Even as the American economy shows tentative signs of a rebound, the human toll of the recession continues to mount, with millions of Americans remaining out of work, out of savings and nearing the end of their unemployment benefits.

Economists fear that the nascent recovery will leave more people behind than in past recessions, failing to create jobs in sufficient numbers to absorb the record-setting ranks of the long-term unemployed.

Call them the new poor: people long accustomed to the comforts of middle-class life who are now relying on public assistance for the first time in their lives — potentially for years to come.

Yet the social safety net is already showing severe strains. Roughly 2.7 million jobless people will lose their unemployment check before the end of April unless Congress approves the Obama administration’s proposal to extend the payments, according to the Labor Department.

Source/Full Story: NYTimes.com

The unemployment rate dropped unexpectedly in January to 9.7
percent, while employers shed 20,000 jobs, according to a report that
offered hope the economy will add jobs soon.

The unemployment rate dropped from 10 percent because a survey of
households found the number of employed Americans rose by 541,000, the
Labor Department said Friday. The job losses are calculated from a
separate survey of employers.

The department also revised its past employment estimates to show
that job losses from the Great Recession have been much worse than
previously stated. The economy has shed 8.4 million jobs since the
downturn began in December 2007, up from a previous figure of 7.2
million.

That’s the most jobs lost in any recession, as a percent of total employment, since World War II.

The figure for November was revised higher, however, to show a gain
of 64,000 jobs. That was initially reported as a gain of 4,000.

Source/Full Story: FOXNews.com

As bad as the government’s jobs readings numbers have been during the Great Recession, we’ll soon find out the real situation likely was worse.

Much worse.

Job losses during the recession may have been underestimated by close to a million jobs. So instead of employers cutting just over 7 million jobs from their payrolls since the economic downturn began in December 2007, it’s expected that the Labor Department’s new estimate will be a loss of 8 million jobs.

“It’s an enormous understatement of the severity of the crisis,” said Heidi Shierholz, labor economist with the Economic Policy Institute, a union-supported think tank. “It confirms that things were actually worse on the ground than what the reports suggested.”

Source/Full Story: money.cnn.com

The 2010 census couldn’t have come at a better time for the U.S. economy.

The government will hire about 1.2 million temporary workers in the first half of the year to administer the decennial population count, possibly providing a bridge to gains in private employment later in the year.

The surge will probably dwarf any hiring by private employers early in 2010 as companies delay adding staff until they are convinced the economic recovery will be sustained. Money earned by the clipboard-toting workers going door-to-door to verify the government population survey is likely to be spent, giving the economy an extra lift.

“It’s a short-term stimulus program in which the government’s injecting money into the economy through additional paychecks,” said Dean Maki, chief U.S. economist at Barclays Capital Inc. in New York, who projects that 2.5 million more Americans will be working at the end of the year. “This will support consumer income during those months.”

Payrolls unexpectedly fell 85,000 last month, a Labor Department report showed today, and revisions showed they increased by 4,000 in November, the first gain in almost two years. Service industries, which include banks, insurance companies, restaurants and retailers, subtracted 4,000 workers after adding 62,000 the previous month.

The economy will add 1.1 million jobs by the end of the year, according to the consensus estimate in a survey last month by Blue Chip Economic Indicators.

“We have the strongest increases in the second half of the year,” said Nigel Gault, chief U.S. economist at IHS Global Insight in Lexington, Massachusetts, referring to the firm’s forecast for hiring to grow by 800,000 this year.

Source/Full Story: Bloomberg.com

A record 37.2 million people, or about one out of every eight Americans, received food stamps in September, as the recession drove a surging jobless rate, according to a government report.

Recipients of the subsidy for retail-food purchases climbed 18 percent from a year earlier, according to a statement posted today on the U.S. Department of Agriculture’s Web site. Participation has set records for 10 straight months.

The government boosted food aid as unemployment soared, heading to a 26-year high of 10.2 percent in October. The jobless rate cooled to 10 percent last month, the Labor Department said on Dec. 4.

“We’ve been working to get that money out the door” to families that need assistance, Deputy Agriculture Secretary Kathleen Merrigan said last week in an interview.

Nevada had the biggest increase in food-stamp participation rates from a year earlier, surging 54 percent, followed by a 46.5 percent jump in Utah, according to the USDA. Texas had the most recipients at 3.1 million, followed by California with 2.9 million and New York with 2.6 million.

Recipients increased in every state and the District of Columbia, except Louisiana. Because of a sharp rise after Hurricanes Ike and Gustav in 2008, the number of people in Louisiana getting food stamps fell 65 percent in September from a year earlier. Gains of more than 30 percent from 2008 were reported in 18 states.

Source/Full Story: Bloomberg.com

Full Story/Source: Reuters

U.S. job losses fell to their lowest level in a year last month, but the unemployment rate jumped to a 26-year high, painting a mixed picture of an economic recovery hindered by weakness in the labor market.

