Household Income

How are we doing in the post-recession “recovery” under the Progressive policies of the Democratic Presidential Candidate Barack Obama?  One indication comes from Sentier Research and a report produced by their Gordon Green and John Coder, Changes in Household Income During the Economic Recovery: June 2009 to June 2012. (normally, I provide links to the documents from which I quote, but the folks at Sentier charge for their reports; I’ll not defeat their purpose. The report can be found at their site, here.)

The following graph from the report shows the policies’ impact on incomes of various household types in the period since 2009.  It hasn’t been good for anyone.  Green and Coder normalized household incomes, setting per cent changes to 0.0% as of January 2000 (as in the graph) and to a Household Income Index with the income levels of January 2000 being 100.0.

Moreover, they noted that household income has remained poor and relatively static after the recession “ended.”  Having fallen from a start-of-recession HII peak of a shade over 100 to 96 at the “end,” household incomes continued to fall over the following year to roughly 92 and have remained static there for the last two years.  In other words, at the official end of the recession, incomes were roughly 96% of their pre-recession levels, and since 2010 have remained static at a lower 92% of pre-recession.

The authors pointed out a number of factors related to the drop in HII, including this one:

Another important factor contributing to the steep decline of the HII is the sharp increase in the median duration of unemployment not only during the recession but also during the economic recovery, and its tendency to remain at a very high level.  During the recession, from December 2007 to June 2009, the median duration of unemployment increased from 8.4 weeks to 17.4 weeks.  During the economic recovery, the median duration of unemployment increased from 17.4 weeks in June 2009 to 25.5 weeks in June 2010, and then fell to 19.8 weeks in June 2012.

Notice that unemployment duration after the recession “ended” remains above the in-recession rate.

Meanwhile, over 20 House-passed jobs related bills have continued to languish in the Democrat-controlled Senate in the period since 2010, when unemployment remains above in-recession levels and household income remains depressed compared even to its in- and immediately post-recession levels.

Leave a Reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *