Dow Jones Industrial Average down in 2014

San José, CA – On Friday, Oct. 10, U.S. stock prices fell again, ending a week marked by ups and downs in the market. As measured by the Dow Jones Industrial Average of 30 large U.S. corporations, stock prices have actually fallen slightly this year.

Growing economic inequality means only the rich are getting richer

San José, CA – On Tuesday, Sept. 16, the Census Bureau released their annual report on income and poverty for 2013. The report showed that the typical household had a small gain in their income for the first time since 2007. The median household income, at $51,939 was still below that of 1996, when adjusted for inflation. It is still down 8% from 2007 and 8.7% less than its peak in 1999.

San José, CA – Four years after the Great Recession of 2007-2009 officially ended, millions of working people are being left behind by the expansion of the economy. While the stock market and corporate profits reached new highs, there are still millions of fewer jobs than before the recession began, and the official unemployment rate is closer to its recession high than the low before the recession. Things are bad.

San José, CA – On Friday, Dec. 2, the U.S. Department of Labor said that the official unemployment rate fell to 8.6% in November, from 9.0% in October. Despite being the lowest unemployment rate since March of 2009, the fall in the unemployment rate was mainly due to the more than 400,000 jobless workers who gave up looking for work and were no longer counted as unemployed.

The recession ain’t over yet, fears of a ‘double-dip’ rise

San José, CA – On July 29, the Commerce Department released its report on Gross Domestic Product or GDP for the Second Quarter (April to June) of 2011. GDP, which measures the value of goods and services produced in the United States, rose at only a 1.3% annual rate, much slower than most mainstream economists expected. Even worse, the First Quarter (January to March) economic growth was cut from an earlier estimate of 1.9% to just 0.4%.