Press "Enter" to skip to content

Posts published in “Day: June 25, 2024”

Digging through numbers

Though statistics more often than not make dull reading, once-in-a-while some come along that need our attention.

The U.S. Census Bureau folk postulate about 336,639,585 of us are living border-to-border and coast-to-coast in our nation.  While that's an increase

of a few million since the last official census in 2010, it works out to be only about four-percent more for the period.

One of those "got-my-attention" numbers from the Bureau was this.  As a nation, we're experiencing a birth about every eight seconds and a death about every 12.  Net migration is adding one person to our population total every 33 seconds.  So, the combination of births, deaths and migration adds a new face to feed and house every 16 seconds or just over four a minute.

Another set of interesting numbers.  If asked to name the four most populous states in order, could you?  Well, there's a surprise there.  Of course, California is the largest at about 38.8 million souls.  And Texas is second at about 27 million.  But the attention-getter is Florida which passed New York as it grew to 19.9 million - adding about 803 residents a day.  Poor old New York slipped to fourth at 19.7 million.  All of the ten fastest growing states are in the South or West.

 

Now that you know about how many of us there are and where most of us live, "How are we doing financially," you ask?  Well, those numbers are both a bit surprising and a bit grim.

Major credit card and credit rating companies did a new survey of 4,000 Americans and found more than 18 percent expect to be in debt the rest of their lives!  Those 65 and older totaled 31% believing such.  Younger respondents were more positive.  But, also less experienced.

Another sampling of citizens nationwide, done by the Federal Reserve Bank of New York, showed numbers that have become one of our national shames.  Student loan debt rose from an aggregate of $390 billion at the end of 2005 to $966 billion at the end of 2012.  Just seven years!  No surprise that student admissions applications are tapering off substantially.

Next, the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau (CFPB) says many Americans are drowning in uncollected medical debt.  Some 43 million are carrying heavy medical red ink and - complicating their problem - a difficult maze of systems to collect that debt makes it almost impossible for consumers to come out with a clean credit report.

The CFPB's examination showed the process for medical care can be confusing and the system for reporting overdue medical bills is haphazard at best.  That could explain why half of all overdue debt shown on credit reports is for medical bills.  One-in-five personal reports now carries a black mark for overdue medical expenses.

The Federal Reserve concludes the Great Recession has not ended for millions of us despite improvements in major portions of our economy.  Fact is, 25% of respondents said they were "just getting by financially" and 13% believed they were "losing ground."  Looking back five years, 34% said financial conditions are worse now.

The University of Arizona has been polling students and graduates on financial matters each year since 2007.  One of the most disturbing findings: only 49% of participants have full-time jobs two years after graduation!  Less than half!

There are more numbers out there.  Billions of 'em.  But you get the idea.  As I said, sometimes statistics need our attention.  These are some I've come across recently that certainly do.

The sum of all these surveys seems to be: there are more of us - we're leaving the traditionally larger Eastern states for the West and South - previous and continuing medical costs are overburdening too many of us - we're paying too much for a college education that, too often, results in employment not justifying the expense - the middle and lower levels of income in our national economy are not sharing in any real "recovery."

New news?  Probably not.  Will the folks in our Congress do anything to make the numbers - and conditions -  better?  Probably not. They could, you know.  But statistics are just not that interesting to most of 'em.  Except the ones tied to their own personal employment. Those numbers always get their attention.