Chart of the Day: Economy has lost over 9 million full-time, year-round jobs

Today the U.S. Census Bureau will release a new set of income, poverty and health insurance data based on the American Community Survey. This survey is the one recommended for state-level analysis, and we will be analyzing its data carefully for what it tells us about the impact of the recession on Oklahoma households.

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?