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.

The Beveridge Curve is a means of depicting the relationship between the unemployment rate and the number of jobs available in an economy.  An example of this curve is given by a Federal Reserve Bank of Cleveland article, which asks “Has the Beveridge Curve Shifted?” and is presented below.

Moves along the curve indicate increasing job openings in a growing economy associated with decreasing unemployed workers, or decreasing openings with increasing unemployment in a shrinking economy.  The curve itself can move, also, as structural mismatches between employers’ needs and employees’ capabilities change.  Such mismatches can be driven by technology that creates a gap between skills needed and skills possessed, or job location vs employee location—or by long-term unemployment, which destroys existing job skills that otherwise would be a good match for existing skill needs.

But in such cases, we’d expect the curve to shift back as such mismatches clear (and shift again, as new mismatches develop).  It’s normal for economies to expand and contract on a shorter time frame, though, than that on which structural shifts occur—it can take months or years to retrain, for instance, whereas an economy can contract in a matter of months (typically, in the US, the current dislocation, or those of the 1970s or 1930s notwithstanding).  In fact, the Fed’s article points out that such movements of the curve itself are normal behaviors for our economy in the post-war period.

That’s a long-winded entry into the purpose of this post.  There are two graphs that indicate the failure of the present administration’s economic policies, especially as those policies impact employment capabilities in our economy; both of these are from  Sober Look.  The first graph is this one:

This shows just the sort of structural shift described above, and the shift didn’t occur until after the recession was over—and recall that the recession ended in Spring 2009, before any economic policies of Democratic Presidential Candidate Barack Obama could have taken effect.  Even his $800 billion Stimulus Act spending had not had time to have any effect at the time of the recession’s official end.

Notice that the pre-recession unemployment vs job openings part of the curve is entirely consistent with what we’d expect in a healthy economy—lots (relatively) of openings and full employment, with fewer openings associated with moderately higher unemployment.  During the recession, the decreasing availability of jobs and increasing unemployment followed that curve all the way out to the peak unemployment near 10%.

After the recession, though, and since—a period in which Obama’s economic policies have been able to have their full effect—we see the curve’s shift: even though jobs are becoming more available, unemployment is remaining high, and the drop-off in unemployment, such as it is, is following a higher level of jobs availability—there is a higher mismatch between jobs and job seekers.

This next graph illustrates a major reason why.

This graph shows the number of Americans who’ve been out of work for 27 weeks (6+ months) or more as a per cent of total unemployed.

Notice that sharp, and so far sustained, rise in this long-term unemployment during Obama’s term.  This long-term unemployment produces one of those mismatches described above—the skills mismatch, this time driven by skills destruction through non-use from that long-term unemployment.  Obama’s policies are actively suppressing re-employment.  Even as the preceding graph implies that there are more jobs available now than at the start of his term, job seekers can only find jobs from an increased amount of availability than was the case before the present policies were in place.  The increase in jobs available just isn’t enough to absorb our high unemployment.