Factoid ‘o the day
by digby
Half the jobs in the nation pay less than $34,000 a year, according to the Economic Policy Institute. A quarter pay below the poverty line for a family of four, less than $23,000 annually. Families that can send another adult to work have done better, but single mothers (and fathers) don’t have that option. Poverty among families with children headed by single mothers exceeds 40 percent.
Wages for those who work on jobs in the bottom half have been stuck since 1973, increasing just 7 percent.
Washington, D.C., nosed out San Jose, Calif., as the nation’s highest-income metropolitan region, fueled mainly by its army of attorneys, consultants, lobbyists and outside government contractors.
Census data for 2010 show median household income was $84,523 in the D.C. area, compared with $83,944 for the San Jose region, the epicenter of Silicon Valley. Both numbers are well above the median income of about $50,000 for the nation as a whole. While Washington’s incomes in 2010 were lower than in 2009, paychecks in the D.C. region have been more stable overall.
Update:
Also, too, another factoid for Mother’s Day:
Happy Mothers’ Day, maybe — the U.S. is one of the worst places in the industrialized world to be a mother. That is, at least, according to a report published earlier this week by Save The Children. The NGO based its index on “the lifetime risk of maternal death, the under-five mortality rate, years of formal schooling, income per capita, and the participation of women in government.” The U.S. ranked 30th, according to the measure.