Anyone who wants to understand the enduring nature of Occupy Wall Street and similar protests across the country need only look at the first official data on 2010 paychecks, which the U.S. government posted on the Internet on Wednesday.
The figures from payroll taxes reported to the Social Security Administration on jobs and pay are, in a word, awful.
These are important and powerful figures. Maybe the reason the government does not announce their release — and so far I am the only journalist who writes about them each year — is the data show how the United States smolders while Washington fiddles.
There were fewer jobs and they paid less last year, except at the very top where, the number of people making more than $1 million increased by 20 percent over 2009.
The median paycheck — half made more, half less — fell again in 2010, down 1.2 percent to $26,364. That works out to $507 a week, the lowest level, after adjusting for inflation, since 1999.
The number of Americans with any work fell again last year, down by more than a half million from 2009 to less than 150.4 million.
More significantly, the number of people with any work has fallen by 5.2 million since 2007, when the worst recession since the Great Depression began, with a massive taxpayer bailout of Wall Street following in late 2008. This means 3.3 percent of people who had a job in 2007, or one in every 33, went all of 2010 without earning a dollar.
In addition to the 5.2 million people who no longer have any work add roughly 4.5 million people who, due to population growth, would normally join the workforce in three years and you have close to 10 million workers who did not find even an hour of paid work in 2010.
SIX TRILLION DOLLARS These figures come from the Medicare tax database at the Social Security Administration, which processes every W-2 wage form. All wages, salaries, bonuses, independent contractor net income and other compensation for services subject to the Medicare tax are added up to the penny.
In 2010 total wages and salaries came to $6,009,831,055,912.11.
That’s a bit more than $6 trillion. Adjusted for inflation, that is less than each of the previous four years and almost identical to 2005, when the U.S. population was 4.2 percent smaller.
While median pay — the halfway point on the salary ladder declined, average pay rose because of continuing increases at the top. Average pay was $39,959 last year, up $46 — or less than a buck a week — compared with 2009. Average pay peaked in 2007 at $40,764, which is $15 a week more than average weekly wage income in 2010.
The number of workers making $1 million or more rose to almost 94,000 from 78,000 in 2009. However, that was still below some earlier years, including 2007, when more than 110,000 workers made more than $1 million each. At the very top, the number of workers making more than $50 million rose in 2010 to 81, up from 72 the year before. But average pay in this group declined $4.5 million to $79.6 million.
What these figures tell us is that there was a reason voters responded in the fall of 2010 to the Republican promise that if given control of Congress they would focus on one thing: jobs.
But while Republicans were swept into the majority in the House of Representatives, that promise has been ignored. Not only has no jobs bill been enacted since January, but the House will not even bring up for a vote the jobs bill sponsored by President Obama. His bill is far from perfect, but where is the promised Republican legislation to get people back to work?
Instead of jobs, the focus on Capitol Hill is on tax cuts for corporations with untaxed profits held offshore, on continuing the temporary Bush administration tax cuts — especially for those making $1 million or more – and on cutting federal spending, which mean destroying more jobs in the short run.
At the same time, nonfinancial companies are sitting on more than $2 trillion of cash — nearly $7,000 per American — with no place to invest it profitably. This money cannot even be invested to earn the rate of inflation. All this capital is sitting on the sidelines waiting for profitable opportunities to be invested, which will not and cannot happen until more people have jobs and wages rise, creating increased demand for goods and services.
More of the same approach we have had for most of the last three decades and all of the last ten years is not going to increase demand, create more jobs or enable overall prosperity. In the long run, continuing current policies will make even the richest among us less well off than they would be in a robust economy with government policies that foster job creation and the capital investment that grows from increased demand.
On top of this are the societal problems caused by something the United States has never experienced before, except during the Depression — chronic, long-term unemployment.
Having millions who want work go years without a single day on a payroll is more than just a waste of talent and time. It also can change social attitudes about work and not for the better.
The data show why protests like Occupy Wall Street have so quickly gained momentum around the country, as people who cannot find work try to focus the federal government on creating jobs and dealing with the banking sector that many demonstrators blame for the lack of jobs.
Will official Washington look at the numbers and change course? Or do voters need to change their elected representatives if they want to put America back on a path to widespread prosperity? (Editing by Kevin Drawbaugh)
It is amazing that the President is escaping this and blaming the banks. Any other time in history a sitting president with numbers this bad would be on his way out. Same with all incumbents really. I guess the media has to protect the chosen one.
I’m pretty sure he is on his way out.
“Will official Washington look at the numbers and change course? Or do voters need to change their elected representatives if they want to put America back on a path to widespread prosperity”?
Who said those were the only two alternatives?
The reason the President escapes blame here is that he is doing something to stem the tide of job losses and economic malaise, and he is doing what he can over the opposition of Republicans in Congress, who only want to see him out of office. When people who have no jobs see Republicans in Congress only wanting to replace the President, they can be forgiven for blaming Republicans in Congress for doing nothing.
If you really think that his jobs bill will do anything more than spike numbers like his census hiring stunt, you might as well believe that republicans and democrats are somehow fundamentally different, and not just paid off mouth pieces by whatever major lobby dominates their respective districts.
Just make offshore outsourcing only 50% tax deducible and jobs will return instantly.
