As is often the case, the White House released bad news on a Friday, knowing that Saturday’s newspapers are the least read of the week. Post convention stories pushed this piece of particularly bad news on to page 2 of The Washington Post. But the more succinct and clearer story was by Reuters.
One in five Americans laid off from a long-term job in the last three years was still unemployed in January, and most who had found jobs were paid less than they were before, government data showed on Friday.
In a report that adds fuel to the debate over the quality of new jobs, the Labor Department said only 65 percent of the 5.3 million workers who were laid off from January 2001 to December 2003 were reemployed by January 2004.
Another 15 percent had left the labor force and were not counted as unemployed.
Of those who lost full-time wage and salary jobs and found new ones, 57 percent earned less than they had in the positions they lost — the worst result in 10 years.
“About one-third experienced earnings losses of 20 percent or more,” the department’s Bureau of Labor Statistics said in the report.
…43 percent of workers cited plant or company closings or moves as the reason they were out of work. The report did not indicate whether the work had moved overseas or elsewhere in the United States.
“Nearly one-third of long-tenured displaced workers lost jobs in manufacturing,” the report said, a stark measure of how much pain the factory sector suffered in the 2001 recession and the subsequent slow recovery.
The re-employment rate for laid-off manufacturing workers was 60 percent, five percentage points below the overall success rate. Factory workers were also paid less in their new jobs, with 64 percent reporting lower earnings.
It’s not just manufacturing jobs but many white collar ones workers are losing and then regaining but with less income. With rising health insurance premiums, property taxes, prescription medicine and gasoline, Dems can make the case that we’re not better off than we were four years ago.
And in a campaign that has freely borrowed slogans from the past and each other, I see no reason the Dems shouldn’t ask Ronald Reagan’s question.