Yes We Can’t: Gruesome Numbers Paint a Grim Economic Picture

Bleak is the new black. Gallup’s latest Economic Confidence Index shows that three out of four Americans say the economy is getting worse, same as they’ve been saying for months now. Consumer spending is persistently down, so is job creation, and investor optimism is scraping along the bottom plumbed in late 2008.

Want some more gruesome numbers? The dean of the Yale School of Forestry passes these stats along in a piece titled “American Prospect.” They imply that our prospects aren’t great. Out of the world’s 20 “major advanced countries,” the U.S. has the:

• Greatest inequality of income
• Lowest social mobility
• Lowest number of paid holidays and least maternity leave
• Highest infant mortality rate
• Highest poverty rate, both generally and for children
• Highest obesity rate
• Highest per capita consumption of antidepressants
• Highest per capita CO2 emissions and water consumption

(But we also have “Bridalplasty.” So there.)

Yuan a piece of this? The people of the United States are now officially hungrier than the people of China. Six percent of Chinese say there have been times in the past year when they didn’t have the money to buy enough food, while 19 percent of Americans say the same -- up from 9 percent in 2008.

This is where you point out that the Gallup numbers are likely skewed by the fact that Americans habitually eat way more than Chinese people and therefore are harder to satisfy and therefore have a different concept of what constitutes “enough food.”

And that’s where we point out that Chinese people are eating Chinese food -- and they’re all hungry again in an hour.

No country for bold men. Another impact of the recession is the damage it’s doing to our national self-esteem. We’re losing our swagger. For one thing, we’re having less sex. (And by “we,” we mean ... oh never mind.)

The Pew Research Center reports that since 2007 the U.S. fertility rate has drooped sadly, right along with the economy. The only state that recorded an increase in its birth rate from 2007 to 2009 was North Dakota -- which also has the nation’s lowest unemployment rate. (And which, interestingly, was ranked the state with the ugliest people in a survey by the Daily Beast.)

Something else to be embarrassed about. Droves of Americans are moving back in with their parents, Pew says. From 2007 to 2009, the number of Americans living in multigenerational households jumped by 4.9 million, the biggest increase in modern history. (No wonder people are having less sex. Their parents are sleeping in the next room.)

A blue Christmas. You could say holiday spending isn’t what it was. But, to paraphrase ol’ Purple Nose, that would depend on what the meaning of the word “was” is. If you’re talking about last year, then holiday spending is exactly what it was.

The National Retail Federation reports shoppers will continue their cooling trend. In a recent NRF survey, respondents said they plan to spend an average of $704.18 on holiday gifts, which is down a little from last year’s average of $718.98. Sixty percent said they plan to take advantage of sales and discounts to save money.

Another survey, from Big Insight, reveals that 38.5 percent of shoppers plan to spend less, 32.3 percent plan to spend the same, while just 5.9 percent plan to spend more. Big Insight broke its survey up by retailer and found that the one group of people who uniformly say they’ll spend more are Costco customers.

(And that’s only because this year’s hot gift is a 10-gallon jar of cocktail olives.)

Follow Tim and Tom on Twitter @timntom.