"Sure there are homeless camps all over the place, but the economy is doing fine really!"

 

Two articles from the "Week-end Wrap" at Ian Welsh's blog.

First: "Why are a record number of Americans living with their parents?" from Robert Bridge at Russia Today.

A record 25.2 million young American adults (about 33%) under 35 have returned to the family nest as the cost of living has become prohibitive.

There is a stereotype of Americans living at home with their parents as freeloaders, living in the basement and spending their ample free time playing video games. That is far from the reality. Around 70% of young adults (ages 25 to 34) living at home are actively employed and use their income to contribute to the household expenses, like groceries and utilities.

One of the main reasons for Americans opting to live with their parents is the high price of home ownership. The median sales price for a single-family home in the US is approximately $434,300. Compare that to 1975 when the average price was under $40,000. That demonstrates how much the dollar has shrunk in terms of purchasing power.

 

Second: "Voters were right about the economy. The data was wrong." from Eugene Ludwig at Politico.

Take, as a particularly egregious example, what is perhaps the most widely reported economic indicator: unemployment. Known to experts as the U-3, the number misleads in several ways. First, it counts as employed the millions of people who are unwillingly under-employed — that is, people who, for example, work only a few hours each week while searching for a full-time job. Second, it does not take into account many Americans who have been so discouraged that they are no longer trying to get a job. Finally, the prevailing statistic does not account for the meagerness of any individual’s income. Thus you could be homeless on the streets, making an intermittent income and functionally incapable of keeping your family fed, and the government would still count you as “employed.”

I don’t believe those who went into this past election taking pride in the unemployment numbers understood that the near-record low unemployment figures — the figure was a mere 4.2 percent in November — counted homeless people doing occasional work as “employed.” But the implications are powerful. If you filter the statistic to include as unemployed people who can’t find anything but part-time work or who make a poverty wage (roughly $25,000), the percentage is actually 23.7 percent. In other words, nearly one of every four workers is functionally unemployed in America today — hardly something to celebrate.