The Labor Department said on Friday the jobless rate climbed to 9.7 percent in August, the highest since June 1983. The bigger-than-expected rise suggested weak consumer spending would impede recovery from the worst slump in seven decades.

Employers cut 216,000 jobs, the smallest since August 2008, but the department revised upward the June and July job losses by 49,000.

“Things are much better than they were six months ago, but the patient is still somewhat sick and on the road to recovery,” said Jack Bauer, a senior economist at Manning & Napier in Rochester, New York. “The recession ended probably somewhere around June, but the recovery is going to be muted.”

The jobs report confirmed the pace of layoffs had eased from early this year. Nearly three-quarters of a million jobs were lost in January alone.

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Consumer prices rose at a surprisingly steep rate in June and the nation’s factories continued to pull back production, according to new data released today that affirm that the economy remains weak but is not entering a dangerous cycle of falling prices.

The consumer price index rose 0.7 percent last month, the Labor Department said, driven primarily by a 17.3 percent rise in the price of gasoline. But even excluding volatile food and energy costs, prices rose more than analysts expected, by 0.2 percent.

The data offers the most solid evidence yet that the nation has avoided the onset of deflation, a dangerous process in which the weak economy causes prices to fall, leading people to further rein in spending and setting off a vicious cycle. Instead, prices for a wide range of goods — clothing, medical care, even automobiles — saw price increases in June.

Source/Full Story:: washingtonpost.com

Confidence in the world economy dropped for the first time in four months in July as government stimulus efforts showed little sign of reducing unemployment, a Bloomberg survey of users on six continents showed.

The Bloomberg Professional Global Confidence Index declined to 39.13 in July from 43.57 in June. A reading below 50 means pessimists outnumber optimists. A measure of U.S. participants’ confidence in the world’s largest economy fell to 29.5 from 36.7, the survey showed.

The MSCI World Index is down close to 2 percent since the U.S. Labor Department on July 2 reported higher-than-expected job losses and an unemployment rate approaching 10 percent. Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner said yesterday the world will probably suffer “more than the usual” setbacks in exiting the worst slowdown since the Great Depression.

“No one can wave a magic wand,” said David Semmens, an economist at Standard Chartered Bank in New York and a regular survey participant. “We aren’t pulling out of the recession in the same way as in past recessions. The economic outlook isn’t improving as strongly as people would have hoped.”

The survey of more than 2,700 Bloomberg users was conducted between July 6 and July 10. Since the previous survey, the International Monetary Fund and the World Bank lowered their forecasts for global growth this year, while leaders from advanced nations say the recovery is too fragile to consider reversing more than $2 trillion in stimulus efforts.

Source/Full Story: Bloomberg.com

With companies in no mood to hire, the unemployment rate jumped to 9.4 percent in May, the highest in more than 25 years. But the pace of layoffs eased, with employers cutting 345,000 jobs, the fewest since September.

The much smaller-than-expected reduction in payroll jobs, reported by the Labor Department on Friday, adds to evidence that the recession is loosening its hold on the country. It marked the fourth straight month that the pace of layoffs slowed.

“This tide is turning,” said Richard Yamarone, economist at Argus Research. “We expect this trend of slower job loss to continue throughout the year.”

Still, the increase in the nation’s unemployment rate from 8.9 percent in April underscores the difficulties that America’s 14.5 million unemployed are having in finding new jobs. Economists had expected the rate to hit 9.2 percent last month.

If laid-off workers who have given up looking for new jobs or have settled for part-time work are included, the unemployment rate would have been 16.4 percent in May, the highest on records dating to 1994.

Labor Secretary Hilda Solis called the rise in May’s unemployment rate “unacceptable” and pledged to help bring it down by aiding the unemployed get new skills or training.

Source/Full Story: Yahoo! News

The weak labor market is hurting U.S. cities — centers of many industries and large housing markets — with 93 metropolitan areas registering an unemployment rate of at least 10 percent in April, according to Labor Department data released on Wednesday.

That is more than 13 times the number of cities that notched the same high levels a year earlier, the Department said.

Currently, the national unemployment rate is 8.9 percent, but in nearly 150 cities a higher proportion of residents were out of work this spring.

At the same time, the number of cities posting unemployment rates below 7 percent was 117, which was less than half of the 347 cities recording lower rates just a year earlier.

The Labor Department said nine of the 13 metropolitan areas with jobless rates of at least 15 percent were in California.

Source/Full Story: NYTimes.com

Source:  Bloomberg.com

The number of Americans filing unemployment claims unexpectedly rose last week to the highest level since 1982 and those staying on benefit rolls jumped to a record as companies kept cutting jobs to trim costs.

Initial jobless claims swelled by 12,000 to 669,000 in the week ended March 28, topping 600,000 for a ninth straight time, after a revised 657,000 the prior week, the Labor Department said today in Washington. The number of people staying on benefit rolls soared in the prior week to 5.73 million.

Another Labor Department report tomorrow may show the jobless rate in March rose to the highest in more than 25 years, reinforcing concerns that the economy will continue to bleed jobs as companies reduce output. Less employment and slowing incomes may thwart a rebound in consumer spending, setting back prospects for an economic turnaround in the second half of 2009.

