Income and employment statistics

I love statistics. Not only do they tell a story but often they help you perceive BS when you hear it simply by doing a small calculation in your head.  Here’s a few statistics I gathered this last year concerning this income inequality discussion and a few more on employment.

            Median family income for 2013 was $51,404.  Ponca City compares with $49,566.  That’s about $2K higher than median household income and is over double the per capita income. So you have to watch out what is quoted. What do different taxpayers pay?  Here’s a table.

                        Make    % of all taxes    %of their income

Bottom 20%      <15k span="" style="mso-tab-count: 2;">                0.3%                 1%

Middle Quintile   31-58K              9.4%                 11.1%

Top Quintile       >77K               67.9%               23.2%

Top 5%             >145K               59.7%               23.6%

Top 1%             >371K               38.9%               28.9%

And so we see that the rich don’t pay less, they pay the largest % of their own income and a giant amount of all income taxes.  This table doesn’t count payroll taxes and the income amounts refer to “taxable income”, i.e. after deductions and exemptions, not AGI.  Now this table may not square with stuff you have read about how 47% don’t pay taxes.  That figure refers to Net taxes. They receive tax benefits like earned income credit or welfare funds that move their net to below zero. And please note that even among the bottom 20%, they pay income taxes.  There are individuals who are farmers and small businessmen who can’t get earned income credits or any welfare during a bad business year. 

            So what class of people makes the most?   My vote goes to federal workers. They make an average of $81,258 and when you add the generous benefits, it grows to $121,600.  Seniors are the best off age group, but they also show large contrast.  Some have nothing but Soc. Sec. and others have savings.  75% of 50-64 year olds have less than 30K saved (average is $120,000).  Half of people make it to 65.   Of those who do, 80% have net worth of <35k avg.="340K).<span" style="mso-spacerun: yes;">  Only 40% have pensions.

            54% of all people in lowest quintile move to a higher group within 10 yrs.  20% of households are on food stamps.  If you define ‘the rich’ as the upper 20%, then 2/3 of them are small business owners.  That’s about 15% of all taxpayers.  Small businessmen comprise 27% of all taxpayers and create 70% of new jobs.  So if you tax the upper quintile, you damage small businesses and jobs considerably.  By the way, small business owners work 67 hrs a week on average, so these aren’t leisurely folks living off inheritance. 

            I did a study of what poor people have to live on since I wanted to know if they had enough to afford my houses and apartments.  If a single mom with two kids (SM2K) makes nothing, she qualifies for TANF, WIC, food stamps, Sect. 8 housing, and Medicaid.  This varies by state but in OK is about $22K.  However inequalities in households mean that 18-20K of assistance is most likely.  If the recipient starts making money, at about $5K income they lose TANF but start getting EITC.  As income grows to 23K the SM2K continues to net about 20K all the way.

            Only 1% of income earners makes minimum wage but 26% make less than twice minimum wage.  As of this last fall, there were 145.1 million people employed, full and part-time.  There were 133.6 M employed full time or had 40 hours per week on multiple jobs.  There were another 12.1M unemployed and looking for a job, which gave 7.7% unemployment at that time.  There were 88.5 M adults who weren’t working out of 245.7M adults over age 16.  In the crudest sense, “unemployed” means the percent of people with don’t have jobs, so the above statistics yield 36% unemployment.  Of course some are retired, some go to college, some don’t give a fig about having a job that doesn’t pay cash, etc.  But here’s the crazy thing. In NV 2009 there were 232M adults, 80.0M not working, and 144.5M employed.  So in essence employment has gained practically nothing, but they quoted 10.2% unemployment.  People have really revamped their lives and aren’t looking anymore.  Social Security disability has grown from 8.5 M to 14.0M in this time and costs the federal gov’t  $260B which works out to about $18K per recipient (They actually make about 11,200.  Rest is “overhead” which includes about 20% estimated fraud).

            Finally those 133.6M who had full-time employment consist of 112.6M in private enterprise and 21.0M in government jobs. That leaves out agriculture.  There are another 1.5M farmers and farm workers who make wages and another .6M family helpers on farms. So anyway, you have about 114M who work in the private sector and support the 315M with mouths to feed.