Family

The folks who track the country's economic data have been busy these past few days, unlike a large chunk of the workforce, unfortunately.

The stat keepers have let us know that 605,000 U.S. jobs have been lost so far this year. To put that in perspective, that's about the population of the city of Milwaukee.

Naturally, then, unemployment is up.

Gas prices? Up. Again. And likely to climb further.

Therefore, there's less spending money going around, and the result is that retail sales are down. Even with all the money dropped in August on back-to-school shopping, times were lean, those same stat keepers report.

The truth is – with apologies to the statisticians – most Americans don't need data to illustrate how pinched things are. A weekly run around town on errands one recent afternoon highlights what those same statisticians have called a "growing economic divide" between the rich and poor.

Funny thing is, though, even people most of us would perceive as rich are starting to mine their couch cushions for pennies.

Traffic at the discount bread-bakery store is higher than it used to be. Shelves are often picked clean, even though the law of supply and demand has pushed prices up. Good luck finding a sale that offers three loaves for a dollar.

Civic and school groups trying to sell discount cards aren't finding the ground as fertile as it usually is. It seems getting 10 percent off at your favorite restaurant or store won't justify buying a card, because you can't afford the other 90 percent of the bill.

Housing sales have dropped nationwide, a condition reflected here. The result on the larger economy is that when sales slump, housing prices fall. That makes homeowners feel less wealthy, the analysts say.

While that may not seem like a big deal — other than to those fortunate enough to own a home — it has an unpleasant side effect. When people feel financially vulnerable, or when their wealth does actually drop, they're less able to share.

That bodes ill for the less fortunate.

Evidence from the summer shows the country's most faithful givers — lower-income, working Americans — are shifting from the "give" list to the "receive" line at charities.

Lower-income Americans donate to charity 4.5 percent of their income on average, according to The American, a magazine project of the conservative American Enterprise Institute. This compares to about 2.5 percent among the middle class and 3 percent among high-income families.

Toss in news about a national debt that grew at a rate of $1.95 billion per day since last September.

Ugh.

"It could be worse," one driver says at the pump, while he watches his pickup drink $75 worth of Regular. "Man, in the early '80s. Now that was bad."

He remembers losing his job at a pickup plant in northern Kentucky and being part of record unemployment rates set in 1982 and '83. Those are records that are still around today, as the statisticians tell us. He remembers paying 14.2 percent interest on his home mortgage.

It seems they didn't need the number crunchers back then either. Let's hope memories wrought by this year's economic news don't last so long.