DEBT AND FORECLOSURES AT RECORD LEVELS
‘Middle-class squeeze’ affecting millions of workers
No doubt you’ve heard the stories. Like the security guard who works two full-time jobs just to make ends meet, leaving home at 6 each morning, before his children wake up. He returns at 11 p.m., after they've all gone to sleep, and admits, "I'm missing them grow up."
The gap between what people earn and what they need to make their budgets has resulted in serious economic stress for Americans.
Costs are rising, incomes are falling and family budgets are forced to stretch even further. Fuel prices and health care costs continue to skyrocket, and even grocery prices have risen at their fastest rate in nearly 20 years. To top it off, the May unemployment rate worsened from 5 percent to 5.5 percent, the biggest jump in two decades.
Dubbed "the middle-class squeeze," it has turned into an epidemic affecting millions of workers, said Steven Greenhouse, New York Times' labor reporter.
"The middle-class squeeze has taken other painful forms. Families are drowning in record levels of debt. Foreclosures have jumped to record levels. And workers are being pushed to work faster and harder," said Greenhouse, author of a new book, "The Big Squeeze: Tough Times for the American Worker."
As a result, he added, for the first time in modern history, the median income for working-age American households declined during an economic expansion.
So why is it important for workers to understand where our presidential candidates stand on economic policy?
"One important benefit of the 2008 presidential campaign is that when the candidates campaigned in Iowa, Ohio, Pennsylvania, Wisconsin and other states, they and the news media started seeing – and paying attention to – the crisis faced by millions of workers and their families," Greenhouse said.
The sad fact is that since 2000 the nation has lost one in five manufacturing jobs, or 3.7 million jobs.
"It's important that workers pay close attention to what the candidates are saying about how they will end the economic squeeze faced by millions of workers and their families," he added. "And workers should analyze whether those proposals are real or empty rhetoric, whether those proposals are feasible or pie in the sky."
See how presumptive Democratic nominee Barack Obama views the middle-class squeeze, in our cover story.