Laura E. sent in a link to the Off the Charts blog by the Center for Budget and Policy Priorities. They posted a set of charts highlighting ongoing unemployment in the U.S. Overall, the private sector has been adding jobs, but at generally very low levels:

But we lost so many jobs relative to the overall working-age population during this recession that the slow job growth simply isn’t enough to significantly alter the unemployment rate, which is still hovering around 9% (though much higher for some groups, particularly young people and racial and ethnic minorities):

The increased labor force participation we saw during the 1990s and 200s have been erased:

The CBPP has a collection of recession-related charts, including this graph of the number of individuals needing a job per each available job opening, a ratio that remains quite discouraging:

In the last few days since the debt ceiling fiasco, a number of economic experts have begun discussing the possibility of a double-dip recession and, as you may have heard, last night Standard & Poor’s downgraded the U.S. debt rating. Overall, it’s not an encouraging picture of our immediate economic future.

Dmitriy T.M. sent in a video put together by the Center for Investigative Reporting about some of the hidden costs of gasoline use in the U.S.:

Also check out our earlier posts on Lisa Margonelli’s TED talk about the political economy of oil in the U.S. as well as the inconsistent relationship between gas prices and how much we drive.

Cross-posted at Scientopia.

As demonstrated by some figures posted at Family Inequality, the U.S. birthrate has dropped during the recession:

But the birth rate hasn’t dropped for all American women equally.  Women who’ve already had two children were most likely to skip having a child during this period, and women who already had one child were more likely to delay or end childbearing than women with no children.   But women who already had three children were relatively ready to plow forward with a fourth, even more ready than childless women.

To make an even stronger case that the recession inhibited childbearing, Philip Cohen correlated birth data by state and state unemployment rates (both from the Bureau of Labor Statistics).  His figure shows that “fertility fell more where the recession hit harder”:

Great stuff, as always, from Family Inequality.

Lisa Wade, PhD is an Associate Professor at Tulane University. She is the author of American Hookup, a book about college sexual culture; a textbook about gender; and a forthcoming introductory text: Terrible Magnificent Sociology. You can follow her on Twitter and Instagram.

Cross-posted at Scientopia.

The U.S. Department of Commerce just released a report on the continuing gender gap in STEM jobs – that is, science, technology, engineering, and math. While women make up roughly half of the total paid workforce, they still held only a quarter of STEM jobs as of 2009:

In fact, we saw no change in the gender make-up of STEM fields between 2000 and 2009.

There is significant variation in the gender composition within the STEM category, however. At the high end, women hold 40% of jobs in the physical and life sciences; the low point is engineering, where only 14% of employees are women. And the proportion of women in computer science and math jobs actually fell between 2000 and 2009, from 30% to 27% of workers.

This isn’t simply because of differences in education, either. Here we see the proportion of both men and women in STEM jobs at various educational levels; while increased education correlates with a higher likelihood of having a STEM job for both groups, women are significantly less likely than men at every educational level to have a STEM job:

The gender disparity in STEM jobs is especially noteworthy because, on average, STEM occupations pay significantly more than other private-sector jobs, and the gender gap in pay is actually lower than in non-STEM sectors:

If we look only at women with bachelor’s degrees, women who earn STEM degrees and work in STEM jobs earn, on average, 29% more than other women.

So the underrepresentation of women in STEM jobs means that women are missing out on some of the best-paying occupations in the U.S.; in fact, this type of gender-segregation of jobs is one of the leading causes of gender gap in yearly and lifetime earnings.

The authors of the report don’t go into detail about potential causes of the gender gap in STEM careers, though they note that among those earning STEM degrees in college, women are significantly less likely than men to hold jobs in related STEM fields. They suggest this might be because STEM jobs are relatively unaccommodating to those who take time off for family obligations (disproportionately women), because of a lack of female role models in STEM fields (including as college professors), or because of gender stereotyping about math or science aptitude (like this, or this if you prefer a t-shirt) that pushes women away from STEM degrees and careers. [UPDATE: Broken links fixed!]

The complex interplay of factors that lead to a gender gap in who holds STEM-sector jobs provides significant challenges to increasing the proportion of women in these occupations — as indicated by the lack of change over the past decade. But particularly as we see increasing economic divergence between well-paid tech and information sector and low-paid service sector jobs, addressing the underrepresentation of women in STEM jobs will be essential as part of any effort to improve women’s lifetime earnings potential and overall economic outlook.

Cross-posted at Scientopia.

Sadie M. sent in an example of the reproduction of the idea that “Africa” is an arid, desolate place where nature still dominates civilization.  The snapshot Sadie sent in was of Nairobi.  Nairobi is the 12th largest city on the continent of Africa with a population of over 3 million in the city and its surrounding suburbs.  It is the capital of Kenya and an economic, political, and financial hub in the region.

