Posts Tagged unemployment

Unemployment – A Graphic View over time

Posted by Rob Paterson in Context on November 21st, 2009

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We can usually only see the present – so we can see a statistic such as unemployment or we can see a graph that is just a line. But when we can see the spread of something on a map in color, we can feel the change. So here is a map of America showing the growth of unemployment since 2007 – it struck me to the heart. And it shows the power of the trend. And so does it not show us what we have to do – we have to be part of the reinvention of our communities.

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Unemployment – Still getting worse – More for us to do

Posted by Rob Paterson in Context, Journalism on November 6th, 2009

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Here is a summary from the official release edited by Edward Harrison of Credit Writedowns - a consistent commentator on the economy

The unemployment rate rose from 9.8 to 10.2 percent in October, and nonfarm payroll employment continued to decline (-190,000), the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics reported today. The largest job losses over the month were in construction, manufacturing, and retail trade.

Household Survey Data

In October, the number of unemployed persons increased by 558,000 to 15.7 million. The unemployment rate rose by 0.4 percentage point to 10.2 percent, the highest rate since April 1983. Since the start of the recession in December 2007, the number of unemployed persons has risen by 8.2 million, and the unemployment rate has grown by 5.3 percentage points. (See table A-1.)

Among the major worker groups, the unemployment rates for adult men (10.7 percent) and whites (9.5 percent) rose in October. The jobless rates for adult women (8.1 percent), teenagers (27.6 percent), blacks (15.7 percent), and Hispanics (13.1 percent) were little changed over the month. The unemployment rate for Asians was 7.5 percent, not seasonally adjusted. (See tables A-1, A-2, and A-3.)

The number of long-term unemployed (those jobless for 27 weeks and over) was little changed over the month at 5.6 million. In October, 35.6 percent of unemployed persons were jobless for 27 weeks or more. (See table A-9.)

The civilian labor force participation rate was little changed over the month
at 65.1 percent. The employment-population ratio continued to decline in October, falling to 58.5 percent. (See table A-1.)

The number of persons working part time for economic reasons (sometimes referred to as involuntary part-time workers) was little changed in October at 9.3 million. These individuals were working part time because their hours had been cut back or because they were unable to find a full-time job.

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Good News on the Benefits Front

Posted by Rob Paterson in Journalism, National, Network, Partners on November 5th, 2009

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The $24 billion economic package, which would also broaden tax breaks for businesses, cleared the House Thursday afternoon in a 403-12 vote and heads to President Barack Obama to sign into law. It passed 98-0 late Wednesday in the Senate.

Under the measure, the $8,000 tax credit for first-time homebuyers would be lengthened by seven months and expanded with a $6,500 credit for some prospective homebuyers who already own homes.

The nearly 2 million people who have lost or are in danger of running through their unemployment benefits before the end of 2009 would receive up to 20 weeks in additional benefits.

For those in states with unemployment rates above 8.5 percent, it would grant an additional six weeks on top of that. The extension is the fourth since last June, and could give some people up to 99 weeks of unemployment benefits, above the previous record of 65 weeks set in the 1970s, according to the Associated Press.

More after the jump – Source The NewsHour

Read the rest of this entry »

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In Mass it is now the rich who are hurting

Posted by Rob Paterson in Context, Impact, Journalism, Local, The Collective Story on October 14th, 2009

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WBUR is seeing a new story in Mass – the crisis is now affecting everyone.The crisis is growing in intensity and has momentum. The key is employment.

Also when you look at the end of the story, it also raises a new issue – the mega banks are protected but the local crisis is putting intolerable pressure on the local banks. It is the smaller banks that are failing.

The reason for these auctions is not the crazy interest-rate mortgages. It’s the recession. Nowadays, people are losing their homes the way they used to before the sub-prime crisis.

“Historically, people lost their home when they lost their job, they lost their health or they lost their spouse,” says Nick Retsinas, a housing market economist at Harvard University.

Unemployment is to blame again today. The number of foreclosure proceedings in Massachusetts has jumped an alarming 150 percent. (My emphasis)

In fact, people under foreclosure I talked to in Sudbury didn’t want to be interviewed for this story. They said they’re ashamed — to have lost their jobs; to have run out of savings; to not be able to make their payments.