“Companies are unsure of when demand will bounce back on a sustainable basis, so they’re continuing to reduce the labor force,” Joseph Brusuelas, a director at Moody’s Economy.com in West Chester, Pennsylvania, said before the report. “Personal consumption is in the process of stabilizing, and job losses will dampen that.”

The Labor Department tomorrow may say the jobless rate last month climbed to 8.5 percent, the highest level since 1983, according to the median forecast in a Bloomberg survey. Payrolls probably fell by 660,000 workers, bringing total job losses since the downturn began to about 5 million.

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The U.S. jobless rate climbed in March to the highest level since 1983 and manufacturing shrank, putting the recession on the brink of becoming the longest in seven decades, economists said before reports this week.

Unemployment jumped to 8.5 percent from 8.1 percent in February, according to the median estimate of analysts surveyed by Bloomberg News before the Labor Department’s April 3 report. The figures may also show payrolls fell by 660,000 workers, bringing total job losses since the contraction began to 5 million.

Factories are projected to keep cutting staff and output to reduce inventories that piled up after sales sank in the U.S. and abroad. The deteriorating outlook means President Barack Obama’s plan to save or create 3.5 million jobs by boosting government spending and cutting taxes will still leave the country shy of pre-recession employment levels.

“This recession is the deepest and the broadest of the postwar era,” said Mark Vitner, a senior economist at Wachovia Corp. in Charlotte, North Carolina. “One thing that happens in recessions is that manufacturing gets clobbered.”

Should it persist into April, the now 16-month recession would surpass similar contractions in the early 1970s and 1980s as the longest since the Great Depression. The magnitude of the current slump is still an open question.

Manufacturing probably contracted in March for the 15th time in the last 16 months, the Tempe, Arizona-based Institute for Supply Management may report on April 1. The group’s factory index was probably at 36 this month compared with February’s 35.8, according to the survey median. Readings less than 50 signal contraction.

Source: Bloomberg.com

The U.S. economy probably shrank in the fourth quarter more than previously estimated and the pace of firings accelerated last week, economists said before reports today.

Gross domestic product contracted at a 6.6 percent annual rate from October to December, the most since 1980, according to the median forecast in a Bloomberg News survey. The number of people claiming jobless benefits exceeded 600,000 for an eighth consecutive time, the Labor Department may report.

Recent reports show retail sales, residential construction and home sales have improved, indicating last quarter’s slump may give way to smaller declines in growth. A let-up in the recession would set the stage for Obama’s stimulus plan and Federal Reserve measures to take hold in the second half.

“The worst is probably behind us,” said Michael Feroli, an economist at JPMorgan Chase & Co. in New York. “Hopefully, if policy works, we can actually start to see some daylight as we get to the middle of the year.”

The revised figures for GDP, the sum of all goods and services produced, are due at 8:30 a.m. in Washington. Commerce last month estimated the fourth-quarter’s contraction at 6.2 percent. Forecasts of the GDP decline ranged from 6 percent to 7.1 percent in a Bloomberg survey of 69 economists.

This is the final of three growth estimates the government issues. The world’s largest economy shrank at a 0.5 percent annual rate in last year’s third quarter.

Today’s report will also provide the first look at corporate profits last quarter.

Source: Bloomberg.com

The number of U.S. workers drawing state unemployment benefits hit another record high early this month and factory activity in the Mid-Atlantic region shrank again as the economy battles a severe downturn.

The Labor Department said on Thursday that 5.47 million people stayed on the benefit rolls in the week ended March 7, up from 5.29 million the previous week and the highest on record.

Jobless rolls are swelling to record levels after Congress last year extended benefits beyond the regular 26 weeks.

With the economy mired in recession since December 2007, the nation’s unemployment rate has skyrocketed and the claims figures underscore the difficulty of finding a new job.

The insured unemployment rate, the percentage of insured workers receiving jobless benefits, jumped to 4.1 percent in the March 7 week, the highest since June 1983, from 3.9 percent the week before.

“There is no sign of even a temporary easing in the downward pressure on employment,” said Ian Shepherdson, chief U.S. economist at HFE in Valhalla, New York, who said the economy would likely lose more than 700,000 jobs this month.

The data had little impact on financial markets, which were still focusing on the Federal Reserve’s decision on Wednesday to buy up to $300 billion of longer-dated government debt.

Source: Reuters

Source:  FOXNews.com

After the Labor Department reported the nation’s unemployment rate bolted to 8.1 percent in February, the U.S. workforce will likely face another major challenge – stagnant, or even falling wages, Reuters reported.

Labor experts say that after landing a new job, workers can expect lower pay because the downturn doesn’t show signs of improving in the near future.

“There’s no end in sight,” Tig Gilliam, Chief Executive of Adecco Group North America, told Reuters. “March is going to be the same, and I don’t see anything that will make April better.”

Adecco Group North America is the third-largest U.S. employer behind the postal service and Wal-Mart.

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