Fact Sheets: Data at a Glance

The recession has increased joblessness among older Americans. These graphs and tables report unemployment rates and how they have varied by age, sex, race, and education since 2007.

The retirement savings of American households took a big hit when the stock market crashed in 2008. Recently, however, a good portion of these losses has been reversed. This fact sheet follows trends in retirement account balances since the beginning of 2005.

The U.S. Census Bureau has announced that the poverty rate jumped to 15.1 percent in 2010, up from 14.3 percent in 2009 and 13.2 percent in 2008. This 18-year high still understates the dire straits of many Americans today. The devastation of poverty grows more severe over time as individuals exhaust private resources and temporary benefits.

Poverty is higher among the unemployed. In 2010, 30 percent of the long-term unemployed were poor, and 66 percent of single parents unemployed more than 26 weeks were poor.

In the sluggish recovery, less-educated workers, especially those with a high school degree or less, continue to lose jobs at a substantial rate. This factsheet presents employment changes in the recession and recovery by skill level and industry showing that those with less than a high school degree were hit hardest, even in low wage industries. Gains in the recovery have been concentrated among workers with a college education.

Families headed by low-income single mothers who are not working or receiving public cash benefits ("disconnected families") are among the most vulnerable in our society. This fact sheet shows that the number of families in this situation is increasing over time. It also describes their income, receipt of noncash benefits like housing and food assistance, living arrangements, and characteristics that may impede work.

Temporary Assistance for Needy Families (TANF), the nation's cash assistance program for poor families with children, has not played much of a countercyclical role during the current recession. As unemployment has risen, TANF caseloads nationally have grown much more slowly and state TANF caseloads have not tracked state unemployment growth. Program rules and financing structures limit the responsiveness of TANF in a downturn. As TANF reauthorization is considered, this brief details some relatively small changes that could improve the program's effectiveness in future recessions.

In 2008, safety net programs cut child poverty in half in Georgia, Illinois, and Massachusetts. Federal programs that provide the same benefit across the country reduce poverty more in lower housing cost states such as Georgia than in higher cost states such as Massachusetts. Massachusetts's generous TANF policy has a greater impact on child poverty than the TANF policies in the other two states. Estimates are produced using the Supplemental Poverty Measure.

Supplemental Nutrition Assistance (SNAP) provides assistance to millions of families in the US. This fact sheet describes how, as unemployment rates have climbed, so have the rates of SNAP receipt — among older families, families with children, and single adults.

How much will you pay in Social Security and Medicare taxes over your lifetime? And how much can you expect to get back in benefits? It depends on whether you're married, when you retire, and how much you’ve earned over a lifetime. These tables provide estimates of the lifetime value of Social Security and Medicare benefits and taxes for typical workers in different generations at various earning levels.