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Many no longer count on finding a job

18 Jul 2010 - Preaching the News for Sunday

The author of the Letter to the Colossians talks of having a commission from the Lord he needs to “bring to completion” for the Colossians. Having largely brought their work to completion for another decade, the U.S. Census Bureau is shedding hundreds of thousands of workers--about 225,000 in only the last few weeks--putting further pressure on an already tight job market. In past decades the bureau faced a challenge just keeping workers around to close up shop, as most dashed for new jobs that might pay better. Not this time around, said observers. Jobs remain scarce. “Typically, at this point in the process, we’re losing a lot of people because they’re taking jobs,” said Kathleen Ludgate, the bureau’s regional director in Boston. “I wish we had that problem now.” Stubbornly high unemployment is causing political headaches for Democrats. Four months before the November congressional elections, Republicans have tried to paint Obama and Democrats who support him as anti-business. The U.S. Chamber of Commerce, a leading business group, issued a rebuke of Obama’s economic agenda Tuesday, accusing him and Democrats in Congress of neglecting job creation and hampering growth with burdensome regulatory and tax policies. Polls have reinforced Democrats’ fears of big losses in November. A survey by the Washington Post-ABC News showed 54 percent of Americans disapproved of Obama’s leadership on the economy. In a CBS News poll, only 40 percent of Americans said they approved of Obama’s handling of the economy. To counter such perceptions, the administration trumpeted an analysis from the White House Council of Economic Advisers (CEA) that said government funding of clean energy, economic development, construction projects, and other initiatives was spurring “co-investment” by the private sector. The report, unveiled by CEA Chairwoman Christina Romer and Vice President Joseph Biden, estimated that Obama’s $862 billion economic stimulus package had saved or created roughly 3 million jobs and was on track to meet its goal of 3.5 million jobs by the end of this year. Source: Articles by Michael Powell for the New York Times, Caren Bohan for Reuters, and Dow Jones News Service

unemployment kathleen ludgate jobs census bureau economy republicans democrats elections business chamber of commerce

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Poverty rate may be only economic indicator on the rise

24 Oct 2010 - Preaching the News for Sunday

“The Lord hears the cry of the poor,” we affirm in the psalm response this Sunday. Unfortunately, the Lord is hearing from a lot more people these days. Thanks to the recession, 2009 was one of the worst years for poverty in America in more than half a century, according to data released by the U.S. Census Bureau. The total number of Americans living in poverty hit 43.6 million, and the national poverty rate rose to 14.3 percent. Many expect it to reach 15 percent this year. All told, a startling one in seven Americans are living in poverty. To make matters worse, state governments, facing a combined estimated budget shortfall of $380 billion for 2011, have begun cutting crucial services and laying off thousands of employees. Last year’s steep rate of job losses also caused millions of Americans to lose employee-provided health insurance. Nearly 17 percent of the population, more than 50 million people, has no health insurance, the highest level since the Census started collecting such data in 1987. The Lord rescues the poor from their distress, the psalmist says. Many charitable organizations serve a similar purpose. But more bad news: At a time when increasing numbers of people need some help, charitable giving has decreased sharply. Contributions to the nation’s 400 largest donor-funded nonprofits fell 11 percent in 2009, The Chronicle of Philanthropy reported this week. The drop was by far the steepest since the Chronicle began tracking those numbers 20 years ago, nearly four times as great as the next biggest annual decrease: 2.8 percent in 2001, when charities also struggled to raise money from recession-battered donors. Catholic Charities USA was one of only a few of the top 10 charities to report increased contributions last year, with a healthy 5.2 percent jump. But overall observers don’t expect charities to do much better in 2010; most fundraising directors say they’re expecting growth of only 1.4 percent this year. Source: Articles by Arthur Delaney for HuffingtonPost.com and by Noelle Barton and Holly Hall for The Chronicle of Philanthropy

poverty recession health insurance united states americans census bureau charitable giving catholic charities usa

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Republicans count on boost from census

26 Dec 2010 - Preaching the News for Sunday

The gospel for Sunday, December 26 recounts how the Holy Family had to relocate several times as Joseph and Mary sought to raise the child Jesus. New population figures released by the Census Bureau Tuesday underscore how American families continue to relocate from the Northeast and Midwest to the South and West in search of employment and a warmer climate. The once-a-decade head count will give Republican-leaning states more seats in Congress while traditionally Democratic states will shed representatives, adding impact to state-level GOP victories in last month's elections that gave the party a stronger hand in redrawing voting districts across the U.S. The big winner in the census was Texas, which will gain four seats in the U.S. House. Elsewhere in the South, Florida gained two seats, while Georgia and South Carolina added one. In the West, Arizona, Nevada, Utah, and Washington each got an additional seat. States that gained seats got them largely because of growth in their minority populations, especially Hispanics. Hispanics accounted for 63 percent of Texas' population growth and half the gains in Florida and Arizona this decade, according to William H. Frey, a demographer at the Brookings Institution in Washington. Big losers were Ohio and New York, which each shed two seats. Illinois, Iowa, Massachusetts, Michigan, Missouri, New Jersey, and Pennsylvania all lost one seat. The only Southern state to lose was Louisiana, which shed one seat, a result of the exodus following Hurricane Katrina. Source: Articles by Patrick O’Connor and Conor Dougherty for the Wall Street Journal and Hope Yen and Charles Babington for the Associated Press

house of representatives hispanics democrats republicans census

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Rising number of poor and uninsured signals “lost decade”

