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As the economy's downturn continues to loom over America and employment remains to be a daily issue, the problem is almost magnified for the young males in the Black community. 34.5% of young Black men are unemployed. Reported in October, unemployment for African-American men between the ages of 16 and 24 has skyrocketed. The percent is more than three times the unemployment rate for the entire U.S. population. This month, the Bureau of Labor Statistics reported that unemployment for Blacks in D.C had risen from 11.4% to 11.9%, although employment was stable for other races located in Maryland and Virginia....

The recent unemployment figures. over 10% of Americans out of work, blows through the President's projection at the time of the porkulous debate. At that time, America was promised that if his bill was passed, unemployment would not rise higher than 8%. The spike in unemployment is a black-eye to the president as it is proof that the President's plan of government spending like a drunken sailor on shore leave is doing very little to help the economy. The administration is so embarrassed about the bad numbers that they have revised their promises. Job creation is no longer the bell...

When the unemployment rate hit a 26-year high of 10.2 percent in October, it captured national attention, but little has been said about the racial disparities among job seekers. The unemployment rate for blacks is a whopping 15.7 percent and 13.1 percent for Latinos compared to 9.5 percent for whites. When the recession started two years ago, the black unemployment rate was 8.9 percent compared to the national rate of 4.9 percent. Influential black leaders have now begun pressuring President Obama, the country's first black president, to take action, saying they want him "to move forward" because in some communities,...

video at posting's link

There have been dozens of news reports exposing tens of thousands of stimulus jobs as frauds — David Freddoso and Mark Hemingway of the Washington Examiner put the number of phony jobs at about 75,000. They found more than 100 separate incidents, but these incidents can be grouped into seven categories, representing the seven biggest lies the administration is telling you about the stimulus: 1. Raises = jobs: This one turns out to be pretty common. For example, the Associated Press reported that one nonprofit in Georgia used stimulus money to give its employees raises, then multiplied its total number...

http://cohort11.americanobserver.net/latoyaegwuekwe/multimediafinal.html

As many families gather for this splendid holiday feast, there are too many others who in the year suffer the American equivalent of hunger. This is more like deprivation and thankfully not the clinical malnutrition and starvation it is in the Third World. At the same time, this super-rich nation is also battling what is described as an epidemic of overweight and obesity. Obesity, according to the experts, is mushrooming faster than any other health problem. If not slowed down, it will exact $344 billion in health care costs in 2018. By that time 43 percent of Americans, or 103...

WASHINGTON (Reuters) – President Barack Obama said on Monday his top priority was to tackle high U.S. unemployment, and stressed that although the economy was growing again, many Americans were still suffering. "Our economy is growing again for the first time in more than a year," Obama told reporters after a meeting with his cabinet. "We cannot be sit back and be satisfied given the extraordinarily high unemployment levels that we have seen." U.S. unemployment is at a 26-year high of 10.2 percent and may get worse before it improves, despite the economy's swing into positive growth in the third...

Jobs that not only help save the planet but usher individuals and neighborhoods out of poverty - talk about a silver bullet. If the promise of green jobs sounds too good to be true, the simplicity of the logic is difficult to resist: Train and hire people who are economically marginalized in work that is critical but has been neglected. Instead of poor people getting stuck at the back of the line, they step to the front of the new technology. The Bay Area's Van Jones was a visionary, early recognizing the social justice potential in the green economy. Jones,...

Employers already are squeezed by tight credit, rising health care costs, wary consumers and a higher minimum wage. Now, the surging jobless rate is imposing another cost. It's forcing higher state taxes on companies to pay for unemployment insurance claims. Some employers say the extra costs make them less likely to hire. That could be a worrisome sign for the economic recovery, because small businesses create about 60 percent of new jobs. Other employers say they'll cut or freeze pay. -- Chuck Ferrar, who owns a liquor store in Annapolis, Md., expects to pay $9,000 in unemployment taxes next year,...

The NAACP, the AFL-CIO and the Hispanic rights group La Raza joined forces to pressure the Obama administration to do more to create jobs for a recession-plagued nation. The normally pro-Obama groups made it clear that they felt his $787 billion stimulus had favored big banks and corporations and had not gone far enough to create jobs. They called for significant increases in government spending for schools and roads and billions to provide fiscal relief for financially strapped state and local governments. In an attempt to avoid appearing to be an Obama critic, the NAACP’s Senior Vice President Hilary O....

California employers added workers to their payrolls in October for the first time in more than a year, but the state's unemployment rate ticked higher as more job seekers entered the labor pool amid hopes that companies are finally hiring again. The state gained 25,700 jobs last month, marking the first time it has added workers since April 2008. Government, financial activities, education and health were among the sectors posting gains, probably with the help of the massive federal stimulus package, analysts say.

