Tag: Unemployment

Senate Extends Unemployment

The Senate approved a House bill to extend unemployment benefits by at least seven weeks on Thursday, sending the measure to President Bush on the same day the Labor Department reported continuing claims for jobless benefits hit a 26-year high.

The Senate bill extends benefits by seven weeks. It would extend them for 13 weeks in states with unemployment rates higher than 6%.
The House approved the measure on Oct. 3.
The current U.S. jobless rate is 6.5%.
U.S. workers are facing a gloomy job market. Earlier Thursday, the Labor Department reported that first-time jobless claims rose to a 16-year high of 542,000 in the latest week. The number of people receiving benefits rose to 4.01 million in the week ending Nov. 8, the highest level in 26 years.
OMG!  They pigs are doing something good.

Jobs Lost Hit 14 Year High

A total of 240,000 jobs were lost last month on a net basis, significantly more than had been anticipated, again pointing to a prolonged and severe downturn. “We’re heading for a deep recession,” Nariman Behravesh, chief economist at IHS Global Insight, told Bloomberg News. “Banish the word mild from your vocabulary. It’s big, it’s bad, and it’s broad-based.”

The Labor Department revised its jobless figures for September, from the initially reported 159,000 net job losses to 284,000. Total employment has declined by 1.2 million in the first 10 months of 2008, with more than half of this fall recorded in the last three months. Economists estimate that the economy must generate an additional 100,000 jobs each month just to keep up with population growth.

Jobs were shed across a number of sectors:

• Manufacturing employment declined by 90,000 in October, including employment in fabricated metal parts (11,000 jobs lost), furniture and related products (10,000) and motor vehicles and parts (9,000).

• Construction employment fell by 49,000. The Labor Department noted that since peak activity in September 2006, construction employment has fallen by 663,000.

• The employment services industry lost 51,000 jobs.

• Retail trade employment declined by 38,000, with auto dealerships (20,000 jobs lost) and department stores (18,000) the worst affected.

• Financial sector employment fell by 24,000 and is down by 200,000 jobs since its peak in December 2006.

The rising unemployment rate is having a devastating social impact. According to the New York Times, only 32 percent of the officially unemployed are drawing state benefit checks because of onerous eligibility restrictions and other conditions designed to drive people off the books.

Moreover, the real jobless rate is far higher than the official 6.5 percent figure. The Labor Department’s monthly report acknowledged that the number of “involuntary part-time workers”—that is, those who are unable to find full-time work, or those whose hours have been cut back to part-time levels—increased in October by 645,000 to 6.7 million.

Also not counted as unemployed are those “marginally attached to the workforce”—i.e., those who wanted and were available for work and had looked for a job in the last year, but not in the four weeks preceding the survey. A total of 1.6 million people were in this category in October. Among the marginally attached were 484,000 “discouraged workers” who have stopped actively looking for employment. Other marginally attached workers include those who were unable to look for work in the preceding four weeks due to school attendance or family responsibilities.

When the involuntary part-time and marginally attached workers are counted, the unemployment rate stands at 11.8 percent, up from 11 percent in September and from 8.4 percent a year earlier.

Commenting on the Labor Department data, the Wall Street Journal’s Sudeep Reddy and Justin Lahart noted, “One of the more worrisome aspects of today’s report: signs that the labor market was declining substantially even before the worst of the credit crisis hit… If conditions were that bad before October, they’re likely to be far worse in the months to come as companies adjust to the new credit environment and consumers retrench with added pressure on housing and credit markets.”

Job Losses Accelerated

Unemployment claims, already well into recession territory, are rising even faster than expected, leading economists to warn Thursday that the worst is yet to come.

As the Labor Department released bleak new numbers on the job market, Goldman Sachs, Chrysler and Xerox all announced they were cutting workers by the thousands, adding to the woes of an economy beset by tighter credit and wobbly banks.

