thesis paper (1)

The Economy is Back?

The Economy is back?

Christopher Bruny

Eco 405

Spring 2015


Just in case you missed it: the US economy is back…or is that what many economists

want you to believe? In the last seven to eight years, our nation’s economy has experienced a

crisis, which has led to, what we now refer to as, the Great Recession. However, over the past

few years, many economists have claimed that the recession has ended and our economy has

recovered from its latest setback. With our economy in a state of stability, that would suggest

that the quality of life for individuals has improved and that may not be the case here. The

livelihood of the general population has not significantly improved from the latest crisis. If the

economy has truly recovered, why hasn’t the public experienced it? When we look at the data,

the US has been segregated into two separate classes, the top 1%, who have recovered and are

far better off, and the remaining 99%, who has not shown any signs of improvement in their

livelihood. In this paper I will refute the claim that the economy and the quality of the general

population has been stabilized by claiming that, in actuality, the quality of life for everyone,

specifically the bottom 99%, has not improved and has possibly deteriorated through the factors

of unemployment, low wages, labor participation, job opportunities, poverty, and inequality

between us, the bottom feeders, and the rich; while at the same time addressing any possible

objection to my argument.

Before we begin, let’s take the time to understand what an economic crisis is and the

effects that our recent crisis has had on our economy. An economic crisis can be defined as a

situation where an economy suffers a downturn brought by a financial crisis. During an

economic crisis, an economy will experience a fall in GDP, as shown in figure 1; and whether an

inflation or deflation occurs, prices will rise or fall. This usually comes in a form of a recession

or depression. Our last economic disaster in 2007-2008, often referred to as our worst crisis since

the Great Depression, started with the busting of the U.S. housing bubble. As a result, when it


reached its peak in 2006, the values of securities that were tied in U.S real estate pricing began to

plummet (Simkovic 2011). This greatly damaged many financial institutions. The suffering of

the housing market would eventually lead to things such as many houses going into foreclosure

and the downturn of the economy, which led to the rise of unemployment. All of these, among

others, eventually led to the instability of the economy. During this time, we witnessed the

decline in the output of goods and services in the United States, and corporate profits plummeted

after years of increasing, as shown in figure 2. This would then lead to many companies either

letting go of their employees or limiting the number of people they hire, which would resulted in

the rise of unemployment to 10.1% in October of 2009, and the failure of many top corporations

(BEA 2010/ BLS 2010). People began scrambling around looking for jobs because employees

were either being offered fewer hours or no hours at all. Government spending also took a hit

during this time. In a response effort to the growing instability of the economy, the government,

along with the Central Bank, established an unprecedented fiscal stimulus and expansionary

monetary policy in an effort to bailout many institutions. However, this pushed the government

into a deep debt. Overall, we can see that the economy was a mess, but according to many

economists, this is all behind us.


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What may be considered the "longest recovery" began in 2009 when The Recovery Act,

also known as The American Recovery and Reinvestment Act of 2009 (ARRA), was enacted and

signed into law. The Recovery Act was created in response to the Great Recession. The primary

objective of this act was to create and save jobs while providing temporary relief programs for

those who were affected by the recession (CBO Report February 2012). The act was also geared

to invest in infrastructure, education, health, federal tax incentives, renewable energy, and the

expansion of unemployment benefits. The approximate cost of the economic stimulus package

was estimated to be around $787 billion, but later revised to $831 billion between 2009 and 2019

(CBO Report February 2012). The Recovery Act was based on the Keynesian macroeconomic

theory of Neoliberalism. According to this theory, during a recession, a government should

decrease its private spending while increasing public spending, which would result in providing


and saving more jobs, and stop any further decline of the (David Kotz 2000). Fast-forwarding to

six years later, many have claimed that the Recovery Act was a success. Economists argue that

we are no longer in a crisis and our economy is well stabilized. Based on figures 1 and 2, after

experiencing a decline in numbers, real GDP and corporate profits began surging during the

recovery years to numbers that are higher than they have ever been. In return, this would suggest

that the livelihood of many individuals should have already improved or will do so in the near

future. Economists believe that since the economy is stable, there are now more job opportunities

being provided, which will result in more labor participation and a decline in unemployment.

