WASHINGTON, D.C. -- Gallup Daily tracking finds that 20.3% of the U.S. workforce was underemployed in March -- a slight uptick from the relatively flat January and February numbers.
Underemployment in U.S. Workforce, December 2009-March 2010 Monthly Trend
"The underemployed in March became neither more nor less hopeful about finding work soon."
These results are based on March interviews with more than 20,000 adults in the U.S. workforce, aged 18 and older. Gallup classifies respondents as underemployed if they are unemployed or working part-time but wanting full-time work. Gallup employment data are not seasonally adjusted.
A rise in the percentage of part-timers wanting to work full time (from 9.2% to 9.9%) is responsible for the March increase in underemployment. Unemployment saw a slight, but insignificant, decline in March.
Underemployment Components, December 2009-March 2010 Monthly Trend
Underemployed Americans Still Not Hopeful
Despite the Obama administration's March 16 announcement that unemployment would remain high or increase in coming months, the underemployed in March became neither more nor less hopeful about finding work soon. Six in 10 underemployed Americans are not hopeful they will find work or move from part-time to full-time work in the next four weeks. That translates to 12% of the workforce that is both underemployed and not hopeful they will find their desired amount of work. The lack of change suggests that underemployed Americans anticipated long-term difficulties in finding work well before the administration's formal announcement was made.
Hope Among Underemployed for Finding a Job in the Next Four Weeks, January-March 2010 Trend
Bottom Line
As unemployed Americans find part-time, temporary, and seasonal work, the official unemployment rate could decline. However, this does not necessarily mean more Americans are working at their desired capacity. It will continue to be important to track underemployment -- to shed light on the true state of the U.S. workforce, and the millions of Americans who are searching for full-time employment.
Survey Methods
Results are based on telephone interviews with a random sample of 20,504 national adults, who are part of the workforce, aged 18 and older, conducted March 1-31, 2010. For results based on the total sample of national adults, one can say with 95% confidence that the maximum margin of sampling error is ±1 percentage points.
For results based on the sample of 4,164 adults who were underemployed in March, the maximum margin of sampling error is ±2 percentage points.
Interviews are conducted with respondents on landline telephones (for respondents with a landline telephone) and cellular phones (for respondents who are cell-phone only).
In addition to sampling error, question wording and practical difficulties in conducting surveys can introduce error or bias into the findings of public opinion polls.
Showing posts with label employment. Show all posts
Showing posts with label employment. Show all posts
Friday, April 1, 2011
Thursday, April 29, 2010
Public Employee Unions Work against American Public
Unions in this country got started because industry took advantage of workers. But these days, it seems to be the other way around. I am not talking about unions in the private sector. Private sector union workers should be free to get what they can. If private sector unions get too much (health care, pensions and pay), it is the fault of company management.
Public sector unions are a different story all together. Public sector unions do not operate in the real world where there is profit and loss. These unions work in a world of politics and taxes. This is a place where the unions’ needs line up against the people who pay them—the taxpayer. The unions think they are entitled to rich pensions and medical plans when they retire. If there is not enough money in a state or city budget, then they think taxes should be raised. For example, take the recent union protest over budget cuts in Illinois. A crowd of 15,000 union members were chanting, “Raise my taxes!” Yes that’s right, “Raise my taxes.” Check it out for yourself in the video below:
Public sector unions are a different story all together. Public sector unions do not operate in the real world where there is profit and loss. These unions work in a world of politics and taxes. This is a place where the unions’ needs line up against the people who pay them—the taxpayer. The unions think they are entitled to rich pensions and medical plans when they retire. If there is not enough money in a state or city budget, then they think taxes should be raised. For example, take the recent union protest over budget cuts in Illinois. A crowd of 15,000 union members were chanting, “Raise my taxes!” Yes that’s right, “Raise my taxes.” Check it out for yourself in the video below:
Monday, March 1, 2010
Battle For The Middle Class: 20% Underemployment And 38 Million On Food Stamps
For most Americans a jobless recovery is an oxymoron. After all, the vast majority of Americans who pump money into the economy through consuming what they earn, typically find it harder to spend if they don’t have a job to draw an income from. It is understandable that there is a lag between a recession and when companies start to hire. But over the last four decades each subsequent recession seems to add more and more months of so-called jobless recovery. Part of this has to do with the amount of exports we bring in. When spending goes down in the U.S. the actual contraction goes beyond our country and hits many of our trading partners. Yet the middle class in the U.S. has fallen behind both in nominal and inflation adjusted terms for over 40 years. Part of this has to do with the structure of our banking system and our heavy reliance on debt spending. Today, as talk of a recovery permeates the media outlets we have 38,000,000 Americans on food assistance and nearly 20 percent of Americans are registering as underemployed.
