The following sums it up: 162,000 net new jobs were created in July while the working age population increased by 204,000. This is the legacy of Obamonics. The net difference id the people who are now on the federal and state doll. Success- more dependent and one step closer to socialism!
WASHINGTON (AP) — Four out of 5 U.S. adults struggle with
joblessness, near poverty or reliance on welfare for at least parts of their
lives, a sign of deteriorating economic security and an elusive American dream.
Survey data exclusive to The Associated Press points to
an increasingly globalized U.S. economy, the widening gap between rich and poor
and loss of good-paying manufacturing jobs as reasons for the trend.
The findings come as President Barack Obama tries to
renew his administration's emphasis on the economy, saying in recent speeches
that his highest priority is to "rebuild ladders of opportunity" and
reverse income inequality.
Hardship is particularly on the rise among whites, based
on several measures. Pessimism among that racial group about their families'
economic futures has climbed to the highest point since at least 1987. In the
most recent AP-GfK poll, 63 percent of whites called the economy
"poor."
While racial and ethnic minorities are more likely to
live in poverty, race disparities in the poverty rate have narrowed
substantially since the 1970s, census data show. Economic insecurity among
whites also is more pervasive than is shown in government data, engulfing more
than 76 percent of white adults by the time they turn 60, according to a new
economic gauge being published next year by the Oxford University Press.
The gauge defines "economic insecurity" as
experiencing unemployment at some point in their working lives, or a year or
more of reliance on government aid such as food stamps or income below 150
percent of the poverty line. Measured across all races, the risk of economic
insecurity rises to 79 percent.
Sometimes termed "the invisible poor" by
demographers, lower-income whites are generally dispersed in suburbs as well as
small rural towns, where more than 60 percent of the poor are white.
Concentrated in Appalachia in the East, they are also numerous in the industrial
Midwest and spread across America's heartland, from Missouri, Arkansas and
Oklahoma up through the Great Plains.
More than 19 million whites fall below the poverty line
of $23,021 for a family of four, accounting for more than 41 percent of the nation's
destitute, nearly double the number of poor blacks.
In 2011 that snapshot showed 12.6 percent of adults in
their prime working-age years of 25-60 lived in poverty. But measured in terms
of a person's lifetime risk, a much higher number — 4 in 10 adults — falls into
poverty for at least a year of their lives.
The risks of poverty also have been increasing in recent
decades, particularly among people ages 35-55, coinciding with widening income
inequality. For instance, people ages 35-45 had a 17 percent risk of
encountering poverty during the 1969-1989 time period; that risk increased to
23 percent during the 1989-2009 period. For those ages 45-55, the risk of
poverty jumped from 11.8 percent to 17.7 percent.
By race, nonwhites still have a higher risk of being
economically insecure, at 90 percent. But compared with the official poverty
rate, some of the biggest jumps under the newer measure are among whites, with
more than 76 percent enduring periods of joblessness, life on welfare or
near-poverty.
By 2030, based on the current trend of widening income
inequality, close to 85 percent of all working-age adults in the U.S. will
experience bouts of economic insecurity.
Rank's analysis is supplemented with figures provided by
Tom Hirschl, a professor at Cornell University; John Iceland, a sociology
professor at Penn State University; the University of New Hampshire's Carsey
Institute; the Census Bureau; and the Population Reference Bureau.
Among the findings:
—For the first time since 1975, the number of white
single-mother households who were living in poverty with children surpassed or
equaled black ones in the past decade, spurred by job losses and faster rates
of out-of-wedlock births among whites. White single-mother families in poverty
stood at nearly 1.5 million in 2011, comparable to the number for blacks.
Hispanic single-mother families in poverty trailed at 1.2 million.
—The share of children living in high-poverty
neighborhoods — those with poverty rates of 30 percent or more — has increased
to 1 in 10, putting them at higher risk of teen pregnancy or dropping out of
school. Non-Hispanic whites accounted for 17 percent of the child population in
such neighborhoods, up from 13 percent in 2000, even though the overall
proportion of white children in the U.S. has been declining.
The share of black children in high-poverty neighborhoods
dropped sharply, from 43 percent to 37 percent, while the share of Latino
children ticked higher, from 38 to 39 percent.
___
AP Director of Polling Jennifer Agiesta, News Survey
Specialist Dennis Junius and AP writer Debra McCown in Buchanan County, Va.,
contributed to this report.
