7 setbacks for the middle class

[Gary and Alla 3,694]

http://finance.yahoo.com/news/7-setbacks-middle-class-121400614.html

Obama has been very good to the 1%. For the rest of us....not so much.

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Five years into his presidency, Barack Obama is still falling short of his number one goal: to fix the economy for the middle class.

Sure, a recovery has been underway for most of his presidency, but it's still slow and uneven. And despite Obama's focus on the middle class, the improvement so far has largely benefited corporations and the ultra-rich.

Whether you blame Obama or a dysfunctional Congress, either way the recovery is hardly a middle-class success story.

1. Workers are taking home their smallest slice of U.S. income on record: At around $15.8 trillion a year, the United States produces more in annual economic output than ever before, but it's not the worker that's benefiting. Instead, corporate profits now account for their largest slice of that pie on record, whereas the slice for workers has been steadily declining.

2. Inequality has widened: The recovery has been good to families earning more than $394,000 a year, but the other 99% of Americans have barely felt it. The richest 1% of American families have captured 95% of the income gains in the recovery period spanning 2009 to 2012, according to economists at the forefront of income inequality research, Thomas Piketty and Emmanuel Saez.

Meanwhile, income for the median American family has barely budged in recent years.

3. The job market still faces a gaping hole: From the job market's peak in early 2008 to its bottom in 2010, the U.S. economy lost 8.7 million jobs -- about half of which were in construction and manufacturing.

To this day, the United States still hasn't gained back all those jobs. The economy needs about 1.2 million jobs to get back to the 2008 level, and once population growth is added to the mix, the hole looks more like an abyss.

To fill that abyss, the economy still needs about 7.9 million jobs to get back to pre-recession conditions when unemployment was under 5%, according to Heidi Shierholz, economist with the liberal Economic Policy Institute. Even with strong hiring, it could take at least five years to get there.

Part of the problem stems from workers dropping out of the labor force. If these "missing workers" were looking for work, Shierholz estimates the unemployment rate would be closer to 10% today, rather than its current 6.7%.

4. The poverty rate remains high: About 46.5 million Americans are living in poverty -- equivalent to 15% of the entire U.S. population. The poverty rate has barely budged during Obama's presidency, marking the first time it has remained at or above 15% for three consecutive years since 1965.

5. Record number of Americans are on food stamps: Amid the recession, the food stamp rolls surged, and as of 2013, 48 million Americans were receiving the benefits -- the highest number since the program began in 1969.

The average recipient gets $133 a month from the program, but some of those benefits are now on the chopping block in Congress.

Share your story: Were you helped, or left behind by the recovery?

6. The manufacturing revival was a mirage: In his 2012 State of the Unio

[TBoneTX 45,498]

We're missing part of #6 and all of #7, it seems.

[Pooky 3,807]

We're missing part of #6 and all of #7, it seems.

Yet another setback to the middle class, not knowing what the mysterious "Seventh Setback to the Middle Class" might be.