March 6, 2012
The economy is largely running on a solidamount of debt, Orwellian news, and selective perception. Take for example the absolute lack of coverage on our peak debt situation. The media simply assumes that going over the $15 trillion mark on national debt was somehow a story not worth reporting. The total amount we have taken on in borrowing is larger than our annual GDP yet countries around the world are being chastised for this exact problem. Or what about the peak number of Americans now on food stamps? One out of every seven men, women, and children is now on food assistance at well over 46,000,000. You get food assistance when you are economically scraping by. Yet the media is largely absent on this story. We are living in a crisis of solvency and much of the recent recovery is simply a choice of ignoring glaring issues of solvency.
Are people really hiring in large numbers?
I keep seeing articles about the massive number of job hiring recently. Yet examining the data shows us a somewhat different perspective:
The above data is really a reason why most average Americans feel very little in the form of economic recovery. Job postings are solidly up from the lows in 2008 but look at the number of people actually getting hired. While job postings are up well over 1 million since the trough, job hires are still near bottom levels. It is very different to post a job than to hire an employee. From the hiring data we are seeing we are witnessing a large surge in low-wage service sector jobs. This of course is better than nothing but also explains why expensive items like housing continue to move lower in price. It would be hard to sustain a big mortgage on a minimum wage.
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