18 Sep 2011 - Preaching the News for Sunday

The gospel parable this Sunday features idle laborers who wait all day in the marketplace for someone to hire them. Persistently high unemployment in the U.S. caused the poverty rate to jump from 14.3 percent in 2009 to 15.1 percent last year, a 27-year high. About 46.2 million people, or nearly 1 in 6, live in poverty. At the same time, the number of people lacking health insurance increased to 49.9 million, a new high. Decreases in coverage were due mostly to working-age Americans who lost employer-provided insurance in the weak economy. The percentage of workers covered by employer-based insurance has steadily declined in the past decade, from 65 percent in 2000 to about 55 percent in 2010, a U.S. Census report said. Main provisions of the health overhaul law mandating wider coverage do not take effect until 2014. In new signs of distress among the middle class, median household incomes fell last year to levels last seen in 1996. It is the first time since the Great Depression that median household income adjusted for inflation has not risen over such a long period, said Lawrence Katz, an economics professor at Harvard University. “This is truly a lost decade,” Katz said. “We think of America as a place where every generation is doing better, but we’re looking at a period when the median family is in worse shape than it was in the late 1990s.” This year is not likely to be any better, economists said. Stimulus money has largely been used and state and local governments have made deep cuts to staff and to budgets for social programs, both likely to move economically fragile families closer to poverty. Sources: Articles by Annalyn Censky for CNN Money, Sabrina Tavernise for the New York Times,Daniel Gross for Yahoo! Finance, and Hope Yen for the Associated Press

poverty unemployment health insurance census lawrence katz

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Poverty: The only economic indicator going up

13 Nov 2011 - Preaching the News for Sunday

Referring to a servant who buried his master’s wealth instead of investing it, Jesus warns this Sunday’s gospel parable “from the one who has not, even what he has will be taken away.” As the U.S. Congress mulls cuts to a number of social programs that make up the proverbial “safety net,” a new Census Bureau report says that 49 million Americans--more than previously thought--are living in poverty. In September the government reported that a record 46.6 million Americans were living in poverty, but the new report released Monday, using a more sophisticated method to measure poverty rates, finds the true figure is even higher: 49.1 million, or 16 percent of all Americans. The Census Bureau's traditional poverty measure has changed little since it was first developed in 1963. The old poverty calculus has several important shortcomings: It doesn't take into account the impact of non-cash government benefits such as food stamps and tax credits; it doesn't include expenses like out-of-pocket medical costs; and it doesn't factor in varying costs of living across the country. The new method, known as the Supplemental Poverty Measure, "is going to give us a better sense of the extent of poverty, and who's poor, and the effect of government programs," said Jane Waldfogel, an expert on poverty at the Columbia University School of Social Work. "So in all those respects, it's vastly superior." The new findings also demonstrate the value of government programs in keeping Americans out of poverty, Waldfogel said--just as Congress is mulling cuts to some of them. Were it not for the Earned Income Tax Credit, for example, the new measure shows that the child poverty rate would be 22 percent; without food stamps, the rate of child poverty would be 21 percent. With both those programs factored in, it's 18 percent. Sources: Articles by Richard Fry, D’Vera Cohn, Gretchen Livingston, and Paul Taylor for thePew Research Center, Hope Yen for the Associated Press, and Zachery Roth for The Lookout

poverty taxes united states census bureau supplemental poverty measure jane waldfogel

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Households get harder to create—and more crowded

06 May 2012 - Preaching the News for Sunday

“All the families of the nations shall bow down” before the Lord, the psalmist says this Sunday, as well as “all who sleep in the earth.” Fewer families in the nation are sleeping in homes they own these days, thanks to high unemployment, falling house prices, and stringent lending conditions, according to U.S. Census Bureau statistics. The share of privately-owned U.S. homes fell to a 15-year low in the first quarter as the harsh economic environment pushed younger Americans, in particular, into renting. The dramatic slowdown in "household formation" is both a consequence of the economic downturn and a continued obstacle to overcoming it, analysts contend. Meanwhile, the weak job market has reshaped many American families, with an increasing number of adult children moving in with their parents to make ends meet. A recent Pew Research Center survey found that 29 percent of parents with adult children report having a child who has moved back in over the past few years. With so many young people delaying their first forays into careers and the housing market, some researchers wonder whether households in the United States will begin to resemble those in parts of South America or Europe, where it is much more common for young adults to live in their parents’ homes for longer periods of time. “That light at the end of the tunnel is an onrushing train called falling household formation,” Bentley University economist Scott Sumner said. Others are more optimistic. “The biggest driver of household formation is really young people coming out of their parents’ house and young people giving up living with roommates,” said Robert Denk, assistant vice president of forecasting and analysis at the National Association of Home Builders. “This has to happen. You can postpone moving out of your parents’ basement. You can postpone leaving your group house situation. You can postpone proposing to your sweetheart. But you can do these things for only so long.” Sources: Articles by Michael A. Fletcher for the Washington Post and Lucia Mutikani for Reuters

families young adults census bureau pew research center robert denk scott sumner household formation

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