The government said new applications for unemployment insurance rose 15,000 last week to a seasonally adjusted 478,000, above analysts’ estimates of 470,000. Jobless claims above 400,000 are considered a sign of recession.

The Commerce Department will release its first estimate of third-quarter economic performance Oct. 30, and Wall Street analysts project it will show the economy contracted by 0.5 percent, according to Thomson/IFR.

Many economists expect the decline to continue into the current quarter and the first three months of 2009, if not longer. The classic definition of a recession is at least two consecutive quarters of negative growth.

The impact of the job losses is rippling through the economy. As jobs disappear, foreclosures rise when out-of-work homeowners can no longer make mortgage payments.

Home foreclosure filings jumped by 70 percent in the third quarter, according to the listing service RealtyTrac Inc. Nationwide, nearly 766,000 homes received at least one foreclosure-related notice from July through September, the company said.

Spending is falling, too. Americans who still have jobs are worried about keeping them, and those who have lost jobs must watch every penny. Consumer spending accounts for about 70 percent of the economy, and economists estimate it fell by more than 3 percent last quarter in what would be the first quarterly drop in 17 years.

A dismal report at best, but the almost $1 trillion  should slow this from happening….if you buy that…then there is this bridge that is for sale.  I am afraid the worse is yet to come.

Crisis Will KO The Workers

John McCain was right about one thing. Jobs are being lost. This week the Department of Labor reported that 159,000 American workers lost their jobs in September, a five-year record. The Labor Department reported the ninth straight month of job losses, approaching 800,000 lost jobs in 2008.

Why was McCain right? During his Republican presidential primary campaign, he asked one audience, “Have people lost jobs” due to the economic policies of free trade and low taxes for companies that move jobs out of the country which he has supported? “Yes,” he inexplicably continued, “they have, and they’re gonna lose jobs.” But McCain offered no solutions and appeared to suggest ignoring with the pain.

The Economic Policy Institute reported this week that weakening job numbers did not begin in 2008, despite Labor Department data. Bush administration trade policies, which McCain has steadfastly supported, 5.6 million jobs were lost or displaced, with 4 million of those lost jobs in manufacturing. Hardest hit were Michigan, Ohio, Texas, California and New York. But South Carolina, Alabama, Mississippi, New Hampshire, and North Carolina were among the biggest job losers as well.

This month’s jobs numbers don’t tell the whole story, however. The AFL-CIO reported this week that long-term unemployment has steadily worsened over the past few years. According to Labor Department estimates, the number of long-term unemployed people grew by 167,000 last month.

This is an immediate problem because about 750,000 unemployed workers are about to lose their unemployment benefits, throwing thousands of families into deeper crisis.

The labor movement has called for investing in job creation, helping working families renegotiate their mortgages, make their payments, and keep their homes, and for extending unemployment benefits for the jobless.

“Working people are suffering real economic pain, and if there is money enough for Wall Street, Congress and the president need to dig a little deeper and find the funds to take care of people who are shouldering the burden of this economy,” Sweeney concluded.

Emphasizing that no economic recovery can happen without addressing the needs fo working families, Barack Obama, in a statement this week, said, “I also call on Congress to pass an immediate rescue plan for our middle-class that will provide tax relief, save one million jobs, and save our local communities from harmful budget cuts and painful tax increases.”

How About A Real Issue?

Lipstick?  Please people stop listening to this crap.  There is more to worry about than some damn silly lipstick comment.

In a stark indication that the crises gripping the US housing market and the financial sector are spreading throughout the economy, unemployment figures for August rose far more sharply than expected, hitting a five-year high.

The official unemployment rate rose to 6.1 percent last month, according to a report released Friday by the Bureau of Labor Statistics. In addition to the net loss of 84,000 jobs last month, the agency revised its figures for June and July, reporting the destruction of an additional 58,000 jobs, pointing to an entire summer dominated by layoffs and economic slump.

Meanwhile the so-called misery index, which adds the unemployment and inflation rates, hit 11.7 percent, the worst figure recorded since mid-1991, as high gas, food and utility prices continue to gouge workers’ paychecks even as layoffs mount.