Why do people think Obama can single-handedly reverse multiple decades of ignorant policy? Or rather, why does anybody blame Obama for not being able to single-handedly undo the mistakes of several generations in just a couple of years? Mr Johnston sums it up, if you want to point the finger, you need to point it in the other direction:
“But while Republicans were swept into the majority in the House of Representatives, that promise has been ignored. Not only has no jobs bill been enacted since January, but the House will not even bring up for a vote the jobs bill sponsored by President Obama. His bill is far from perfect, but where is the promised Republican legislation to get people back to work?”
President Obama and his big government is the problem. With all the regulations and upcoming Obamacare, the business leaders are scared stiff to invest money in jobs or major corporate purchases. They are sitting on that pile of money because they are afraid they will need it to counter government mandates. President Obama is not in favor of capitalism, and I don’t know why people expect him to get economic recovery going when he doesn’t believe in the economic system or in America. It is lack of leadership and vision that are keeping this country back. That is what a change in the White House can accomplish in 2012 – leadership and an attempt to let the economy recover. We need to reduce the size and scope of government. The example of Greece should be enough to tell us that huge government social programs cannot be sustained.
I think the Republicans were voted into office to stem the flowing red ink, and they are attempting to do that. The deficit is over a trillion dollars MORE per year, in the past three years, than any year that President Bush was in office. As a Republican, I have no problem increasing taxes on the rich, so long as every penny goes to reducing the debt, and as long as every income level above poverty pays something, however small, in taxes – so that people realize that any benefit comes at a cost.
It is incredible how people in general see Obama an example as a family man, in his integrity, idealism and his view of a better society… (well , pretty much what any country wants as a guide) but cant see that the president alone cant guide the nation… For the elite and the finantial interests the difference between Republican and Democrat is simple… Convenience… No matter wich one has majority on Senate or Congress… it is just a matter of lobby the way through to achieve a special interest goal… just a matter of money and time… and one path may just be easier and cheaper than another… And if it is not of interest … simply leave them divided arguing to the last breath… It is more possible to have a guy with integrity, idealism and a better view of the future as president… highly improbable is to have hundreds in congress and senate… same thing all around the world… Take my country for example… since people dont see a congressman or senator as a key important figure, often take only a few thousand votes for the worst kind of politician get there… not mentioning we still have former clows, former pop singers, former athlets, actors… who got there…
It’s official: The middle class is shrinking and 9-9-9 is here to rescue us
You people blaming just the President (and not Congress) are all idiots. Go back to a Civics Class.
Republicans do not want an employed work force; they want a slave race readily available to mow the lawns of their sprawling estates on the cheap.
Just from looking at the chart, I see that our steepest job loss was 2008 – 2009; President Obama didn’t take office until January 2009, where job loss started evening out. Did y’all even read the article? Heck, you don’t even need to read, there’s a picture and everything.
@KyuuAL
The Republican Congress has been there for eleven months. Obama had 2 full years to address the economy, he did so and his policies didn’t work. He campaigns constantly against the Republicans, calls them his enemy, and then wonders why they aren’t working with him. He is either to blame for the mess, or powerless to change it which shows his lack of leadership. There is no other other way to get around that.
The only one who is going to fix this…. is Sarah Palin.
It is evident that individual income would have turned direction by 2007, but for the case that income figures and associated federal tax revenues were skewed higher by a peaking corporate merger mania. By 2008, the downtrend starting to assert itself, and the trend has been down since that time.
This is the current President’s show, and he should have been smart enough to recognize that supply side policies including support of three decades of federal deficit spending and reliance on consumer debt expansion were not prescriptive for this economy. Just as Reagan’s drive for supply side spending pulled the US out of an inflationary recession, so too must the Presidental office holder lead COngress to neutralize those policies while containing the engine of deficit growth.
And this is why we’re so screwed. The tea partiers don’t want to do anything; the rest of the Republicans are pushing their tired supply side baloney that hasn’t worked for thirty years, and the Democrats are missing in action. So three years into this and nobody in Washington is doing anything effective to deal with this and industry is sitting on their hands.
“Will official Washington look at the numbers and change course?”…. Now that would be a historical moment… Too bad it won’t happen… And that post by stevedebi offends the senses… Man, this person needs an education. Of course I understand how hard that is to obtain now-a-days, because the Republicans have cut education budgets so drastically….
@unpartisan…
You ever hear of this thing called the filibuster? It was used an unprecedented matter of times in the last Congress. The Dems had a super majority (and barely one, even if you included people like Lieberman, Nelson, Tester, Spectre, and a few others) for all of a few months before Kennedy died. Talk about bad timing. He was VERY conciliatory to the GOP over the first two years, in fact most think most of his problem was that he took the GOP on their word (the pledge of office to work for the people) when in fact they where simply working to, and I quote because this was said verbatim, their “primary goal is for Obama to be a one-term president” by their leader, Mr McConnell. He even said this in the first year, so what we get 3.5 years of ‘trying to make Obama a one-term president”. And then you, and others have the gall to say it is Obama’s fault! Personally I find it bewildering and it gives insight into the logic that brings you to the ideological conclusions of those on the right.
Ok now back to this article, sorry when I see complete mis-characterizations I have to try and correct them…..I am interested in seeing the trends starting in the 80′s and during the more sensible taxation policies of the 90′s.
Median pay started to slide before Obama was pres. SO it is his fault how?
Looking at these numbers as a tea party member – the obvious solution is to repeal 17th amendment. No – to make all students carry guns. No – abolish taxes and we all go live in caves. Yes that’s it.
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