Numbers on the Financial Industry and More

I. The Revolving Financial Industry Door
60% - Percentage of retired senators from the 2008 Senate Banking Committee who went to work for the financial industry.

40% - Percentage of congressional senior staff involved in the response to the 2008 crash who have gone to work for the financial industry.

1,447 - Number of former federal employees hired to lobby for financial firms from 2009 to June 2010, including 73 members of Congress.

88% - Percentage of Goldman Sachs lobbyists in 2016 who at one point worked for the federal government.

$1M - Amount made by former congressman Barney Frank, co-sponsor of the Dodd-Frank Wall Street Reform and Consumer Protection Act, on the board of directors of Signature Bank since 2015. (Source: The Nation, October 8/15, 2018.)

II. World Bank Misadventures
1.3M - Estimated number of people displaced by World Bank-funded projects in Vietnam.

$10M - Minimum amount of World Bank funding used in 2015 for the violent eviction of a minority farming community in Ethiopia.

25M - Metric tons of CO(2) released per year by a World Bank-funded power plant in South Africa -- more than the total emissions of many nations.

1,000 - Number of people who reported symptoms of mercury poisoning following an accident at a goldmine in Peru funded by the World Bank Group's International Finance Corporation.

133 - Number of deaths in a land dispute between peasant collectives and a World Bank-funded palm-oil corporation in Honduras. Source: The Nation, October 22, 2018.)

III. Unionizing Bank Workers
A. The financial industry has a massive number of workers: 8.6 million, or 5.7% of all U.S. employment.
B. The vast majority are low-level bank workers who need higher pay: $13.52 an hour is the median wage for the 502,700 bank tellers in the U.S.
C. They could be a fraud solution: Organized, empowered workers could help regulate the industry from below. $12 billion is the amount the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau returned to 29 million defrauded customers between 2010 and 2017. Wells Fargo workers were pressured into opening 3.5 million fake accounts. Sources: Bureau of Labor Statistics; author's calculations; Financial Services Committee. The author is Mike Konczal of The Nation.)

IV. All Work and No Play
A. You're Probably Working Too Much - One-third of Americans work 45 hours or more a week, and 9.7 million work more than 60. Americans work 7.8% more hours a year than they did in 1979. The average workday in Europe is about one hour less than in the U.S.
B. Long Hours Are Making Us Sick - Americans sleep just 6.5 hours a night, a drop from the 1940s. In one recent experiment in Goteborg, Sweden, workers who put in just six hours a day were more productive than those working regular eight-hour shifts. Germans clock the fewest hours each year among developed countries. In a 2013 poll about sleep, the United States came in fifth of six developed countries.
C. The so-called Save American Workers Act considered in the House of Representatives would have put at risk nearly 66 million people who work 40 hours a week, because losing a single hour deducted from their schedules could have brought about legally denied employer-paid health insurance. 20 million people who work 30-39 hours a week could lose benefits under the GOP plan if they don't work more. (Sources: Bureau of Labor Statistics; Economic Policy Institute; IZA  National Sleep Institute;  Gallup.)