At the same time, existing home sales fell to a 10-year low in the second quarter, while the median price of a single-family house plummeted by another 7.6 percent, the National Association of Realtors reported.

The increase in unemployment and the rising number of foreclosures are clearly trends that are feeding into one another in a vicious downward spiral. Workers having lost their jobs are finding it impossible to meet monthly mortgage payments, and the collapse of home values has wiped out credit for many, leading to falling consumption and new layoffs.

This is turning into a vicious cycle that needs to be addressed by the candidates and let the late night TV shows handle the lipstick thing.

Workers Real Wages Fall

This is what should be talked about in the media.  But no…instead we get an array of mindless speculation on who the Veep will be.

US prices jumped in July by their highest month-to-month rate since 1981, in one of the sharpest inflation spikes since the Second World War.

The July Producer Prices index, reported Tuesday by the Bureau of Labor Statistics, rose by 1.2 percent, on top of a 1.8 percent increase in June. “Core” prices, which exclude food and energy, shot up by .7 percent, more than triple economists’ expectations. Producer prices were up 9.8 percent from a year ago.

The consumer price statistics released last Thursday mirrored the producer price statistics. Seasonally-adjusted consumer prices jumped .8 percent last month—more than double earlier predictions—and were up 5.6 percent since July 2007. Even so, inflation has picked up in recent months. While the Consumer Price Index rose at a comparatively low annualized rate of only 2.8 percent in the first quarter, it shot up at an annualized rate of ten percent in the past three months.

The living standards of workers continue to decline as the purchasing power of their wages falls and pay increases fail to keep up with inflation. The most recent Bureau of Labor statistics report found that real average weekly earnings fell by .8 percent from June to July. Over the past year, weekly earnings fell by 3.1 percent. Thus, the average household now earns a staggering $1,500 less than it would if wages had kept pace with inflation over the past twelve months.

Skyrocketing prices, falling wages, rising unemployment, and falling home values are all lining up to create a massive social catastrophe. According to Credit Suisse, the credit analyst, there will be some 6.5 million home foreclosures by 2012, amounting to 12.7 percent of homeowners with mortgages. While arranging multi-billion dollar bailout of big investors involved in the mortgage meltdown, the Democrats and Republicans have offered no relief for working people facing the loss of their homes and unsustainable levels of debt.

Now the question is:  will the worker finally wake up and realize that the two candidates are offering nothing but a continuation of the crap they are facing now?  Or will they just slide into their party politics and screw themselves yet again?

More High Tech Jobs To Be Lost

Memory chip heavyweight Hynix Semiconductor Inc. announced plans to close down its only North American plant, located in Eugene, Oregon, in the next two months. The closure will result in the elimination of over 1,400 jobs. As of August 1, the first pink slips had already been handed out.

The closure of Hynix’s Eugene plant is the largest loss of jobs in Oregon this decade. Kim Jong-kap, chairman of the South Korean company, flew to Oregon to personally convey the news to the governor and the mayor of Eugene. The July 23 announcement apparently caught state and local officials by surprise.

Hynix, the second largest producer of memory chips in the world after Samsung Electronics, has been battered by the unusually steep decline in global prices for memory chips. The average price fell a dramatic 39 percent in 2007.

Laid off high-tech workers will find themselves job-hunting in an economy that is reeling from the collapse of the housing market and rising fuel prices. Over the last few years, two major high tech companies, Intel Corporation and Hewlett Packard, have downsized operations in Oregon.

Unemployment in Oregon currently stands at 5.5 percent, identical to the national level. However, losses in well-paid construction jobs, down 7,500 jobs since June 2007, have been balanced by gains in notoriously lower paying jobs in retail and the leisure and hospitality industry. June was the first month since May of 1996 that Oregon’s unemployment rate was equal to the national rate. In 2003, Oregon led the nation, and exceeded the national rate by 2 percent, with an 8.5 percent unemployment rate.

