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Packed Oklahoma prisons, rising costs

Creativity & Learning

The Great Recession

Making Ends Meet: The Medicare Generation

A tale of two (Oklahoma) cities

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In the meantime, thanks to a long plane ride and my recurring tendency to pack novels in the wrong bag, I had a chance last week to look more closely at the Census Bureau’s other report on income, poverty and health insurance, the Current Population Survey, released two weeks ago (I can’t help but think of the show Newhart: “This is my Census Bureau survey Darryl, and this is my other Census Bureau survey Darryl”). The report included findings on work experience and earnings over the past year, along with historical comparisons. Despite having followed the path of the Great Recession closely over the past two years, I was astonished to read the following:

Between 2007 and 2009, the number of males working full-time year-round with earnings decreased by 6.9 million; the number of females working full-time year-round with earning decreased by 2.4 million.

Here are the annual numbers of full-time, year-round male and female workers going back to 1997:

Overall, there were 9.3 million, or 8.6 percent, fewer full-time, year-round (FT/YR) workers in 2009 than in 2007. The male FT/YR workforce has shrunk 10.9 percent in the past two years; while the female FT/YR workforce has shrunk by 5.0 percent. There were fewer men working FT/YR last year than in 1998, while the female FT/YR workforce remains 11.6 percent larger than in 1998. Last year, 68.4 percent of male workers worked full-time, year-round, compared to 59.2 percent of working women.

If there was any sliver of good news in this, it was that median earnings for those fortunate enough to maintain full-time, year-round employment went up: from $46,191 for men in 2008 to $47,127 and from $35,609 to $36,278 for women (adjusted for inflation).  However, as the Economic Policy Institute pointed out in their analysis of the data, the consequence of the significantly eroded work-time for men meant that overall, median income for men fell slightly in 2009, while for women, it rose.

This data can lead to important policy questions, some of which we discussed in this blog post from August of last year looking at the impact the recession was having on male employment. But for now, the main question we are left with is simply when, if ever, are those 9.3 million full-time, year-round jobs going to come back?

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Sunday’s New York Times magazine cover story explored the devastating impact that the collapse of the U.S. automobile industry is having on the Black middle class in Detroit and surrounding areas. Since the 1930s, the Big Three automobile companies have provided a ladder to the middle-class for tens of thousands of African Americans in Detroit and surrounding areas, offering high-paying blue-collar jobs and the opportunity to become homeowners and send their children to good schools and colleges. Now, plant closures, layoffs and buyouts in the auto sector are leaving these workers without jobs, at risk of losing their homes, and struggling to avoid losing hope. Writing of Marvin Powell, a 13-year GM assembly-line worker who earns $28/hr at a plant in Pontiac that is set to shut down before the end of this year, author Jonathan Mahler asks:

What if you were 38 and had spent the last 12 years doing one thing for a company and an industry that allowed your predecessors to escape the Jim Crow South, that gave generations of black workers a shot at dignity and their rightful place in the American middle class, that allowed you to buy a decent home in a neighborhood right next door to white families who had fled your city years before? Maybe it wasn’t the job you dreamed of when you were 20, but it was what you did and what your father did and what you and almost everyone around you knew, and it had never failed you before. What would you do? How would you prepare for the loss of all that?

Meanwhile, this excellent story in the Oklahoma Observer by OU Journalism student Melissa Morgan looked at the City Rescue Mission homeless shelter in downtown Oklahoma City. The article notes that women with children are the fastest-growing demographic group among homeless Americans today, having increased by 51 percent in the past year. Morgan described 34 children from the Rescue Mission participating in an Easter Egg Hunt and quoted Tiffany Webb, the Mission’s public relations director:

“We are heartbroken to see this many children need services at the mission; however, if they come, we want them to receive all the services they can to help them out of the situation without a sense of chaos and worry,” Webb said.

The story notes that job losses and rising foreclosure rates are among the main causes for increased homeless populations, along with chronic factors related to domestic violence, mental illness and trauma, and affordable housing issues. (The Homeless Alliance of Oklahoma and National Center on Family Homelessness offer substantial information on homelessness issues, as well as policy proposals and ways to get involved. The American Recovery and Reinvestment Act provided $1.5 billion for homelessness prevention efforts, of which Oklahoma’s share is $8.2 million. You can get information on Oklahoma’s plans for these funds from the state Department of Commerce website).

For earlier blog posts spotlighting excellent reporting on the  impact of the economic downturn on families and safety net providers, click here and here.

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