"Recipients of federal disability checks often admit that they are capable of working but cannot or will not find a job, that those closest to them tell them they should be working, and that working to get off the disability rolls is not among their goals.
More baffling, most have never received significant medical treatment and not seen a doctor about their condition in the last year, even though medical problems are the official reason they don't work. Those who acknowledge they're on disability because they can't find a job say they make little effort to find one, according to a Washington Examiner analysis of federal survey results.
Unearned disability, called SSI, is for individuals who have petitioned to be classified as disabled. Many of them have never worked and have never paid into Social Security. Earned disability, or SSDI, is for those who have held jobs for significant periods of time and paid at least partially into Social Security before becoming disabled.
Those collecting government checks in the unearned program are in less pain than their counterparts who paid into the system, the analysis showed. They are typically overweight, uneducated and from broken homes.
But the analysis also revealed more practical barriers to weaning recipients off the disability rolls: The jobs they'd be candidates for often don't provide health insurance, which is essential for those with medical problems, and they'd rather receive the federal benefit. Many also say they don't have transportation to work.
In 2009, the Social Security Administration conducted a detailed study of disability recipients' characteristics, desire to work and their impediments from doing so. Geared towards academics, only the raw, individual-level responses were released, and until the Examiner's analysis here, there has been little in the way of published tallies.
The survey included responses from 2,300 disability benefits recipients. There are approximately 11 million SSDI recipients and approximately seven million SSI recipients.
Among the most notable results of the survey:
* Returning to work is not a goal for 71 percent of the SSDI recipients, 60 percent of the SSI recipients.
* 75 percent of the SSDI recipients don't see themselves returning to work within five years, 65 percent of the SSI recipients don't.
* 72 percent of the small number of SSDI recipients who started a job while on disability got cash under the table, as did 70 percent of the small number of SSI recipients who started a job while on disability.
* 24 percent of the SSDI recipients lack even GEDs, as do 43 percent of the SSI recipients. "
- Luke Rosiak, Exography: many disability recipients admit they could work, Washington Examiner, 07/30/2013
Link to the entire article appears below:
http://washingtonexaminer.com/exography-many-disability-recipients-admit-they-could-work/article/2533626
Regarding recent jobless claim declines in the US economy, and this as an indicator by some of an improvement of the aggregate economy…..what about the 5.4 million total discouraged workers (short-term discouraged and long-term discouraged = total discouraged)?
U6 unemployment measurement includes the short-term discouraged worker as well as other categories of workers and currently stands at 15%. Lets dust off the SGS alternate unemployment rate and bring it off the shelf (reflecting total discouraged) and one notes that it stands at 22.5%. (1)
Focusing on jobless claims and considering a three year trend regarding a declining-to-stagnant economy, jobless claims trended up, peaked, then trended down as firms removed marginal workers at the margin, then marginal workers more toward the core, ending with a firm made up of core workers. Hence with the firm running on core workers and the firm producing few new jobs:
(1) the now “core employment” doesn’t shrink,
(2) few new jobs created means fewer new jobs to be possibly eliminated,
(3) hence fewer jobless claims.
Keep this in mind for a moment.
During the same phenomena described directly above, the discouraged worker pool increased at an increasing rate. That is, some sub-set of jobless, having been a prior jobless claim statistic in month MM in year YY becomes long-term unemployed and eventually falls into the discourage worker pool.
We end with a core firm economy, and the core firm within this economy finds it can do more with less. The core firm economy, and its core firm employed, match the demand gap and hence a dynamic equilibrium. The end result is that at this point on the trend line the firm hires few and fires few.
One must consider that the 5.4 million discouraged are attracted back to the labor pool (become active job seekers) once the economy shows signs of improvement (flooding the denominator of the unemployment formula hence sending unemployment upward in a improving economy). Moreover, these 5.4 million can not make a jobless claim, all they can do is show up in the denominator. However, the denominator keeps suffering from statistical revisions [guesses/political guesses?] e.g. 1.2 million statistically eliminated January 2012.
The next observation is: are we at the core or are we at a false core? If government is still spending more than the revenue taken in, is the core false? For example, if government moved toward a balanced budget, government would need to shed workers. If government moved toward a balanced budget, some expenditures would end associated with the private sector, meaning the core economy to some degree shrinks in the short-run.
One must also consider there has to be a cost associated with the 5.4 million discouraged workers. Welfare, food stamps, Medicaid, state level social welfare programs, etc. certainly are costs associated with maintaining the standing army of 5.4 million discouraged. However, considering 5.4 million discouraged workers, where are the soup lines, where are the tent cities, where are the masses sleeping in the street? That means the costs enumerated above must come with some addition cost. That is, since we see no soup line/tent cities there must be some expenditure/cost by some exogenous provider that creates a buffer between what one sees and what one would expect to see with an army of 5.4 million discouraged workers.
One might conjecture that these costs come in the form of items such as living in mom’s basement; the return to the extended family; income diverted from the core employed to the discourage relative; grandparents liquidating wealth and giving the funds to the discourage extended family member, etc.. Consider this, how long or at what rate can this exogenous cost continue? The cost can not be absorbed infinitely. Does the ability to absorb the cost deteriorate and deteriorate at an increasing rate suddenly exposing soup lines/tent cities?
Hence is the media, talking heads and pundits overrating jobless claim declines as a positive indicator?
Notes:
(1)
http://www.shadowstats.com/alternate_data/unemployment-charts