Barack Obama played golf for over four hours today at Andrews Air Force Base, according to the AP.Our troops in Afghanistan have been waiting months for reinforcements urgently requested by Obama's hand picked Afghan commander Gen. Stanley McChrystal.Millions of Americans have lost their jobs under Obama--and they're not getting new ones--as unemployment has skyrocketed to 10.2% with no sign of abating anytime soon.Obama has blown out the budget and deficit.His foreign policy from the Middle East to Asia is in a shambles.His approval rating is below 50%, including in swing states he won last year like Iowa, Ohio and Virginia.He...

RALEIGH -- North Carolina's unemployment rate rose slightly to 11 percent in October, a fraction off its historic peak earlier this year and the ninth straight month in double digits.

Hope and change hits 29 states, the sad thing is, Obama is just getting started...Chart from CNN..

Ten months to the day after Barack Obama took office and three years since Democrats won control of both chambers of Congress, the American public has begun to get the impression that Democrats are responsible for the economic mess that continues to unfold. A new CNN poll shows that those blaming Republicans has dropped fifteen points in the last six months, while those blaming Democrats have risen 21 points in the same period (via Yid with Lid): Nearly two years into the recession, opinion about which political party is responsible for the severe economic downturn is shifting, according to a...

Depressing indeed. Depressing. From yesterday’s Happy Hour, Cody Willard asks economist Peter Morici to gaze into the crystal ball and predict unemployment a year from now and how long before recovery. Depressing. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OgIdjvn_lmU

TAMPA - Business owners in Florida are about to get hit with a big tax hike: starting January 1st, all Florida businesses will have to pay skyrocketing unemployment compensation taxes to replenish the unemployment compensation trust fund.

As experts debate the potential speed of the US recovery, one figure looms large but is often overlooked: nearly 1 in 5 Americans is either out of work or under-employed. According to the government's broadest measure of unemployment, some 17.5 percent are either without a job entirely or underemployed. The so-called U-6 number is at the highest rate since becoming an official labor statistic in 1994. The number dwarfs the statistic most people pay attention to-the U-3 rate-which most recently showed unemployment at 10.2 percent for March, the highest it has been since June 1983. The difference is that what...

Data from Rasmussen Reports national telephone surveys shows that 15.0% of Democrats in the workforce are currently unemployed and looking for a job. Among adults not affiliated with either major party, that number is 15.6% while just 9.9% of Republicans are in the same situation. These findings are from interviews with 15,000 American adults in October. The numbers show an increase in all categories from earlier in the year. The percentage of unemployed Democrats has grown less than a point from 14.2% in February. Among those not affiliated with either major party, unemployment has grown by more than two percentage...

The labor market improved slightly last month but offered little hope that the economy would soon emerge from its prolonged weakness. American employers added 39,000 jobs in August, roughly in line with the modest growth of recent months, the Labor Department reported yesterday, but the entire gain came from the hiring of new airport security guards and other government workers. Companies remain reluctant to hire until economic growth improves. The unemployment rate fell to 5.7 percent last month, from 5.9 percent in July, but economists at the Labor Department and on Wall Street called the decline almost meaningless. The rate,...

From December 2008 to March 2009 the number of job losses from closing and contracting establishments remained essentially unchanged at 8.5 million. The number of job gains from opening and expanding private sector establishments fell from 6.7 million to 5.7 million, the lowest level since the series began in 1992, the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics reported today. Gross job losses exceeded gross job gains in all but two industry sectors: utilities and education and health services.

Innocent bystanders blog began this...I have merely updated it. If anyone else is more handy at graphics, then feel free to make it better!

President Obama recently announced that he will convene a White House summit next month to address the issue of unemployment, which rose to 10.2% in October, the highest rate in over 25 years. But perhaps even more concerning to policymakers is that employment continues to shrink substantially despite the worst of the financial crisis--extremely high risk spreads, the breakdown of interbank lending--being over. For several months, the Fed has been winding down at least some of the measures it took last fall to stabilize financial markets. And as more than 2 million jobs have been lost since the roughest patch...

A number of years ago I was in the unfortunate predicament of having to be in two places at almost the same time: Zurich and San Francisco. There was no solution it seemed until someone suggested I take the Concorde. I could think of nothing more appealing or more practical considering what was at stake. So I made the two-day trip: San Francisco to Chicago to Zurich, Zurich to London where I would board the Concorde to fly to New York and then home. Flying the Concorde was like booking a first class cabin on the Queen Mary I was...