The numbers in all of these categories has either been as high (jobs opportunities and labor

participation) or as low (unemployment) since the crisis began. As noted before, I am here to

prove that we should not jump on the boat of this claim just yet.

I am not here to write about how much of a bust the Recovery Act was; however, I am

here to claim and demonstrate how the evolution of most individual's quality of life has not

significantly improved since the crisis. I believe that many individual’s status has either not

changed or had worsened compared to how it was before and during the crisis. I believe there are

still many people who are unemployed or underemployed. As a result, many of those individuals,

who are still discouraged, refuse to go out and look for jobs because they have simply given up

and do not trust the state of the economy to find a job. In addition to those factors, inequality in

income and wealth has widened even more since the crisis. I do not know where these experts

have gotten their evidence, but as I will show you that the general quality of life for most U.S.

citizens has not improved, as one would expect after an extensive period of recovery or in an

unstable economy.


First, I would like to tackle the issue of the unemployment rate, since that is what catches

the eye of most. According to an article written by Patrick Gillespie (2015), as of February 2015,

“the unemployment rate fell to 5.5%.” According to the article, this is the lowest the rate has

been since May 2008, before the economic crisis began; and an improvement from what the rate

was a year ago at 6.7%. When people see these numbers, they tend to get excited because they

believe that more people are being employed due to the higher availability of jobs. This means

that the economy is getting better. What people do not know is that numbers can easily be

manipulated to tell a story in someone’s favor. It is not to say that the rate given is made up, but

it does not accurately depict the current situation our nation is in. The unemployment rate of

5.5% is the official percentage of the country’s unemployment rate. What people do not know is

the factors, or lack of, that goes into the calculation of this rate. There are six different

measurements (U1-6) used by the government in order to calculate the unemployment rate. The

official rate is measured by U3, which consists of individuals who are part of the labor force, do

not have a job, and are actively looking for work. In other words, if you are sixteen and older, do

not have a job, and are constantly looking for employment, then you fall under the official

measurement of being unemployed. In return, this is how the rate of 5.5% is formulated.

However, let’s say that you are unemployed and you are too discouraged from the outlook of the

labor force to actively look for a job, then under the official measurement, you are not considered

unemployed. Let’s be honest, there are many people out there like this. Due to the instability of

the economy in recent years and the level of difficulty in getting job, many people have simply

given up and have either stopped looking for a job or returned to school. These same people,

nonetheless, would not be measured in the official calculation. There are a lot of these


individuals, and if they were factored into that calculation, then the unemployment rate would

skyrocket.

The measurement of unemployment we should be looking at is the U6. The U6

measurement includes far more factors than the U3 measurement. The U6 measurement includes

individuals described in U3 plus discouraged workers, marginally attached workers, and

underemployed workers (part time workers who want to work full time but cannot due to

economic reasons) (Boundless Economics 2014). So while experts say that the unemployment

rate, as of February 2015, is at 5.5%, unemployment is really at 11.2% under U6 measurements

(Jerome Corsi 2015). I strongly believe that there should be a better form of measurement for the

official unemployment rate because it better depicts the current state of individuals in the labor

force, especially during this period. I believe that experts like to keep the numbers of negative

factors relatively low to prevent the public from panicking. However, I believe it is providing a

sense of false hope for everyone. When we compare the measurements of the U3 and the U6,

two different stories are being told. Based on figure 3, we see that the rates of unemployment for

both measurements are completely different dating back to the years before the crisis. The

official rate of the U3 has been lower than the measurement of the U6, partly because many

factors are being left out of the official rate. So in actuality, our unemployment rate has been way

higher than it has been portrayed to be in our official measurement. Under the U6 measurement,

an economy, throughout the past fifteen years, that has unemployment rate above 8% majority of

the years, spells out an unstable economy, and an unstable economy results in a negative effect

on the quality of life of many citizens. Another thing to note when looking at figure 3 is that

when we look at the U3 line, at the time of January 2014, the unemployment rate began inching

back towards the rate it was at right before the crisis occurred. However, when we look at the U6


measurement for the same time period, the unemployment rate in January of 2014 was nowhere

near the rate it was at in January of 2008, right before the crisis began. Now the U3 measurement

would back the claim of economists who argue that the unemployment has improved and

reached a point where it is as low as it was before the crisis, thus suggesting the improvement of

the livelihood of many individuals; however, when we look at the U6 measurement, it tells us

quite a different story. While the rate has decreased from what it was during the crisis, thus

showing improvement, we cannot say that the quality of life has fully recovered from the crisis

because the rate is still high and has not reached the point that it was at before the crisis occurred.

