All-Time High in Student Debt

In a poll released recently by the Pew Research Center, it was found that almost one-in-five of all American households had student debt, an all-time high. Up four points since 2007 that golden time before the Great Recession, the student debt gave low-income families another reason to call it great; the greatest portion of the debt per household income fell on "the bottom fifth of the income spectrum," says author Richard Fry "...even though members of such households are less likely than those in other groups to attend college in the first place." Households making less than $21,044 a year shouldered 24% of the burden per household income, with the next highest fifth, the middle fifth ($36,724-$59,623)  sharing 12% of the burden per household income.

When one looks at head of household age and student debt, fully 40% of households with a head of household younger than 35 owe student debt. For all income groups considered, student debt rose and the the richest fifth saw their debt per household income nearly double since 2007. These record highs are in the wake of an ever-increasing average student debt reaching $26,682 in 2010, which has been on an almost linear climb since 1989.

Unemployment Falls in 305 of 372 Metropolitan Areas

Unemployment in America is slowly improving.  The Bureau of Labor Statistics monthly report on metropolitan area employment and unemployment shows that from July of 2011 to last month, unemployment rates decreased in 305 of 372 metropolitan areas.  The number of areas posting over 10.0 percent unemployment nearly halved from 112 to 67.  Overall, the unemployment rate was 8.3% in July, illustrating a comeback – albeit a sluggish comeback – from when unemployment topped off at nearly 10.0% nationally.  Still though, just 18 of the 372 metropolitan areas registered unemployment rates of less than 5.0%.  To put that figure in perspective, before the recession, the national unemployment rate dipped below 5.0% for over a year.

The Long Road Back from Financial Crises

Writing in the New York Times's Economix blog, Catherine Rampell reviews a paper presented two years ago from Carmen Reinhart and Kenneth Rogoff, documenting the road to recovery that followed twelve different financial crises from the American Great Depression to the Argentinian crash in 2001. What they found should have shed doubt on the optimistic projections of rapid recovery in 2009 and 2010 and reminds us that recovery remains far from certain, even as most have written off disappointing GDP growth numbers from the first quarter as the results of transitory factors like excessive snowstorms.

The chart above shows that for unemployment -- a lagging indicator to be sure, but one with profoundly important impacts on people's everyday lives -- the aftermath of financial crises increases unemployment by an average of 7% over an average of 4.8 years. By those metrics at least, America's Great Recession could have been far worse.