Link: http://cohort11.americanobserver.net/latoyaegwuekwe/multimediafinal.html

Payroll employment among for-hire trucking companies in October dropped 0.6 percent on a seasonally adjusted basis from September levels – slightly more than the decline the month before. Employment is down 9.3 percent from October 2008, according to preliminary figures released Friday, Nov. 6, by the U.S. Department of Labor’s Bureau of Labor Statistics.

n Barack Obama's Fantasyland, all things are possible. The economy has been rescued, millions of jobs have been created or saved, and countries that used to hate us now want to hold our hands and sing "Kumbaya". Obama's Gandalf-like wizardry has even managed to magically create eight new congressional districts in Iowa.

creepy creeping unemployment map at link

Yesterday, I finished the third part of my interview with Wade Rathke. I felt, correctly, or not that after spending several hours with Rathke, that I was starting to understand Rathke, his vision, and his goals. So, I tried to make these questions as pointed and interesting as possible. 1) What can the local, state, and federal government do right now to help the poor and middle class?

President Obama told the House Democratic Caucus before the roll-call vote on health care on Nov. 7 that they'd be better off politically if they passed the bill than if they let it fail. Bill Clinton, speaking to the Senate Democrats' lunch on Nov. 10, cited his party's big losses in 1994 after Congress failed to pass his health-care legislation as evidence that Democrats would suffer more from failure to pass a bill than from disaffection with a bill that was signed into law. These were closed meetings, but we can safely assume that the two Democratic presidents also assured...

Roubini: The Worst Is Yet To Come! Joe WeisenthalNov. 15, 2009, 6:47 PM Roubini is back! After a summer of mixed messages, he's now firmly back to stark warnings, most recently sounding the alarm about a massive bubble due to the dollar carry trade. And today in the Daily News he has some bad news for the unemployed: the worst is yet to come. Also, remember: The last recession ended in November 2001, but job losses continued for more than a year and half until June of 2003; ditto for the 1990-91 recession. So we can expect that job losses...

As the Democratic Party-controlled congress and the President continues to dither with messing up the Health Care system and Cap and Trade, The latest Gallup Poll says that America wants the government to concentrate on the Economy, 31% of Americans say the economy is the most important problem in the country (up from up from 26% last month). When you include related issues such as unemployment and inflation,those citing economic issues has jumped from 51 to 58%

A friend emailed this to me. It is one of the most eloquently put descriptions of what small business is about that I have ever read. It describes the reality of the world in which we live and work today. It also describes the future we may have to deal with as it relates to taxes, healthcare, etc.

Like some gothic serial novelist, the Bureau of Labor Statistics delivers another chapter of the same grim tale on the first Friday of every month. In October, the unemployment rate spiked to 10.2 percent, the highest since April 1983. Since December 2007, payroll employment has fallen by 7.3 million jobs. The ratio of unemployed workers to job openings is 6.1 to 1; in December 2007, it was 1.7 to 1. But some recent data points, and an understanding of the behavior of companies at different phases of the business cycle, suggest we'll have job creation sooner rather than later. Before...

ATLANTA - An analysis suggests recipients of federal stimulus dollars have overstated the number of jobs created or saved in Georgia. ..snip In one such case, the Central Savannah River Area Economic Opportunity Authority in Augusta reported saving 317 jobs. But fiscal officer Chris Whitley says that represents the number of Head Start workers who received 2.3 percent raises from the stimulus funds.

Bad is good. Quagmire is progress. And jobs destroyed are jobs “created or saved,” says the Obama administration. A political columnist points out that “one ought to recognize that the present political chaos is connected with the decay of language.” The writer was George Orwell, adding that “political language — and with variations this is true of all political parties, from Conservatives to Anarchists — is designed to make lies sound truthful and murder respectable, and to give an appearance of solidity to pure wind.” Wind power turns out to be central to Obamathink in more ways than one. The...

With the official unemployment rate topping 10 percent and the “unofficial” rate approaching 20%, President Barack Obama has sought to reverse his plunging job approval numbers by launching what he calls a “domestic employment initiative.” “I am calling on the wealthiest 10% of Americans to help out the 10 percent who are unemployed by hiring them as domestic servants or personal aides,” Obama announced. “Even in these hard times, the upper crust of our society has more money than they need and lives in bigger houses than necessary. So, the means and infrastructure to support my initiative are already present....