Whitney Tilson, a Harvard Business School grad and money manager, said, “the number of distressed homes coming through the pipeline has actually never been greater than right now.”

Tilson says Sudbury is a good example of what this coming wave could do to the market. Only seven homes above $1,000,000 have sold in the town this year. Last year it was 43, and that was a bad year.

“The listed prices appear to show that prices are holding up, but that’s phony,” Tilson says. “So what breaks the logjam? The wave of foreclosures working their way through the pipeline.”

Foreclosed properties priced to sell will push housing prices down and push more homeowners under water and into foreclosure. And that could really hurt regional banks.

Unlike the sub prime mortgage crisis — which hammered national mortgage companies — in this instance, local banks carry more of these loans. When Massachusetts banks stand to lose as much as a few hundred thousand dollars a pop, they get more conservative about lending. Tilson says that will suppress economic recovery.

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A Manifesto for the Unemployed – A Call to action

Posted by Rob Paterson in Context, Engagement, Impact, Personal Story, The Collective Story, The Web on October 13th, 2009

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I found this via KERA who found this via NPR and the Washington Post – Ann Powers is finding the voice of the people who aren’t going to take it any more.

“We are more than 15 million individuals in the prime of our lives who have lost our place in the world of work. We call upon our representatives on Capitol Hill to help us directly, rather than assisting our institutions first in the hope that their recovery might also bring us along.

We declare ourselves too big to fail. But we are being pushed by circumstance from the comfortable middle-class to the terrified middle-class, and from the working poor to the hopeless poor. We have lost our savings, retirement, and, in many cases, our monthly income to sustain our lives. We fear homelessness and a loss of stability as we struggle with rebuilding our assets.

We can and will help ourselves. We take jobs for which we are over qualified. We work longer hours. We work odd jobs. We downgrade our lifestyles. We deny our children their birthday gifts and vacations. We try to educate ourselves to the options for cure and take positive steps every day.

But still our financial standing degrades, and we feel the journey of recovery will be long, and we will cry and stumble.

Despite the names chosen by officialdom to describe us, we are not displaced, dislocated, discouraged, disadvantaged, disaffected or disgruntled.

Instead, we are disappointed and disillusioned that the financial condition of our households is of secondary consideration to the economic stabilization of huge Wall Street financial firms, curiously declaring their own recovery just months after calling themselves near death.

In August, six of the seven biggest financial institutions reported quarterly profits that surpassed expectations, despite deteriorating loans on many of their balance sheets. Many of us, however, teeter closer to foreclosure, find ourselves in distressed sales or evicted from our homes.

We are distressed that the $787 billion American Recovery and Reinvestment Act has money to keep us unemployed for longer but not to get us back to work. In July, one in three unemployed individuals were jobless for 27 weeks or more. And, the number of workers who have stopped looking for a job rose to 796,000, up 335,000 over the past 12 months.

We feel disrespected that our government has committed trillions of dollars to get the nation moving again. Yet, we can see no change in our own daily lives.

Has any of this $1.5 trillion bought a single Happy Meal for an unhappy family? Has it sent the creditors that hound us by telephone into silence by making a mortgage or credit card payment for us? Has it bought us groceries or paid the utility or insurance or tax bills? Has it paid for our health insurance?

We declare that we are lost, lonely and forgotten, but that we vow to become loud, united and forceful so we will claim our rightful place at the center of the political debate. The body politic is seriously diseased if those of us who have been the very backbone of U.S. prosperity can be left without direct assistance when we are facing the loss of our homes, careers and all the possessions we need to maintain a safe home for our children.

Patience is no longer the order of the day. There is a rabble to be roused, virtual signs to be made and held up, marches, petitions, visits, phone calls and every manner of communications used to say to the public authorities now it is our turn. Now you must save us.”

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Unemployment – Is becoming the #1 Issue

Posted by Rob Paterson in Context, Journalism on October 10th, 2009

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Here is Planet Money’s lead on Friday – Six Unemployed People For Every Opening

Do the math: On the last business day of August, the number of job openings in the U.S. was just under 2.4 million. The number of unemployed people hit 14.9 million that month, then climbed to 15.1 million in September. That means there about six unemployed people for every available job.

