Macomb, IL – Those who still doubt the need for intervention by our elected representatives into a hurting and harmful economy maybe haven't noticed some of the numbers affecting most regular people.
Here are two: February payrolls fell more than 600,000, and the U.S. unemployment rate is above 8%.
True, here in the Midwest, the Consumer Price Index for February was largely unchanged, according to Bureau of Labor Statistics data released March 18. However, escaping from rising prices generally was mostly due to declines in costs of transportation in particular. For instance, costs for motor fuel are down 36% from a year ago, and energy overall is down 19% since February 2008. Still, a closer look at the statistics shows that motor fuel prices also went up 1.4% since January.
Also rising in the last year were costs for medical care (+2.4%), rent (+2.6%), education and communications (+3.0%), food and beverages (+5.1%) and electricity (+8.5%), the BLS says.
So aside from food, shelter, health care and school, things are about even.
And did your wages go up enough just to keep up with those essential goods and services?
Don't feel bad. Taking a longer view in the Midwest, prices have outpaced wages for years. In the last decade, prices have skyrocketed for electricity (up 39%), gasoline (up 62%), and utility (piped) gas (up 112%), the BLS shows.
Continuing to focus on the Midwest, BLS's most recent data also shows the median income before taxes here to be $58,000, badly trailing the Northeast ($67,000) and West ($68,000), and barely ahead of the South ($57,000). And percentages of household expenditures Midwesterners have to deal with are telling, too. We spend 6.3% of our income on health care, 12.3% on food, 17.4% on transportation, and 32.2% on housing.
Finally, Illinois has 6.6 million people in its labor force, BLS reports - down 139,000 in the last 12 months. The state has 518,000 jobless people - a 33% jump from a year ago - and suffers an unemployment rate that ballooned from a lousy 5.8% in January 2008 to a bleak 7.9% in January 2009.
Mass layoffs in the Land of Lincoln went from 68 in January 2008 to 130 in January this year, resulting in jobless claims increasing from 9,100 last January to 13,400 this January - a 47% jump.
Nationally, according to the Congressional Budget Office, since 2001 (when George W. Bush was named President) the number of U.S. families in poverty went up 19%, to 7.6 million; the cost of the premium for a family health-insurance policy went up 87%, to $12,680; the number of uninsured Americans went up 19%, to 45.7 million folks; the median household income fell 1%, to $50,233; and corporate profits went up 68%, to $1.6 trillion.
Those who oppose a federal stimulus - or even people elected to represent our interests who refuse help for constituents, or make future assistance more unlikely by being partisan obstructionists - hurt us all.