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Figure 3: retrieved from FRED


Another way we can downplay the relatively low unemployment rate is by looking at the

labor force. While many economists claim that the 5.5% unemployment rate is a sign of recovery

due to the Recovery Act and other economic policies generated by the President, a record of 92.9

million Americans are no longer in the labor face (John Schoen 2014 (Gillespie, 15 million

workers still earn under $10 an hour, 2015)). As a result, the labor participation rate is at 62.7%,

a thirty-eight year low (shown in figure 4). As I see it, the recent official unemployment rate is

meaningless. Imagine if they are 92.9 million people not participating in the labor force meaning

there are 92.9 million more people who are unemployed and who are not calculated into the

official rate. A record low in the lack of labor participation, especially after a period of recovery

does not demonstrate a positive outlook of the livelihoods of many individuals. These numbers

demonstrate the level of discouragement in people and their lack of trust in the stability of the

economy, in which they have simply given up and dropped out the labor market. Also, when we

look at the participation rate before the crisis occurred and the rate it is at now, based on figure 4,

we are far below from it. The data on the chart suggests that labor participation is far worse than

it was when both of the recovery crises started. Simply put, individuals never truly recovered

from the discouragement of the outlook of the labor market caused by the crisis, causing many to

stop looking for a job and later dropping out of the labor force.

Many argue that the low rate in labor participation is not due to the lack of stability in the

economy, but because of individuals themselves. You may ask yourself how? Well that would

be the results of jobs and the amount available. During this year’s State of the Union in January,

President Obama claimed that more job opportunities were coming, the highest it has been

during the years of recovery. To follow up this claim, he revealed the U.S. economy added about

295,000 jobs in February, which crushed expectations of many economists who predicted job


gains of 235,000 (Patrick Gillespie 2015). According to this article, February marked the 12th

straight month, during recovery, that the economy has gained over 200,000 jobs, which resulted

into the unemployment rate falling to a so call 5.5%. Some may use this to justify the low

participation rate by claiming that jobs are available, but individuals are not running to go fill

them. The easy route to argue against would be that workers have been too discouraged over the

years to expect them to run after a job after years of being denied one job after another, because

the President claimed that there were more jobs available.

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Figure 4: retrieved from FRED

Now, from a different perspective, the President, along with many other economists,

continually claim that there are more job opportunities available. I am not denying that this claim


is not true, but one should wonder what kinds of jobs are being provided? According to Patrick

Gillespie (2015), the three top sectors that saw an increase in job opportunity during and after the

years of recovery were retail, health care, and business services (Gillespie 2015). Retail was the

leading sector in job opportunities during the period recovery, but there is a downside to this.

Retail is also regarded as paying the lowest wage, with the average starting wage at $10 per hour

(Patrick Gillespie 2015). Health care, on the other hand, takes the award for being the second

highest sector in job opportunities during the period of recover. Just like retail, health care also

has its downside. In the field of health care, many employers require their employees to work full

time to earn benefits, but prevent many of their workers from working full time. Experts may say

a job is a job, especially during a period when jobs are scarce, except they should not be. If

economists claim we are no longer in a crisis, people should not be settling for retail, especially

with individuals who have a college degree. I am pretty sure a college graduate, who spent all of

their time and money to earn a degree, did not imagine themselves getting a PHD at a prestigious

institution like Columbia to be working at a cash register at Walmart or folding clothes at a

clothing store like Uniqlo. Unfortunately, these are the situations that many individuals during

the years of the crisis, and even after today, after the called recovery. In terms of employers not

providing full time hours to their employees, please note that this not only occurred in the health

care sector, to prevent their workers from receiving full time benefits. I believe that since

employers know job opportunities are scarce, people are willing to take whatever they can get,

even if it means they are overworked and underemployed, just so they can meet ends meet. As a

result, workers are being exploited; therefore, they possess no labor power. Employers have the

upper hand in knowing that everyone wants a job, so a worker can be replaced. This gives

employers the leverage to pay their employees a lower wage, while working them to a point


where they can get the much needed labor they need to maximize their profits, while limiting

their cost in paying employees. This has been an ongoing issue in the country with no signs of

improving, thus showing no signs of the livelihood of the general population improving.