This is Nairobi on Google maps:

This is what comes up if you Google image Nairobi:

Nairobi is also not a desert plain.  The name, in Maasai, translates into “the place of cool waters” and it is popularly known as “Green City in the Sun” (wikipedia).

Despite all of this, Sadie’s snapshot shows that an in flight magazine depicted Nairobi as a savanna full of elephants and bereft of people.  The other two destinations featured — New York and Sydney — are pictured as they are.

So there we have it: Another piece of advertising erasing the bustling, successful economies of Africa, and instead reproducing the idea that the entire continent is an uncivilized desert full of exotic animals.

See also: How Not to Write about Africa and The Single Story of “Africa.”

Lisa Wade, PhD is an Associate Professor at Tulane University. She is the author of American Hookup, a book about college sexual culture; a textbook about gender; and a forthcoming introductory text: Terrible Magnificent Sociology. You can follow her on Twitter and Instagram.

Yesterday I posted about some children’s luggage that normalizes gendered occupations. Given that, I thought I’d follow up with several more examples of gendering kids’ stuff that have been sitting in our inbox.

Erin M. saw this image in a Land’s End catalog for kids’ clothing a while back. It draws on the idea that boys and girls are just inherently different, with girls needing things that are “pretty” while boys need stuff that’s “rugged”:

Caspian P. snapped this photo of two video games (by different companies) that efficiently summarize who we assume will be interested in what:

Finally, Cheryl S. noticed that J. Crew decided to market some of their boys’ clothing to girls. Rather than designating the clothes as unisex, or listing them as boys’ items in the boys’ section and girls’ items in the girls’ section, they instead created a section in the girls’ part of the website called Borrowed from My Brother:

As Cheryl points out, there is no “borrowed from my sister” section for boys. We accept the idea of women wearing men’s clothing, even seeing it as potentially sexy, in a way that we don’t tolerate or condone men crossing gender lines to wear women’s items or take on other aspects of femininity. J. Crew simply applies this wider cultural acceptance of women taking on some aspects of masculinity (as long as they balance it with enough signs of femininity), which we see in the marketing of “boyfriend jeans” to women, and applies it to kids.

Cross-posted at Scientopia.

One year ago today six black teenagers died in the Louisiana Red River.  They were wading in waist deep water when one, 15-year-old DeKendrix Warner, fell off an underwater ledge.  He struggled to swim and, one by one, six of his cousins and friends jumped in to help him and each other.  Warner was the only survivor.  The family members of the children watched in horror; none of them knew how to swim.

This draws attention to a rarely discussed and deadly disparity between blacks and whites.  Black people, especially black women, are much less likely than white people to know how to swim.  And, among children, 70% have no or low ability to swim.  The figure below, from the International Swimming Hall of Fame, shows that 77% of black women and 44% of black men say that they don’t know how to swim.  White women are as likely as black men, but much less likely than black women to report that they can’t swim.  White men are the most confident in their swimming ability.

This translates into real tragedy.  Black people are significantly more likely to die from drowning than white people (number of drownings out of 100,000):

Why are black people less likely to learn to swim than whites?  Dr. Caroline Heldman, at FemmePolitical, argues that learning to swim is a class privilege.  To learn to swim, it is helpful to have access to a swimming pool.  Because a disproportionate number of blacks are working class or poor means that they don’t have backyard swimming pools; while residential segregation and economic disinvestment in poor and minority neighborhoods means that many black children don’t have access to community swimming pools.  Or, if they do, they sometimes face racism when they try to access them.

Even if all of these things are in place, however, learning to swim is facilitated by lessons.  If parents don’t know how to swim, they can’t teach their kids.  And if they don’t have the money to pay someone else, their kids may not learn.

I wonder, too, if the disparity between black women and men is due, in part, to the stigma of “black hair.”   Because we have racist standards of beauty, some women invest significant amounts of time and money on their hair in an effort to make it straight or wavy and long.  Getting their hair wet often means undoing this effort.  Then again, there is a gap between white men and white women too, so perhaps there is a more complicated gender story here.

These are my initial guesses at explaining the disparities.  Your thoughts?

Lisa Wade, PhD is an Associate Professor at Tulane University. She is the author of American Hookup, a book about college sexual culture; a textbook about gender; and a forthcoming introductory text: Terrible Magnificent Sociology. You can follow her on Twitter and Instagram.

Cross-posted at Reports from the Economic Front.

Congress has finally agreed on a deficit reduction plan that President Obama supports. As a result, the debt ceiling is being lifted, which means that the Treasury can once again borrow to meet its financial obligations.

