallen by 5.2 million since 2007, when the worst recession since the Great Depression began...

-This means 3.3 percent of people who had a job in 2007, or one in every 33, went all of 2010 without earning a dollar.

-In addition to the 5.2 million people who no longer have any work add roughly 4.5 million people who, due to population growth, would normally join the workforce in three years and you have close to 10 million workers who did not find even an hour of paid work in 2010.

These figures come from the Medicare tax database at the Social Security Administration, which processes every W-2 wage form. All wages, salaries, bonuses, independent contractor net income and other compensation for services subject to the Medicare tax are added up to the penny.

In 2010 total wages and salaries {when adjusted} for inflation, {were} almost identical to 2005, when the U.S. population was 4.2 percent smaller.....

...At the same time, nonfinancial companies are sitting on more than $2 trillion of cash — nearly $7,000 per American — with no place to invest it profitably. This money cannot even be invested to earn the rate of inflation.  All this capital is sitting on the sidelines waiting for profitable opportunities to be invested, which will not and cannot happen until more people have jobs and wages rise, creating increased demand for goods and services......On top of this are the societal problems caused by something the United States has never experienced before, except during the Depression — chronic, long-term unemployment.  Having millions who want work go years without a single day on a payroll is more than just a waste of talent and time. It also can change social attitudes about work and not for the better.

The data show why protests like Occupy Wall Street have so quickly gained momentum around the country, as people who cannot find work try to focus the federal government on creating jobs and dealing with the banking sector that many demonstrators blame for the lack of jobs.

Link:  2010 Payroll Data