Authors: Mickey Huff
Student Researchers:
Elizabeth Fernwood (College of Marin); Aluna Soupholphakdy,
Jordan Hall, Dane Steffy, and Danielle Frisk (Sonoma State University); Brittany Bardin, Christan Zbytniewski, and Gabrielle Vono (Siena College)
Faculty Evaluators:
Susan Rahman (College of Marin); Peter Phillips, Andy Deseran, Shelia Katz, and Heather Flynn (Sonoma State University); Dr. Mo Hannah (Siena College)
A
ccording to the United States Department of Labor’s Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS), unemployment in the US has hovered around 9 percent during the first four months in 2011. This number is what the BLS calls the U-3 statistic. The U-3 statistic, considered the “official unemployment rate,” measures “total unemployment, as a percentage of the civilian labor force.” However, when the BLS adds the total number of discouraged workers along with the marginally employed and part-time labor force—all reflected in the U-6 statistic—the unemployment number rises to an average 15.9 percent.
1
Nonetheless, the BLS’s U-6 number might not be the whole story. One article that made it onto Project Censored’s top 25 stories, “Real Unemployment: One out of Five in the US,” claims the real unemployment number may be as high as 22.1 percent. This story links to author Greg Hunter’s articles, published at
InformationClearinghouse.info
and his own
USAWatchdog.com
.
2
In interviews with economist John Williams from Shadow Government Statistics (SGS), Hunter delves into why the SGS’s unemployment numbers are considerably higher than the BLS’s U-6 rate, and, when looking deeper into the numbers, it is harder to see the turnaround picture. In fact, just the opposite is going on. In his latest report, Williams estimated that the government routinely overstates job growth by “230,000 jobs” a month. In a recent interview from his San Francisco office, Williams told Hunter that when it comes to calculating unemployment numbers, the BLS is “flying blind.” Williams admitted, “It is hard to put an exact number on the actual job losses last month, but we likely lost jobs—not gained them.” He added, “The job losses could be as high as 30,000 for last month.”
3
Over the course of researching this news summary, the authors of this article searched nearly thirty corporate and independent media sites. We compared the underreported stories, which might have briefly appeared in independent media outlets like Common Dreams, IndyMedia, or AlterNet, with the spin presented by the more corporate
media outlets like MSNBC News, Reuters, Associated Press, the
New York Times
, the
Washington Post
, and Fox News. Given the wide range of topics covered in this summary, as primary representatives of the corporate media, we have limited this focus to how the
New York Times
, Fox News, and the
Washington Post
covered the stories. As representative of the independent media, we use Common Dreams, AlterNet, and
Mother Jones
.
When it came to reporting the unemployment numbers, both the corporate and the independent media reported the U-3 statistics and often alluded to the U-6 discouraged statistics, as in this
New York Times
article published on May 13, 2011: “Dig a little though and the foundation looks wobblier. Economists point out that some of the drop in state unemployment merely reflects people’s giving up on the job search or retiring early, as well as an aging work force with fewer young people hunting for jobs.”
4
The press often glosses over the U-6 numbers; rarely does anyone delve into the subject, let alone the alternative statistics provided by economist John Williams at SGS. The independent media covered the unemployment numbers with the same glossing-over of the U-6 numbers and an avoidance of any alternative statistics. Not surprisingly, with President Barack Obama in office, Fox News has actively promoted the higher U-6 statistics but has left the SGS numbers to the left- and right-wing bloggers.
For many people, the SGS unemployment rate of 22.2 percent seems to be a more accurate number. In a related story, the US Census Bureau reported that for three consecutive years, from 2006 to 2009, the poverty rate in the US rose. (At publication time, the 2010 poverty rate had not yet been released.) According to the Census Bureau, the official 2009 poverty rate stood at 14.3 percent, up from 13.3 percent in 2008. In real terms, in 2009, 43.6 million people were living in poverty—up from 39.8 million in the previous year, and the largest number of people living in poverty in fifteen years. Anticipating the 2010 rate, most predict a fourth consecutive year of increases in the poverty rate.
A closer look at the poverty rate in the US reveals a significant racial component to the numbers. The Census Bureau reported that while the poverty rates rose in nearly all ethnic groups, the highest rates and increases were reflected in blacks (from 24.7 percent to 25.8 percent) and Hispanics (from 23.2 percent to 25.3 percent). In comparison, the
poverty rate for non-Hispanic whites rose only 0.8 percent (from 8.6 percent to 9.4 percent). All the while, Asians stayed statistically the same (12.5 percent) from 2008 to 2009.
Interestingly, the Census Bureau estimated that the poverty rate for people aged sixty-five and older decreased (from 9.7 percent to 8.9 percent), though the rate for children under the age of eighteen increased (from 19.0 percent to 20.7 percent).
5
In September 2011, President Obama plans to release the 2010 poverty numbers. The current formula used by the government to determine the poverty line has been unchanged since 1963. Essentially, the formula takes the cost of food and multiplies it by the number of household members. In an article published by Global Research, Christine Vestal explained the problem with this calculation:
While the formula may have been a good way to estimate a subsistence cost of living in the early 1960s, experts say food now represents only one-eighth of a typical household budget, with expenses such as housing and childcare putting increasing pressure on struggling families.
In addition, the official measure fails to account for regional differences in the cost of housing, it doesn’t include medical expenses or transportation, and at $22,000 for a family of four, the poverty line is considered by many to be simply too low.
6
President Obama’s plan was developed by the National Academies of Sciences (NAS) in 1995, thus the product of a study funded by Congress nearly twenty years ago. Obama’s plan calculates many of the additional costs of living and subtracts government aid like food stamps and money received from other stimulus programs. Obama is hoping that with the new NAS formula, along with the 2009 stimulus bills, poverty numbers will soften in the forthcoming poverty report. Even if this is true, Vestal points out that now that most of the stimulus money has been spent, the poverty numbers will likely spike up again.