Let’s take this moment to look at unemployment through our opposition’s perspective.

Let’s say that the official measurement of the unemployment was accurate and that

unemployment was decreasing. Nonetheless, the common theory in macroeconomics is that as

unemployment decline, wages increase. Therefore, the average wage of Americans in the United

States should be increasing since unemployment is decreasing. However, this is not the case

here. According to official measurement, unemployment is going down, but wages are not going

up. A little bit more than a year before the crisis began well through the years of recovery, the

average annual wages of workers have decreased by 0.8%, as seen in Figure 5. Even before that

period, wages have been on a decline through a period of weak expansion (Bush expansion).

After seeing an increase of 2.4% during 1995-2000, wage levels became stagnate and did not see

either an increase or decrease. As we got closer to the crisis, wages started declining, even after

the recession was over. Not only has wages declined during this period, so has the annual hours

worked by workers. In my opinion, this tells two possible stories. Regardless if unemployment is

increasing or decreasing, employers have decreased the wages of their workers; or

unemployment is really declining, but employees are underemployed and forced to work part

time, which is why the average annual hours are down. In turn, this would cause the annual

average wage to decline as well. If we were truly in a stabilized economy, we would see wages

heading towards the opposite directions with both wages and hours worked increasing. Instead,

many individuals are either being forced to work less and/or getting paid less, which would not

suggest an improvement of the quality of life in this country.


Another perspective to view is that the quality of life of the general population would be

through the poverty rate, an ongoing issue of this country. When we look at figure 6, the country

has come a long way from reducing the poverty rate when it was at a record high of about 23%

back in 1959. There were periods when the poverty rates would increase during previous

recessions, nonetheless, at some point, it would begin to decline. However, as we look back

during our last recession, the poverty rate has not followed this trend. During the recession of

2001, the poverty rate did not experience a decline, but it did not increase as much either.

Instead, we witnessed the poverty rate slowly increase where it had a brief decline before the

Great Recession of 2008. It was during this recession where this country experienced the poverty

rate increase the most during any recession. The poverty rate has jumped from


Figure 5: retrieved from The State of working America

11% in 1999 to 14.5% in 2013, the highest rate this country has seen dating back to 1959.

Although the poverty rate has not been as high as it was in 1959, it still should be seen as an

issue due to the fact that it was increasing even way before our latest crisis. This shows the issue

on the rise of poverty has been ongoing even before the crisis as more and more people are in

poverty as the years go by. This suggest as the poverty rate goes up, the livelihoods of many

individuals deteriorate. When we look at it now, the number people in poverty as of 2013 is at

45.3 million, the highest it has been ever. Although we should take into account that the


population has been larger than it has been, suggesting that the number of people in poverty

would be greater than it was in previous years. However, the manner in which poverty has

increased in both numbers and percentage during these last 15 years should be a cause of

concern. Although the economy shows signs of stability, poverty, itself, has not been stabilized

due to the fact that it is increasing, and unlike previous recession where poverty has decline at

some point in time, we have not been able to witness this during our last two recessions.

Figure 6: retrieved from US Census

Since output and profits of many corporations are increasing, the improvement of the

economy should be experienced by all its inhabitants. However, let’s take this moment to think

of whether or not the economy has improved, and who is experiencing it. While numbers show

improvement in the economy, there are data, as presented in this paper, which shows the

livelihoods of many people have not. So that brings the question, who is experiencing the


progression of the economy? This brings me to my next point where I claim that Americans are

becoming increasingly segregated by class. I am not talking about your typical racial class or

class structure of the lower, middle, and upper class. No, in this American society we live in

today, there are only two classes: we, the bottom 99% and the top 1%. As I will show you, the

people of the top 1% are the ones whose livelihoods have improved since recovery.

