Young, Underemployed and Optimistic
Young adults hit hard by the recession. A plurality of the public believes young adults, rather than middle-aged or older adults, are having the toughest time in today’s economy.
Unemployment
02.09.12
10.03.11
Fighting Poverty in a Bad Economy, Americans Move in with Relatives
Without public debate or fanfare, large numbers of Americans enacted their own anti-poverty program in the depths of the Great Recession: They moved in with relatives.
09.12.11
Adding Context to the Census Bureau’s Income and Poverty Report
Pew Research Center reports can add context to the Census Bureau’s release of 2010 data on U.S. income, poverty and health insurance coverage. These Pew Research Center reports, linked to in this article, have documented the impact of the Great Recession and shaky recovery on Americans’ wealth, work lives, personal finances and emotional well-being.
07.26.11
Wealth Gaps Rise to Record Highs Between Whites, Blacks, Hispanics
The median wealth of white households is 20 times that of black households and 18 times that of Hispanic households, according to a Pew Research Center analysis of newly available government data from 2009.
07.06.11
Two Years of Economic Recovery: Women Lose Jobs, Men Find Them
During the sluggish two-year recovery from the Great Recession, men have gained 768,000 jobs while women have lost 218,000 jobs. This new gender gap in employment trends represents a sharp turnabout from the recession itself, when men lost more than twice as many jobs as women.
06.27.11
Living Together: The Economics of Cohabitation
Cohabitation is an increasingly prevalent lifestyle in the United States. The share of 30- to 44-year-olds living as unmarried couples has more than doubled since the mid-1990s. Adults with lower levels of education—without college degrees—are twice as likely to cohabit as those with college degrees.
10.13.10
Working Wives and Unemployed Husbands
Among married couples with their own children under 18 at home, the share with a working wife and unemployed husband went up in 41 states in 2009, compared with the year before, according to a new Census Bureau analysis of data from the American Community Survey.
07.22.10
Lost Income, Lost Friends – and Loss of Self-respect
Long-term unemployment takes a much deeper toll than short-term unemployment on a person’s finances, emotional well-being and career prospects.
06.30.10
How the Great Recession Has Changed Life in America
Of the 13 recessions that the American public has endured since the Great Depression of 1929-33, none has presented a more punishing combination of length, breadth and depth than this one.
03.26.09
Before the Great Recession, a Phantom Recovery
The eight-year period from 1999 through 2007 is the longest in modern U.S. economic history in which inflation-adjusted median household income failed to surpass an earlier peak.
Highlights