Recession Officially Over, U.S. Incomes Kept Falling

ROBERT PEAR

The New York Times

October 10, 2011 ET

WASH­INGTON — In a grim sign of the endur­ing na­ture of the eco­nom­ic slump, house­hold income dec­lined more in the two years af­ter the re­ces­sion ended than it did dur­ing the re­ces­sion it­self, new research has found.
Be­tween June 2009, when the re­ces­sion of­ficially ended, and June 2011, inflation-adjusted me­dian house­hold income fell 6.7 per­cent, to $49,909, accord­ing to a study by two for­mer Census Bu­reau of­ficials. Dur­ing the re­ces­sion — from December 2007 to June 2009 — house­hold income fell 3.2 per­cent.
The find­ing helps explain why Americans’ atti­tudes to­ward the econ­o­my, the country’s di­rection and its po­lit­ical leaders have con­tinued       

to sour even as the econ­o­my has been growing. Unhappi­ness and anger have come to dom­inate the po­lit­ical scene, including the early stages of the 2012 pres­idential campaign.

Pres­ident Obama re­cently called the eco­nom­ic sit­uation “an emergency,” and over the week­end he as­sailed Con­gres­sion­al Re­publicans for oppos­ing his jobs bill, which includes tax cuts that would raise take-home pay. Re­publicans blame Mr. Obama for the slump, saying he has issued a blizzard of reg­u­lations and promised fu­ture tax increases that have hurt busi­ness and consumer confidence.
Those argu­ments may be heard repeatedly this week, as the Sen­ate be­gins debating the jobs bill. The full bill — a mix of tax cuts, public works, un­employ­ment ben­efits and oth­er items, cost­ing $447 billion — is unlikely to             

pass, but individual parts seem to have a signif­icant chance.

The full 9.8 per­cent drop in income from the           

start of the re­ces­sion to this June — the most re­cent month in the study — appears to be the largest in sev­eral decades, accord­ing to oth­er