Now the Bureau of Labor and Statistics usually measures the above through their U-6 rate. This rate measures those that are working part-time but would like to have a full-time job. There is something psychological about this that makes it seem a lot better than full unemployment but the repercussions on the working class is deep and profound nearly as deep as full unemployment. First, if you are working part-time you have less money to spend and this showed up in the survey clearly:
This is important in understanding that even with a 6 percent growth rate in GDP last quarter that many people still feel this recession deep in their pocketbooks. In addition, that latest GDP number is based on companies cutting their top line item, employees and also inventory restocking. But these are usually one time measures. What we want to be seeing is GDP growth because of additional consumption and growth through hiring. That is the real nature of a healthy expanding economy. Cutting and firing middle class workers isn’t exactly the recipe for a longer-term recovery.
Americans are having to do more with less and are facing new measures of austerity. Many are adapting and many are simply unable to cope with the radical changes taking place. Even in the past decade, many Americans came to rely on credit cards and home equity as some kind of embedded ATM for most households. For over a decade this seemed to be the case. Even many that relied on this deep down realized that something just wasn’t right when home prices kept going up by double-digits while their salaries remained stagnant. Any lack of wage growth was made up by additional borrowing. Banks were willing to lend out this money. But now that the bubble has burst, Americans are filing for bankruptcies in record numbers, losing jobs, and losing their homes through foreclosure. At the same time, the banking industry has kept their practices going thanks to taxpayer bailouts. The middle class is bailing out the same industry that was largely at the center of this financial crisis and their practices still largely remain the same.
This struggle to maintain the middle class is going to be the story of the next decade. But beyond that headline, we now have over 38,000,000 Americans receiving food assistance in this country.
The most prosperous nation in this world has over 12 percent of its population receiving food assistance. It is tough to see fellow Americans in such difficult times. You can see on the chart above how quickly the rate has risen in this recession. Clearly in every recession the rate will go up but in this recession the number has struck many more Americans. In fact, the length of unemployment is a large reason for this as people eat into emergency funds. Beyond that, we now have the largest percentage and number of Americans working part-time in history:
In fact, the large number of underemployed has been a shadow to how deep this crisis really is. For example, the headline unemployment rate nationwide is 9.7 percent. That seems bad but nothing historical. But just look above and add in that underemployment rate. In reality, we can understand why middle class Americans are struggling so much with daily financial life. Think of someone that lost their job and is now working at Wal-Mart as a greeter. Sure they aren’t part of that 9.7 percent but they probably would think so:
“(The Atlantic) Over lunch I spoke with one attendee, Gus Poulos, a Vietnam-era veteran who had begun his career as a refrigeration mechanic before going to night school and becoming an accountant. He is trim and powerfully built, and looks much younger than his 59 years. For seven years, until he was laid off in December 2008, he was a senior financial analyst for a local hospital.
Poulos said that his frustration had built and built over the past year. “You apply for so many jobs and just never hear anything,” he told me. “You’re one of my few interviews. I’m just glad to have an interview with anybody, even a magazine.” Poulos said he was an optimist by nature, and had always believed that with preparation and hard work, he could overcome whatever life threw at him. But sometime in the past year, he’d lost that sense, and at times he felt aimless and adrift. “That’s never been who I am,” he said. “But now, it’s who I am.”
Recently he’d gotten a part-time job as a cashier at Walmart, for $8.50 an hour. “They say, ‘Do you want it?’ And in my head, I thought, ‘No.’ And I raised my hand and said, ‘Yes.’” Poulos and his wife met when they were both working as supermarket cashiers, four decades earlier—it had been one of his first jobs. “Now, here I am again.”