And it’s been that way for a while. “The job openings rate was little changed in August in all industries and regions,” reports the Bureau of Labor Statistics in the latest Job Openings and Labor Turnover Summary. Flat, flat, flat.

This job market is just not warming up. Hiring fell in the private sector and in the government one. Hiring fell in every region except for the Midwest, where it rose by 45,000. In the West, hiring fell by 175,000. The quits rate, which includes people who voluntarily leave a job for any reason other than retirement or death, fell back to a record low of 1.3 percent — so low as to be meaningless.

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A More Complete Picture of Unemployment

Posted by Rob Paterson in Context, Journalism, Reinvention on October 2nd, 2009

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Unemp

So in the real world of the world as we live it – this is where we are

Even for many in work – there is less work and fewer hours

hours per civ

Source Economic Pic

So the real work of getting us back to work has not yet begun. Here is Paul Krugman on this situation today in the NYT:

Anyone who thinks that we’re doing enough to create jobs should read a new report from John Irons of the Economic Policy Institute, which describes the “scarring” that’s likely to result from sustained high unemployment. Among other things, Mr. Irons points out that sustained unemployment on the scale now being predicted would lead to a huge rise in child poverty — and that there’s overwhelming evidence that children who grow up in poverty are alarmingly likely to lead blighted lives.

These human costs should be our main concern, but the dollars and cents implications are also dire. Projections by the Congressional Budget Office, for example, imply that over the period from 2010 to 2013 — that is, not counting the losses we’ve already suffered — the “output gap,” the difference between the amount the economy could have produced and the amount it actually produces, will be more than $2 trillion. That’s trillions of dollars of productive potential going to waste.

Wait. It gets worse. A new report from the International Monetary Fund shows that the kind of recession we’ve had, a recession caused by a financial crisis, often leads to long-term damage to a country’s growth prospects. “The path of output tends to be depressed substantially and persistently following banking crises.”

The same report, however, suggests that this isn’t inevitable: “We find that a stronger short-term fiscal policy response” — by which they mean a temporary increase in government spending — “is significantly associated with smaller medium-term output losses.”

So we should be doing much more than we are to promote economic recovery, not just because it would reduce our current pain, but also because it would improve our long-run prospects.

But can we afford to do more — to provide more aid to beleaguered state governments and the unemployed, to spend more on infrastructure, to provide tax credits to employers who create jobs? Yes, we can.

The conventional wisdom is that trying to help the economy now produces short-term gain at the expense of long-term pain. But as I’ve just pointed out, from the point of view of the nation as a whole that’s not at all how it works. The slump is doing long-term damage to our economy and society, and mitigating that slump will lead to a better future.

What is true is that spending more on recovery and reconstruction would worsen the government’s own fiscal position. But even there, conventional wisdom greatly overstates the case. The true fiscal costs of supporting the economy are surprisingly small.

You see, spending money now means a stronger economy, both in the short run and in the long run. And a stronger economy means more revenues, which offset a large fraction of the upfront cost. Back-of-the-envelope calculations suggest that the offset falls short of 100 percent, so that fiscal stimulus isn’t a complete free lunch. But it costs far less than you’d think from listening to what passes for informed discussion.

Look, I know more stimulus is a hard sell politically. But it’s urgently needed. The question shouldn’t be whether we can afford to do more to promote recovery. It should be whether we can afford not to. And the answer is no.

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Unemployed – leads to being Uninsured for Health

Posted by Rob Paterson in Context, Impact, National on October 1st, 2009

unemployed-leads-to-being-uninsured-for-health

From NBR Via PRX

If unemployment is a long term situation for millions of Americans – then most will lose their access to health care insurance – what does the individual do?

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In Ohio – Small Towns and Youth are now being affected

Posted by Rob Paterson in Context, Local, Personal Story, The Collective Story on September 28th, 2009

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The cities in Ohio were amongst the first to feel the recession – but now even the heartland is in the grips as this piece from WOSU explains. The piece also addresses a new reality for the youth of the state – no money and now a big question – what future? Will there be jobs and when for the youth?