Inquiring minds are interested in figuring out how long it might take to get back to "full employment" defined as 5%. John Mauldin touched upon this theme in Welcome to the New Normal. John's analysis stopped short of making actual projections as to when full employment would return, or the detailed path it would take to get there year by year. However, I thank John for providing a nice starting point for discussion. In Scarred Job Market Expected to Weigh on Economy The Wall Street Journal offers this look at how long it would take to return to employment levels...

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THE rise in unemployment that has occurred in the current recession has been hardest on young workers, while having a smaller effect on older workers than previous downturns. Women have been more likely than men to hold on to their jobs. Worst of Three The overall unemployment rate, which reached 10.2 percent on a seasonally adjusted basis last month, remains below the post-World War II peak of 10.8 percent, reached in late 1982. But the proportion of workers who have been out of work for a long time is higher now than it has ever been since the Great Depression.

U.S. Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano said Friday that providing some kind of legal citizenship pathway and status to illegal immigrants -- which critics say is amnesty -- is key to U.S. national security. “We will never have fully effective law enforcement or national security as long as so many millions remain in the shadows,” Napolitano said in a speech Friday to the liberal advocacy group Center for American Progress. Napolitano said the Obama administration favors immigration reforms that include pathways for the 11 to 12 million illegal immigrants in the U.S. to gain legal status. That includes paying back...

As the unemployment rate crossed the double digit barrier for the first time since Michael Jackson learned to moonwalk, President Obama announced that he will convene a "jobs summit" to finally bring the problem under control. Using all the analytic skill that his administration can muster, the President is determined to figure out why so many people are losing their jobs and then formulate a solution. That's a relief; for a while there, I thought we were in real trouble! In fact, the absolute last thing our economy needs is more federal government interference. If Obama really wants to know...

Barack Obama rode an economic crisis into the White House in November 2008. Now he’ll have to ride out the last of that economic storm if he’s to keep his own job in three years. But with unemployment surging and the President’s poll ratings sinking, there’s growing debate about what—if anything—the President can do about the situation. cnbc.com President Obama announcing jobs summit on Thursday “There's nothing new here," says crisis management expert and former senate aide Larry L. Smith. “We have become a very impatient people. When things don’t turn around overnight, we get impatient.” The President took his...

WASHINGTON — Fewer people are claiming unemployment benefits — but still too many to signal that the economy is close to gaining jobs. First-time claims for jobless benefits dropped last week to a seasonally adjusted 502,000, the Labor Department said Thursday. That's the fewest claims since the week ending Jan. 3, and below economists' estimates. Claims would have to fall to the high 400s to indicate the economy could soon produce even a slight gain in jobs, estimates Abiel Reinhart, an economist at JPMorgan Chase. That level of claims could be reached by January, he said, and the economy should...

I was on the Kudlow Report on Tuesday, and Larry made a savvy point about this. He said 10% unemployment is good for stocks in the short run. Here is the logic: 10% unemployment is the number that gets everyone’s attention in Washington. Ten percent changes the national conversation. Ten percent affects the president’s popularity and that of his programs. Democrats from red districts are terrified of running on 10% unemployment in 2010. But elected officials aren’t the only ones focused on 10%. The Federal Reserve considers it, too. Like it or not, they do look at unemployment. In a...

Looking at Unemployment Another Way Still Says 13% by Mid-2010 Andrew Butter November 13, 2009 In response to an article I wrote a month ago plus an update I put out on my Instablog, I got this from Jérôme Fabre: By that logic, perhaps the peak in unemployment might be somewhere around March 2010. Eyeballing that chart, “traditionally”, unemployment seems to go down in a bad recession to reach a point where 56% of the population is employed (i.e. down from about 59%). If that’s right then by the bottom there might be another eight million unemployed, which could bring...

Given the recent announcement that the government's measure of unemployment has hit 10.2 percent, and given that the official House version of Obama's healthcare plan, HR 3962, has now passed, a close examination of the effects of "Obamacare" on the labor market is important. It will be no surprise to readers of this site to learn that the Democrats' bill will seriously harm precisely those poor and uninsured citizens it is ostensibly designed to help. The harm will come by compounding mass unemployment and depriving these citizens of consumption choices. Obamacare as Labor Tax According to pages 269–273 of the...

Why Take Math? So Your Ignorance Isn’t Broadcast Nationwide on the AP Wire November 6, 2009 This is pretty funny. Or horrifying. Depends on how you want to look at it.Several days ago, I noted on Twitter that there were a lot of “saved” jobs that weren’t saved at all but actually cost of living increases. About 24 hours after I noted this, there was an Associated Press article about that very phenomena.Coincidence? Almost certainly. But I’ll flatter myself anyway.But the laugh riot comes several paragraphs into the article as they look into why Southwest Georgia Community Action Council was able...