Obama’s Emergency Economic Plan

Sen. Barack Obama (D-Ill.) on Friday announced an “Emergency Economic Plan” that would give families a stimulus check of $1,000 each, funded in part by what his presidential campaign calls “windfall profits from Big Oil.”

The first part of Obama’s plan is an emergency energy rebate ($500 to individual workers, $1,000 to families) as soon as this fall.

“This rebate will be enough to offset the increased cost of gas for a working family over the next four months,” Obama said. “Or, if you live in a state where it gets very cold in the winter, it will be enough to cover the entire increase in your heating bills. Or you could use the rebate for any of your other bills or even to pay down debt

Separately, Obama’s plan includes a $50 billion stimulus package that his campaign claims would save more than 1 million jobs.

Half of the money would go to state governments, which are facing big budget shortfalls, and half would be used for national infrastructure, including replenishing the Highway Trust Fund, rebuilding roads and bridges, and repairing schools.

Obama announced his plan 27 minutes after a Labor Department report showed unemployment hit a four-year high of 5.7 percent in July — the highest rate since March 2004, when it was 5.8 percent.
McCain reacted to the surprisingly dour jobs report with a two-paragraph statement: “Across this country, Americans are hurting and today’s job numbers are just the latest reminder of the economic challenges we face. … Unlike Sen. Obama, I do not believe that raising taxes is the answer to our economic problems. There is no surer way to force jobs overseas than to raise taxes on businesses.”

Obama announced his plan for a windfall profits tax on oil companies on June 9 in Raleigh, N.C., as he launched a two-week economic tour after clinching the Democratic nomination.

Friday’s proposal says Obama “is proposing to offset the cost of his emergency energy rebates over the next five years by enacting a windfall profits tax on big oil companies.”

“Obama simply asks that big oil companies contribute a reasonable share of the windfall profits they receive from high oil prices over the next five years to pay for emergency assistance for families right now,” the campaign says.

The Economy Is Bombing

The US economy lost 49,000 net jobs in May and the official unemployment rate shot up by half a percentage point in the sharpest month-to-month increase since 1986, according to figures released Friday by the Labor Department. Oil prices rocketed upwards the same day, posting an increase of more than $10 a barrel.

The steep jump in unemployment — from 5.0 to 5.5 percent — came as a surprise to analysts, who had been predicting an increase rise of only 0.1 percent. May’s net payroll reduction followed a drop of 28,000 jobs in April, and was the fifth consecutive monthly fall. Payrolls have fallen by 324,000 since the year began.

Factory payrolls were reduced by 26,000 last month, after a fall of 49,000 jobs in April,. The overall reduction in manufacturing jobs will be exacerbated by job cuts at General Motors, where most of the 19,000 workers who took a recent buyout package are scheduled to stop working by July 1.

The housing and financial downturns also took a toll on employment figures; housing contraction payrolls fell by 34,000, after a drop of 52,000 in April. The service sector lost 8,000 jobs, and retail dropped by 27,000 jobs, while a further 1,000 jobs were lost in the finance. These figures correlate with the latest consumer confidence numbers, which dropped to their lowest level in 15 years. Consumer spending growth likewise reached its lowest level since the 2001 recession.

There have been similar rises in long-term workforce reduction announcements, with the firm Challenger, Gray & Christmas recently reporting that 100,000 job cuts were announced in May, 17 percent higher than the same month in 2007. A number of major US airlines announced significant cuts this week; most recently Continental Airlines, which said Thursday that it would cut 3,000 jobs, or seven percent of its workforce.

The steady increase in unemployment and fall in payrolls underscores the possibility of a severe US recession materializing in the coming months — an outcome that certain analysts had of late been discounting — and complicates problems for the Federal Reserve, which this week suggested that it might raise rates to shore up the dollar and limit US exposure to soaring commodities prices.

Here it comes….here it comes……the Admin’s 19th nervous breakdown…..