Sylvia A. Allegretto PhD is a labor economist at the UC Berkeley Center on Wage and Employment Dynamics. She received her Ph. D. in Economics from the University of Colorado, Boulder and worked for several years at the Economic Policy Institute in Washington, DC. In addition to numerous briefing papers and articles for EPI, Sylvia co-authored two editions of The State of Working America with Larry Mishel and Jared Bernstein. Her previous research has examined long-term unemployment, family budgets, teacher pay, and low-wage labor markets. Sylvia is currently working on analyses of minimum wage effects and on the sub-minimum wage received by tipped workers.
Much of the current political and popular discourse has focused on inequalities that exist in the U.S. In particular, the Occupy movement has brought the huge disparities in wealth to the forefront. There are a few questions floating round about wealth. First, how skewed is the distribution? Second, it is true that the rich have gotten much richer over time? (a statement I often heard my Grandma make).
Well, there is a plethora of statistics (e.g. here, here, & here) out there, but here are two. The share of wealth held by the top fifth is about 87.2 percent, while the bottom four-fifths share the remaining 12.8 percent of wealth—so the Occupiers are correct in their assessment. And, the riches of those in the top 1 percent are about 225 times greater than that held by the typical family—it was 125 times in 1962—so, Grandma was correct too.
, edited by Nari Rhee. The book (available
free for download) addresses many issues pertaining to retirement, and my part reports the lay of the land for current retirees in the United States and specifically for California. This figure is from my contribution in the book’s second chapter, and it illustrates current sources of income for retirees in California.
on income, poverty, and health insurance coverage for 2010. Data from the report represents that of the first full year into our economic recovery (which official started in June 2009). It is no surprise, given the focus of this report and the weak recovery, that it is filled with bad news: poverty is up, health insurance coverage and incomes are down.
For this post I’ll focus on median household income from the report for the United States and California. From 2009 to 2010 median income in the U.S. fell by $1,154 (or 2.3%) and in California the decline was a steeper $2,602 (or 4.6%). The change in income since 2007—the peak of the last economic expansion—totals -$3,378 (-6.4%) for the U.S. and -$5,362 (-9.0%) for California.
, evaluates several different economic indices when assessing the beginning and ending dates of recessions— job growth or loss is just one of those—which is why many workers are surprised that the recession already ended. But officially it has. By the National Bureau’s reckoning, the recession lasted from December 2007 to June 2009.
At its worst, between December 2007 and February 2010, the United States lost 8.7 million jobs—some 6.3 percent of all jobs. Two years into the United States’ recovery, the jobs deficit is still 4.9 percent, or 6.8 million jobs, which is much larger than any of the three previous recessions. In terms of the sheer losses of jobs compared to pre-recessionary employment, the U.S. labor market today is in a severe deficit.
