In the words of Ronald Reagan: “Are you better off today than you were four years ago?”
Or, six years ago?
Obama’s redistribution policies have worked swimmingly for the average American household.
Average hourly income is down 10-15% since Barack Obama took office.
Via Zero Hedge:
The Middle Class continues to struggle under Obama’s misguided economic policies.
Via the Senate.gov website:
Following is an analysis, prepared by the Senate Finance Committee Minority Staff, on the Obama economy:
WEAK JOB MARKETS:
When President Obama came into office, the national unemployment rate was 7.8 percent and rose to as high as 10 percent in October 2009. Today it is 5.9 percent, however:
- The number of people who are not in the labor force has grown, despite a growing working-age population, by 12.1 million.
- The number of people who are not in the labor force who want a job has grown by more than 640,000 during the Obama Administration. Many simply gave up on trying to find a job in the Obama economy.
- The employment-to-population ratio has remained consistently below 60 percent during Obama’s tenure and has barely budged and has been at 59.0 percent since June of 2014; in contrast, the ratio averaged 62.9 percent between the beginning of the year 2000 through when Obama assumed office.
- The labor force participation rate has continued to trend downward during Obama’s tenure, from 65.7 percent when he took office to its current low of 62.7 percent.
- Payroll job growth has been tepid over Obama’s tenure: it has averaged only 135,000 per month since the end of the recession.
- While over 7.4 million payroll jobs were lost during the recession, there has only been a net 4.7 million jobs created over Obama’s tenure.
SMALLER PAYCHECKS:
Middle-class Americans’ take home pay has shrunk under the Obama Administration’s economic agenda:
- Earnings have barely budged during President Obama’s tenure. Average hourly earnings, adjusted for inflation, were $10.38 when the president took office; nearly six years later and a full five years and two months after the National Bureau of Economic Research declared that the recession ended (June 2009), average hourly earnings are now (August, 2014) down to $10.34.
- Inflation-adjusted median household income has fallen during President Obama’s tenurefrom $54,423 in 2008, the year before the president took office, to only $51,939 in 2013 (the last year of data availability), putting a squeeze on middle-class American families.
- Inflation-adjusted per capita income has fallen from $29,173 in 2008 to $28,829 in 2013.
- The number of people in poverty has risen over President Obama’s tenure. As a percent of the total population, 13.2 percent of Americans were in poverty in 2008, before the President took office. In 2013, 14.5 percent of Americans were in poverty.
