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2011 in 11 graphs Ezra Klein’s Wonkblog presents the year in graphs.
Congress is less popular than Paris Hilton
Congress is more unpopular than it’s ever been. This graph, prepared by the office of Sen. Michael Bennet (D-Col.), dramatizes the low esteem the American people have for the legislative branch. And in the months since it was prepared, Gallup’s polling shows that Congress’s approval rating has hit a new low, falling from 11 percent down to 9 percent. Perhaps this next graph helps explain why.
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Graph: Sen. Michael Bennet
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The less-than-do-nothing Congress
Unemployment is high. Growth is low. America is involved in multiple wars. 2011 was one of the hottest years on record. The euro zone is perilously close to collapse. All in all, there’s quite a lot for Congress to do. But they’re not doing it. Data on congressional productivity shows that the first year of the 112th Congress was less productive even than the “do-nothing Congress” that Harry Truman ran against in the 1948 election.
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Graph: Dylan Matthews; Data: Senate.gov
The GOP's dual-trigger nightmare
Imagine if the Democrats offered Republicans a deficit deal that had more than $3 in tax increases for every $1 in spending cuts, assigned most of those spending cuts to the Pentagon and didn't take a dime from Social Security, Medicaid or Medicare beneficiaries. Republicans would laugh at them. But without quite realizing it, that's the deal Republicans have now offered to the Democrats. In rejecting every bipartisan deal that was put on the table this year, Republicans have ended up facing two triggers. One is an extremely progressive spending trigger worth $1.2 trillion that goes off on January 1, 2013. The other is an extremely progressive tax trigger worth $3.8 trillion that goes off on ... January 1, 2013. If you count reduced interest payments, the two policies alone would reduce future deficits by about $6 trillion. That's far more than anything the supercommittee came close to discussing. It's distributed far more progressively than anything the Democrats have even considered proposing. And all that needs to happen for it to pass is, well, nothing.
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Graph: Ezra Klein
Chaos in Iowa
It’s going to be Bachmann! No, Perry! Romney! Sorry, I meant Cain. Actually, Gingrich. Or maybe Ron Paul? Usually, we use charts to impose order on data, to show patterns, to make complicated things clear. But this chart, which tracks each candidate’s poll numbers in Iowa since January 2011, shows little but chaos. But insofar as there has been a pattern in the Republican primary this year, it’s been a chaotic one: Whoever is in the lead now won’t be in the lead a few weeks from now. Plus, if you look at the chart for long enough, you can see a sailboat.
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Graph: Dylan Matthews; Data: Real Clear Politics
The real unemployment rate
An underdiscussed fact about about the labor market right now: as unemployment has been going up, labor force participation has been going down. Way down. So the recent drop in the unemployment rate isn’t as obvious a boon as it might seem. Some of that is simply coming from discouraged workers giving up on finding paid employment anytime soon. If labor-market participation was as high as it was in 2007, unemployment would likely be in the double digits. The flip side of this is that when the job market really does begin to recover, the unemployment rate might actually rise as discouraged workers start returning to the labor force.
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Graph: Dylan Matthews; Data: Bureau of Labor Statistic
Cuts in government jobs are holding back the recovery
Over the past year, we’ve gained more than 1.7 million public-sector jobs, but lost almost 300,000 public-sector jobs. Which means we not only lost those 300,000 jobs, but the jobs that came from those 300,000 people having jobs. Where before they were spending money at the supermarket and making payments on their homes, now they’ve had to cut back, which has likely cost the economy even more jobs. These cuts in government employment have been one of the major headwinds holding back the recovery.
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Graph: Ezra Klein; Data: Bureau of Labor Statistics
Corporate profits up; workers' wages down
Despite the growing threat of contagion from Europe, U.S. corporate profits continued to rebound in 2011, while the outlook for wages and employment still looked grim. Firms have generally remained reluctant to hire, raise wages, or add hours for workers even as their profits have risen. As a result, workers have been squeezed even as other aspects of the economy have recovered. Before 2000, labor was an average of 63.9 cents on every dollar of value added. Now it’s at low of 57.1 cents on every dollar as firms have targeted labor costs.
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Source: Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis
The Euromess in one graph
This is, pretty much, the Euromess in one graph. Before the euro zone, countries like Greece and Germany borrowed money at wildly different rates. After they joined together in the euro zone, they all borrow at the same rates — German rates — which meant the market thought their debt was essentially riskless. Then came the global recession, and the market began to realize that the economic prospects for Greece and Ireland and Portugal and Italy looked quite dim, and it was increasingly hard to see how they could generate the growth necessary to pay back their debts without undertaking crushing austerity programs — austerity programs that would, in turn, hurt their growth prospects, and make it even harder for the countries to recover. That’s the catch-22 Europe is in right now, and it’s the single biggest headwind the global economy faces in 2012. In fact, as the next graph shows, it’s the single biggest headwind our economy faces in 2012.
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Source: Der Spiegel
The Euromess's potential to become our mess in one graph
This graph shows the tight coupling between industrial order in the United States and the euro zone. The takeaway? They move pretty much as one. That makes sense: aside from the fact that the U.S. and the euro zone do hundreds of billions of dollars of trade with one another each year, they both operate in the same basic global economy. When the U.S. suffered a financial crisis in 2008, it quickly spread to Europe’s shores. Similarly, if the euro zone falls into crisis in 2012, the U.S. is unlikely to be spared.
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Source: Graph: Tim Duy; Data: Eurostate, Federal Reserve
Carbon emissions keep track with worst-case scenarios
So much for a temporary reprieve from climate change. According to the Department of Energy's Oak Ridge National Laboratory, global greenhouse-gas emissions jumped by 6 percent in 2010 — a record one-year increase — reversing the lull in carbon pollution following the financial crisis. That means the world is now keeping pace with the worst-case emissions scenarios outlined by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change in 2007.
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Source: Graph: Skeptical Science, Data: IEA
Public remains divided on health care
Despite their best efforts, Republicans and Democrats alike have failed to move public opinion on the health-reform law. Opinion polls find Americans just as split on the law as they were when it passed last March. Both political parties face the same challenge: Most of the health-reform law hasn't come online yet. Aside from a few early-to-implement provisions that rolled out in 2010, the big parts of the law — the health coverage expansion, insurance subsides and end of pre-existing conditions — don’t start until 2014. It's hard to get voters excited or angry about a law that's still largely intangible.
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Graph: Kaiser Family Foundation
FEATURED PHOTO GALLERIES
Flexing their muscles
Dozens of bodybuilders came out to Silver Spring to compete in the 2013 Musclemania Capital Tournament of Champions.
Photos of the day
Oklahoma tornado wreckage, London terrorism attack, NASA’s Dream Chaser, Triton unmanned aircraft and more.
The Herndon Climb
The Herndon Monument climb is the traditional culmination of plebe year at the U.S. Naval Academy.
Animal views
Fun and fascinating creatures around the world.
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