Opinion polls have shown that for the last seven years American voters have listed the economy as the first or second most important issue. In the same polls, roughly 50 percent of Americans have
believed that taxes on the middle class should be cut and that government should be downsized.
7
One of the most important government programs affected by the gradual downsizing is education. Cutting education is extremely shortsighted and can only lead to America forfeiting its competitive advantage to better-educated nations. In fact, this is already happening. Dr. C. Alonzo Peters, founder of
Mocha-Money.com
—a personal finance website dedicated to helping black Americans gain financial independence—wrote in an AlterNet article published on November 18, 2010:
Let’s not forget that increasing the pool of college-educated workers improves the ability of the country to discover the next breakthrough in biology, nanotechnology, or computer science—a process that would create entire new industries and promote further prosperity. Currently only 4 of the top 10 companies receiving US patents in 2009 were American companies. Without a well-educated workforce there is the risk that the next great technology will be invented overseas and then imported here to America.
8
Dr. Peters pointed out that after World War II, the government provided free college education through the GI Bill. Some seven million returning veterans took advantage of the bill, helping to create a wide and prosperous middle class. Peters continued, “In fact, it’s estimated that the GI Bill returned nearly $7 to the economy for every $1 spent on it.” Peters then referred to a US Census study that reported that a person who receives a college education earns, on average, more than $900,000 more than a person with only a high school education.
9
Someone with $900,000 more in her pocket ends up spending that much more in their community, which in turn stimulates the whole economy.
For most Americans, the Great Recession is not over. Budget cuts from both federal and state governments have forced colleges to increase tuition. From 1996 to 2006, higher education costs increased by over 80 percent. The average college graduate received both a diploma and a bank statement with an average of over $26,000 in debt coming due in monthly payments to Sallie Mae. One popular article on Project Censored’s website, reported by Siena College student
researchers Brittany Bardin, Christan Zbytniewski, and Gabrielle Vono, pointed out how student debt made private student loan companies incredibly wealthy, all the while leaving millions of college-educated citizens as, essentially, indentured servants to the high-powered and politically connected bankers.
10
Once again, few corporate media outlets have focused on the rise in student debt, and none of the corporate media outlets seem to have presented the proposal for free college education.
The New York Times
published an article suggesting, “Many economists say student debt should be seen in a more favorable light.”
The New York Times
quoted Sandy Baum, a higher-education policy analyst and senior fellow at George Washington University, as saying she was not concerned that student debt was growing so fast.
11
At the
Washington Post
, columnist Michelle Singletary actually brought up the idea of free education in her May 18, 2011, article, “Higher Education: Right or Privilege?” Singletary argued, “The majority believes the federal government, states, private donations and endowments, or some combination of the four, should cover the cost.”
12
On the independent media site AlterNet, Les Leopold published an excellent piece titled, “Free College on Wall Street’s Tab?” However, even progressive sites like
Mother Jones
seemed to barely cover the issue of rising student debt. Kevin Drum of
MoJo
wrote a few paragraphs on how one of the components of the Affordacare bill that passed in Congress forced commercial banks like Sallie Mae and Nelnet out of the government-subsidized student loan business. Drum presented this as a bonus for education and college students, yet he failed to go into any of the dozens of countermeasures that continue to make going to college less and less accessible to everyday, Main Street Americans.
13
In fact, to find any article on one of the most progressive websites and magazines in the country,
Mother Jones
, doing a simple search of the words “college loans” and “college debt” takes you back to a brief 2006 blog post entitled “Generation Debt” by Jim Rossi.
14
Certainly the financial situation for college students in 2011 has become considerably worse.
Another underreported story relating to poverty and hunger exposed the persistent problem of food waste in America. According to a California Watch article published on March 31, 2010, California’s “largest single source of waste” is food. While poverty and hunger are
on the rise in the US, California alone throws away more than six million tons of food each year.
15
According to Jonathon Bloom, author of the book
American Wasteland
, “Americans waste more than 40 percent of the food we produce for consumption. That comes at an annual cost of more than $100 billion. At the same time, food prices and the number of Americans without enough to eat continues to rise.”
16
Worldwide, the problem of food waste and poverty is not much different. On May 11, 2011, the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations (FAO) released a stunning report that received almost zero coverage from the corporate media. According to the report titled
Global Food Losses and Food Waste:
“Roughly one third of the food produced in the world for human consumption every year—that’s approximately 1.3 billion tonnes—gets lost or wasted.” Interestingly, the FAO report stated among its key findings, “Industrialized and developing countries dissipate [waste] roughly the same quantities of food—respectively 670 and 630 million tonnes.”
17
While Americans throw away roughly 40 percent of the food produced in the US, and the rest of the world tosses out 33 percent of their food, the price of food has skyrocketed. Another
Censored 2012
top 25 story explores the fact that food prices are creating a global crisis. In a web-only article for the magazine
In These Times
titled “Diet Hard: With a Vengeance,” senior editor David Moberg unraveled the web of interwoven factors that have created global food prices, noting that according to a February 2011 FAO report, the food price index rose to its highest level since 1990. Moberg wrote:
As a result, since 2010 began, roughly another 44 million people have quietly crossed the threshold into malnutrition, joining 925 million already suffering from lack of food. If prices continue to rise, this food crisis will push the ranks of the hungry toward a billion people, with another two billion suffering from “hidden malnutrition” of inadequate diets, nearly all in the developing countries of Africa, Asia and Latin America.
18