Jobs & Unemployment
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1 in 10 Americans Unemployed
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Budget Crises, Development Woes Confront Mayors
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Stimulus Bypasses Women and Minority Businesses
10% Unemployment Looming
Published November 05, 2009 @ 12:00PM PT
New unemployment #s come out tomorrow - economists predict 9.9% unemployment nationwide. Can I just round that up to 10% and call it a day?
First time jobless claims were less than expected in October, though only 20k fewer of over half a million. We are supposed to take this as good news that "job cuts are easing as the economy slowly heals." This is the lowest level since January. Still...2009 is almost over and we're still seeing half a million people per month file for unemployment for the first time? That is one horribly contracting economy.
Surviving workers are laboring more feverishly than ever - productivity is up even as our incomes are "squeezed". The stimulus is keeping a lot of jobs afloat; unemployment benefits are practically extended into perpetuity at this point. No wonder discount retailers are doing slightly better than specialty stores; it's amazing we've got anything left to leave behind at the mall!
Your Recession in Charts
Published November 02, 2009 @ 01:52PM PT
Last week President Obama touted 640,000 jobs were created or saved via the stimulus. No doubt the stim, as we're apparently calling it now, has had some positive impact. (Though if it's behind the endless road improvements going on in the Greater Boston area that's driving me insane, pun intended, then I might have to rethink this whole public works investment concept!)
But eminent economist Joseph Stiglitz pronounces the recovery "nowhere near" over and the myriad charts our friends at Calculated Risk and the Wall Street Journal certainly suggest as much. WSJ has an interactive map of stimulus spending by state, including jobs saved and current unemployment rates. 15% unemployment in Michigan! It's almost 30% in Detroit.
Calculated Risk has the gruesome images, including the above graph demonstrating a national unemployment rate of 9.8% (as of September 30), the highest in 26 years.
ABC's of an Effective Jobs Initiative
Published October 30, 2009 @ 05:04AM PT
Driving the Learning Curve Express around backroads of the lower 48, my observation is America's human infrastructure is on life support. The latest unemployment indicators aren't real encouraging. CNN reports...
...the slide may signal that more filers are dropping off those rolls into extended benefits....The figures do not include those who have moved to state or federal extensions, or people whose benefits have expired.
In an op-ed column in The Baltimore Sun, Julianne Malveaux validates my ideas.
To commemorate this anniversary of the Great Depression, the Obama administration ought to engage in Depression-era tactics to jump-start the economy. We have spent $700 billion bailing out banks and $787 billion in economic stimulus. But we have not focused on directly creating employment, on lifting people at the bottom.
Come on! Let's kick something in gear that works.
Most Elderly Job Seekers Since the Great Depression
Published October 29, 2009 @ 08:54PM PT
As a nation, we haven't done too well on reducing poverty overall, but one point of pride has been our success in reducing elder poverty through the creation of Social Security, Medicare, and a general prioritizing of affordable housing and social services for older Americans. Especially considering older Americans' voting power, these programs are generally considered sacrosanct, despite the best efforts of Bush & Co.
So this article from last week is particularly alarming: more Americans aged 65 and up are on the job market than at any other time since the Great Depression - and five times more elderly than just a few years ago. Indebtedness is way up, and economic insecurity is widespread. Are we reversing one of our few anti-poverty successes of the 20th century?
Food Pantry System Needs an Overhaul
Published October 26, 2009 @ 10:05AM PT
With many food pantries around the country being operated by "little old ladies in sneakers," hunger advocates are beginning to worry about who will staff these indispensable operations once an exceedingly aging volunteer base can no longer do it.
After popping up in major cities and small towns alike during the 1970s, food pantries are now being hit with the greatest increase in demand (which has risen between 30 and 70 percent over the past year) they have ever experienced. This is especially troublesome for the elderly volunteers whose bodies simply cannot work any faster or harder.
Many are hoping that as the civically-minded baby boomer generation heads toward retirement, a new group of hunger activists will begin to pick up the slack. It's certainly good news that out of the three billion hours baby boomers spent volunteering last year, nearly 25 percent of that time went to collecting or distributing food.
However, with the recession wiping out many retirement accounts, there's no guarantee that baby boomers will be able to actually leave their paying jobs for the volunteer realm anytime soon.
Cities Ravaged by Recession
Published October 23, 2009 @ 12:01PM PT
The perfect storm of high unemployment rates, shrinking salaries and a painfully slow economic recovery has thrown many U.S. cities teetering on the brink of survival into utter desperation.
Last year, median income for American households dropped a staggering 3.6 percent -- the greatest one-year decline since records have been kept -- and the recession dropped an additional 2.6 million Americans into poverty. Worse, The Economic Policy Institute predicts that incomes could drop another $3,000 and the poverty rate could rise another 1.9 percent by 2011.
Coupled with the assertion that the number of homeless could rise by 1.5 million in the next two years, this news is especially bad for the ten poorest cities in America -- a group of metropolitan areas chosen based on per capita income, the percentage of the population earning less than half the poverty line, the percentage of food stamp recipients, the percentage of people under age 65 receiving public health care and the unemployment rate. (All these statistics come from 2008 Census Bureau data.)
The Promise of Employee-Owned Businesses
Published October 21, 2009 @ 05:41AM PT
In a former life, I worked for years on the issue of increasing minority entrepreneurship and strengthening small businesses in low-income communities. Small business is routinely embraced as a fundamental economic development tool, as it shifts cash, risk and autonomy directly onto an individual business owner; suggests a rejuvenated street life if its an attractive storefront business; and theoretically creates a community stakeholder who cares about the health of the local economy and customers in which the business operates.
To that end, Cleveland has launched an employee-owned cooperative laundry in an effort to revitalize the low-income neighborhoods around University Circle; it's a grand gesture, featuring state-of-the-art, energy-efficient equipment and the goal of employing up to 50 workers, incl. ex-offenders. The laundry will serve local institutions in the area, incl. the universities and hospitals that abound there.