Avoiding a debt default is a good thing. However, the agreement is bad and even more importantly the debate itself has reinforced understandings of our economy that are destructive of majority interests.

The media presented the deficit reduction negotiations as a battle between two opposing sides. President Obama, who wanted to achieve deficit reduction through a combination of public spending cuts and tax increases, anchored one side. The House Republicans, who would only accept spending cuts, anchored the other. We were encouraged to cheer for the side that we thought best represented our interests.

Unfortunately, there was actually little difference between the two sides in terms of the way they engaged and debated the relevant issues. Both sides agreed that we face a major debt crisis. Both sides agreed that out-of-control social programs are the main driver of our deficit and debt problems. And both sides agreed that the less government involvement in the economy the better.

The unanimity is especially striking since all three positions are wrong. We do not face a major debt crisis, social spending is not driving our deficits and debt, and we need more active government intervention in the economy, not less, to solve our economic problems.

So what was the deal?

Before discussing these issues it is important to highlight the broad terms of the deficit reduction agreement. The first step is limited to spending cuts; discretionary spending is to be reduced by $900 billion over the next ten years. Approximately 35% of the reduction will come from security-related budgets (military and homeland security), with the rest coming from non-security discretionary budgets (infrastructure, energy, research, education, and social welfare). In exchange for these budget cuts the Congress has agreed to raise the debt ceiling by $1 trillion.

The agreement also established a 12 person committee (with 6 Democrats and 6 Republicans) to recommend ways to reduce future deficits by another $1.2-1.5 trillion. Its recommendations must be made by November 23, 2011 and they can include cuts to every social program (including Social Security, Medicare and Medicaid), as well as tax increases.

Congress has to vote on the committee’s package of recommendations by December 23, 2011, up or down. If Congress approves them they will be implemented. If Congress does not approve them, automatic cuts of $1.2 trillion will be made; 50% of the cuts must come from security budgets and the other 50% must come from non-security discretionary budgets. Regardless of how Congress votes on the recommendations, it must also vote on whether to approve a Balanced Budget Amendment to the Constitution. Once this vote is taken, the debt ceiling will be raised again by an amount slightly smaller than the deficit reduction.

Check out this flowchart from the New York Times if you want a more complete picture of the process.

Why is this a problem?

Those who favor reducing spending on government programs generally argue that we have no choice because our public spending and national debt are out of control, threatening our economic future. But, the data says otherwise.

The chart below, from the economist Menzie Chinn at Econbrowser, shows the movement in the ratio of publically held debt to GDP over the period 1970 to 2011; the area in yellow marks the Obama administration. While this ratio has indeed grown rapidly, it remains well below the 100% level that most economists take to be the warning level. In fact, according to Congressional Budget Office predictions, we are unlikely to reach such a level for decades even if we maintain our current spending and revenue patterns.

The sharp growth in the ratio over the last few years strongly suggests that our current high deficits are largely due to recent developments, in particular the 2001 and 2003 Bush tax cuts, the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, and the Great Recession. Their contribution can be seen in this chart from the New York Times.

The effects of the tax cuts and economic crisis on our deficits (and by extension debt) are especially visible in the following chart (again from Menzie Chinn), which plots yearly changes in federal spending and federal revenue as a percentage of GDP (the shaded areas mark periods of recession). As we can see, the recent deficit explosion was initially driven more by declining revenues than out of control spending. Attempts to close the budget gap solely or even primarily through spending cuts, especially of social programs, is bound to fail.

To summarize:

Tragically, the debate over how best to reduce the deficit has encouraged people to blame social spending for our large deficits and those large deficits for our current economic problems.  As a result, demands for real structural change in the way our economy operates are largely dismissed as irrelevant.

Recent economic data should be focusing our attention on the dangers of a new recession.  According to the Commerce Department our economy grew at an annual rate of just 1.3% in second quarter of this year, following a first quarter in which the economy grew by only 0.3%.  These are incredibly slow rates of growth for an economy recovering from a major recession.  To put these numbers in perspective, Dean Baker notes that we need growth of over 2.5% to keep our already high unemployment rate from growing.

Cutting spending during a period of economic stagnation, especially on infrastructure, research, and social programs, is a recipe for greater hardship.  In fact, such a policy will likely further weaken our economy, leading to greater deficits.  This is what happened inthe UK, Ireland, and Greece—countries with weak economies that tried to solve their deficit problems by slashing public spending.

We need more active government intervention, which means more spending to redirect and restructure the economy; a new, more progressive tax structure; and a major change in our foreign policy, if we are going to solve our economic problems.  Unfortunately for now we don’t have a movement powerful enough to ensure our side has a player in the struggles that set our political agenda.