We are in a deep struggle and fight to preserve the middle class of this country. What has made this country strong has been a compact between the government and the citizenship between work and some semblance of financial protection. Yet right now with the banking system in power, it is all about that bottom line and they have no idea what is happening in Main Street USA. They are happy with GDP going up by 6 percent even though this was based on restocking lost supply and firing workers. But how is this really good for the middle class?
Now the Bureau of Labor and Statistics usually measures the above through their U-6 rate. This rate measures those that are working part-time but would like to have a full-time job. There is something psychological about this that makes it seem a lot better than full unemployment but the repercussions on the working class is deep and profound nearly as deep as full unemployment. First, if you are working part-time you have less money to spend and this showed up in the survey clearly:
This is important in understanding that even with a 6 percent growth rate in GDP last quarter that many people still feel this recession deep in their pocketbooks. In addition, that latest GDP number is based on companies cutting their top line item, employees and also inventory restocking. But these are usually one time measures. What we want to be seeing is GDP growth because of additional consumption and growth through hiring. That is the real nature of a healthy expanding economy. Cutting and firing middle class workers isn’t exactly the recipe for a longer-term recovery.
Americans are having to do more with less and are facing new measures of austerity. Many are adapting and many are simply unable to cope with the radical changes taking place. Even in the past decade, many Americans came to rely on credit cards and home equity as some kind of embedded ATM for most households. For over a decade this seemed to be the case. Even many that relied on this deep down realized that something just wasn’t right when home prices kept going up by double-digits while their salaries remained stagnant. Any lack of wage growth was made up by additional borrowing. Banks were willing to lend out this money. But now that the bubble has burst, Americans are filing for bankruptcies in record numbers, losing jobs, and losing their homes through foreclosure. At the same time, the banking industry has kept their practices going thanks to taxpayer bailouts. The middle class is bailing out the same industry that was largely at the center of this financial crisis and their practices still largely remain the same.
This struggle to maintain the middle class is going to be the story of the next decade. But beyond that headline, we now have over 38,000,000 Americans receiving food assistance in this country.
The most prosperous nation in this world has over 12 percent of its population receiving food assistance. It is tough to see fellow Americans in such difficult times. You can see on the chart above how quickly the rate has risen in this recession. Clearly in every recession the rate will go up but in this recession the number has struck many more Americans. In fact, the length of unemployment is a large reason for this as people eat into emergency funds. Beyond that, we now have the largest percentage and number of Americans working part-time in history:
In fact, the large number of underemployed has been a shadow to how deep this crisis really is. For example, the headline unemployment rate nationwide is 9.7 percent. That seems bad but nothing historical. But just look above and add in that underemployment rate. In reality, we can understand why middle class Americans are struggling so much with daily financial life. Think of someone that lost their job and is now working at Wal-Mart as a greeter. Sure they aren’t part of that 9.7 percent but they probably would think so:
“(The Atlantic) Over lunch I spoke with one attendee, Gus Poulos, a Vietnam-era veteran who had begun his career as a refrigeration mechanic before going to night school and becoming an accountant. He is trim and powerfully built, and looks much younger than his 59 years. For seven years, until he was laid off in December 2008, he was a senior financial analyst for a local hospital.
Poulos said that his frustration had built and built over the past year. “You apply for so many jobs and just never hear anything,” he told me. “You’re one of my few interviews. I’m just glad to have an interview with anybody, even a magazine.” Poulos said he was an optimist by nature, and had always believed that with preparation and hard work, he could overcome whatever life threw at him. But sometime in the past year, he’d lost that sense, and at times he felt aimless and adrift. “That’s never been who I am,” he said. “But now, it’s who I am.”
Recently he’d gotten a part-time job as a cashier at Walmart, for $8.50 an hour. “They say, ‘Do you want it?’ And in my head, I thought, ‘No.’ And I raised my hand and said, ‘Yes.’” Poulos and his wife met when they were both working as supermarket cashiers, four decades earlier—it had been one of his first jobs. “Now, here I am again.”
We are in a deep struggle and fight to preserve the middle class of this country. What has made this country strong has been a compact between the government and the citizenship between work and some semblance of financial protection. Yet right now with the banking system in power, it is all about that bottom line and they have no idea what is happening in Main Street USA. They are happy with GDP going up by 6 percent even though this was based on restocking lost supply and firing workers. But how is this really good for the middle class?
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