Income inequality is also another ongoing issue that has been facing this country for

many years; and just like poverty, the recent crisis has shed light on how wide the gap is. When

we look at figure 7, we see how big the difference is between the top 1% and bottom 99%. From

the years of 1993-2012, the top 1% has experienced an 86.1% in income real growth, while the

bottom 99% has only experienced 6.6%. We also see in the chart that during the two previous

recessions, both classes experienced a negative growth in their incomes. However, during the

expansion years after the recession, both classes were able to recover what they lost during those

recession years. During President Bush's expansion of 2002-2007, the bottom 99% gained almost

all of what they lost while the top 1% gained doubled than what they lost. Both classes suffered

an even larger loss than what they had during the 2001 recession, however during recovery, the

top 1% has recovered and gained almost everything they lost while the bottom 99% were not so

lucky, as they saw a growth of 0.4% after losing 11.6%. There, my friends would be the

knockout punch to this argument. While the economy has been stabilizing, the livelihoods of

individuals have been improving, but just not by everyone. As crisis comes and goes, the rich

have suffered their lost only to recover and be better off than they were while the rest of us, the

bottom 99%, have never truly experienced a recovery.

Not only has there been a discrepancy in the real income growth of the two classes, there

is also a major gap in the amount of wealth share that has been accumulated over the


Figure 7: retrieved from Saez: The evolution in top Incomes in the United States

years. Based on figure 8, after experiencing an increase in the country’s wealth share in the

1930’s and again in the 1960’s, the bottom 99%, since the 1980’s has seen their wealth share

gradually decline during the years, even more so after the 2008 recession with no signs of

increasing. The top 1%, on the other hand, has been going through a complete opposite path,

based on figure 9. Although they had experienced their decline, the wealth share of the United

States earned by the top 1% has been increasing since the 1980’s. The top 1% is nearly close to

earning 50% of the country’s wealth as they once did during 1928 when the gap was at an all-

time high. Clearly both classes are heading towards opposite directions, nowhere near the period

when the gap was nonexistent, especially during 1962-1972, where percentages were nearly

identical. There was a point in time where the bottom 99% earned more of the country’s wealth

than the top 1%. I am not saying that the bottom 99% need to earn more wealth than top 1% in


order to truly say that the livelihood of every individual has improved, but if we can have an

economy where wealth was split evenly or identically, that in my opinion would suggest a

stabilized, recovered economy. However, this is not the case as the wealth gap is increasing even

more as the years go by.

Figure 8: retrieved from Saez: Income Inequality in the United States


Figure 9: retrieved from Saez: Income Inequality in the United States

To show how drastic the gaps in income and wealth are, we look at the population of the

top 1%. Almost 15 years ago, the country’s population was at 133,589,000 based on figure 10.

Out of that 133,589,000, only 667,945 of individuals made up the top 1%, which is nearly .005%

of the population. It was not like the threshold to be a part of the top 1% was outrageous. In

2000, the income threshold of the top 1% was at $277,983; that is to point out, only .005% of

population had an average income of $277,983 and above; now $388,905 as of 2011 (Jeanne

Sahadi 2013). Based on the data presented in this paper, we can infer that the percent population

of the top 1% has decreased while the percent population of the bottom 99% has increased,

showing an even greater gap. Now, to imagine at least 40% of the country’s wealth belongs to

around .005% of the population; that is a huge chunk of wealth owned by such a small

percentage of the population. However, this is what is going on in the United States as the

disparities in income and wealth equality are huge.


Figure 10

Concluding Remarks:

The economy in the United States can seemingly be improving, but because of the lack of

improvement of the livelihoods of the general population says otherwise. While the top 1% have

experience their lost and earned it back, the bottom 90% continues to remain in shambles. The

quality of life for many us has either not seen any changes or a slow decline. We remain dealing

with the issues of unemployment, wages, poverty, and inequality while the top 1% experiences

the growth in GDP and the effects corporation profits. What makes things worse, these patterns

started years before the crisis occurred showing that our economy was way unstable than we

thought it was during the early 2000s. With the length of instability, the quality of life of the


bottom 99% has shown and still will show no signs of improving. As a result, we the bottom

99%, the majority of the population, has not seen any improvement in our lives, so hold off on

saying the economy is back until almost everyone can experience it.


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http://www.cnbc.com/id/102294235

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