LONDON, OH (wosu) – Later this week,the Labor Department will give its latest snapshot of the job market. Ohio’s unemployment rate remains in double digits. While Ohio cities have suffered much of the job losses, the slack economy also effects the state’s small towns where young people have begun to take notice.

“The recession has arrived.”

Ohio State University Agricultural Economist Matt Roberts says the economic downturn was a long time coming to rural Ohio and its farm economy. Agriculture is often touted as Ohio’s biggest industry. And it helps fuel the economies of some of the state’s smaller towns. Bucyrus, London, and Greenville come to mind. Roberts says record commodity prices last year boosted farm income. Tim White, editor of Ohio Farmer magazine in Lancaster, likens current conditions to a big squeeze and he cites the state’s dairy industry as especially troubled

“Milk prices are extremely low. Feed prices are extremely high and they’re caught in a big squeeze.”

White and Roberts made their comments at this year’s Farm Science Review. Nearly, 140,000 visited the three-day event, including many high schoolers on field trips. They too, sense an economic squeeze. 14 year old Carolyn Carmean and her friends live in Richwood, a small town northwest of Columbus in Union County.

“We just basically have one store. Its a very small town so there’s not much there so people can have a lot of jobs. ”

Carmean says the recession hit home when one of her parents was twice laid-off this year.

“Well I’m experiencing it right now. I’m going through it. We are unable to pay for our stuff so we have to move.”

Carmean and her friends are just getting started in their working lives. Nathan Bigham, also of Richwood, says he first noticed the sluggish economy while doing work laying pavers and bricks for outdoor landscapes.

“We do really fancy work and like people don’t want so much fancy stuff because they have to pay for it. And they don’t got the money so us masonry workers are out of jobs.”

As a result, Bigham says most days he has little or no spending money.

“Honestly, right now I am pretty much broke. So I don’t go to Mcdonalds much anymore.”

Megan Fogle, also of Richwood, says she’s also noticed a downturn in the local economy.

“I don’t know, it sucks, I guess. q) You really think so? Yeah. q) why do you say that? Because like everybody’s getting laid off and then they don’t have jobs and then they don’t have money and then they can’t buy anything or do anything.”

Interviews with other youngsters show similar concerns. 14 year old Dane Simpson of Marysville says he makes about 35 to 40 dollars a week making pizzas so he can keep some cash in his pocket.

“I have a job now but the economy’s so bad that I ain’t getting much hours and so its getting hard to buy stuff.”

Simpson says he’s been forced to cutback especially on his entertainment purchases.

“Well my X-box 360 broke so I don’t have enough money to buy that. So, I’ve given up alot of my X-box and all my other game systems.”

Simpson says instead of going out and buying games he now spends most of his weekly pay on food. Taylor Renick of Lancaster says his plight is even worse. He wants to go to college in a couple of years but he’s also having trouble finding work.

“I’m already looking. Q) how’s that going? Horrible, Yeah, no one will hire me,at all. Q) In Lancaster, what are your options? There’s like Kroger and Carnival and places at the mall and then there’s like Mcdonalds and Burger King and Wendy’s and all that.”

Renick says he wants to study law after he graduates from high school in two years. Bigham, Fogle and Carmean are undecided about their future plans. Simpson says he hopes the economy improves and creates more jobs for young people.

“I hope they do but I’m planning on going into the military where there’ll always be work.”

Tom Borgerding WOSU News

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San Diego – The Recovery is more complex than the “Experts” suggest

Posted by Rob Paterson in Advice, Context, Experts, Journalism, Local, Reinvention on September 17th, 2009

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This short video I think sums up a troubling media issue that KPBS nails. It opens with an Economist being very optimistic – the local experts then have their say. They remind us who the economist works for – and then also remind us that good paying jobs may not appear until 2011.

They end the piece with I think the central issue of our time. The middle and working classes are separated from the elite. The bulk of Americans are seeing no green shoots only the elite. Maybe because jobs that pay enough for most Americans have been disappearing since the early 1980′s and the recession has made this bad situation worse?

The piece leaves then open – what to do to fix this – Great reporting!

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