SavvySugar

Stimulus Act Benefits for the Unemployed

stephley — Wed, 22 Apr 2009 09:50:28 -0700

from monster.com
By Margot Carmichael Lester, Monster Contributing Writer

A number of provisions to help the unemployed are included in the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act (ARRA), and here’s a list of some of the major benefits. Offerings vary greatly by state, so check with your local unemployment office to find out what exactly is available to you.

Increased Unemployment Benefits

The ARRA funds a new temporary Federal Additional Compensation program that suggests states up the unemployment benefit $25 per week for the period beginning February 22, 2009. States also may extend the number of weeks benefits are available from 13 to 20.

“Today, the average length of unemployment is 22 weeks,” says Brad Lazarus, principal at financial planning company Omega Advisors LLC in Chicago. “This extension adds up to thousands of dollars for out-of-work Americans who otherwise would receive nothing after the 13-week mark.”

COBRA Changes

There are two significant changes to COBRA health benefits in the economic stimulus package. One is a new COBRA subsidy, available to individuals who were covered under their prior employer’s health insurance plan and were involuntarily terminated from employment on or after September 1, 2008.

“Eligible individuals will now only be required to pay 35 percent of the COBRA premium under their prior employer’s health plan instead of the full amount,” says Timothy Tracy, Jr., vice president of Gerard B. Tracy Associates, an employee benefits consultancy in Westport, Connecticut. “This subsidy will terminate once the individual becomes eligible under another group health plan or at the end of the nine-month subsidy period.”

Another change allows qualified beneficiaries to elect coverage under a second special election period (the first being when they separated from their jobs), which skirts HIPAA's pre-existing condition exclusion rules for gaps in coverage lasting more than 63 days.

“This is good news for people with a chronic medical condition who may have had to let their COBRA lapse, or couldn't elect at all due to cost,” says Kelly Mason, a consultant with Workable Solutions, an Orlando, Florida-based COBRA administrator. “Ordinarily, these people could potentially find that their new health plan won't cover their existing health problems until a period of time matching the length of their gap in coverage has passed.”

Assistance for Older Workers

Older workers may benefit from an additional $120 million earmarked for the Senior Community Service Employment Program. The program helps unemployed, low-income workers aged 55-plus get training. This is primarily through paid community service assignments for jobs in their communities, according to Cynthia Metzler, president/CEO of Experience Works, an Arlington, Virginia-based organization that provides job training to older workers in 30 states and Puerto Rico.

“As of February 2009, 1.7 million workers age 55 or older were unemployed and looking for work,” Metzler says. “This figure doesn’t include older workers who have become discouraged and dropped out of the labor market. The additional funding will create more training opportunities for these workers, which will help them qualify for some of the 3.5 million jobs expected to be saved or created over the next two years as a result of ARRA.”

Part-Time Work

Nationally, 8.6 million workers reported working less than full-time for economic reasons, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics. Yet prior to the ARRA’s passage, unemployed workers in 28 states who were looking for part-time work were not eligible for unemployment benefits.

“Under the Act, states qualify for federal dollars if they modernize their unemployment compensation systems, and one of the ways to qualify is to make workers looking for part-time work eligible for benefits,” explains Beth Shulman, senior analyst for the Russell Sage Foundation and author of The Betrayal of Work: How Low-Wage Jobs Fail 30 Million Americans. “Many [states] are reforming their part-time eligibility requirements.”

A Tax Break

The Act also creates a tax break for unemployed workers, exempting the first $2,400 of their 2009 unemployment benefits from taxation. Previously, the entire amount received could be taxed.

“This may not seem like a lot, but if a person is receiving unemployment benefits for a short period of time, this will result not only in a financial boost at the time he or she receives the benefits, but at tax time as well,” says Tim Davis, an attorney with The Lawrence Firm LSC in Covington, Kentucky. “Even if a person receives unemployment benefits for a long duration, this still puts more money into their pockets, because the first part of his or her benefits is tax-free.”

Southern New Jersey counties suffer state's worst unemployment rates

tdsollog — Fri, 05 Dec 2008 18:25:03 -0800

Southern New Jersey counties suffer state's worst unemployment rates
By JOHN FROONJIAN Staff Writer, 609-272-7273
http://www.pressofatlanticcity.com/185/story/335431.html
Published: Thursday, December 04, 2008

Atlantic, Cape May and Cumberland counties experienced the highest unemployment rates in the state in October, suggesting that area workers are poised to suffer through a harsh winter economically.
The region's unemployment rate this time of year is usually higher than in the rest of New Jersey because of tourism's seasonal work cycle. But the numbers are significantly worse than they were a year ago. Because of that, experts wonder how high unemployment will go during the off-season months of January and February, when stores lay off workers hired for the holidays.

A Press of Atlantic City review of state Labor Department statistics showed the area counties' unemployment rates to be higher than in all other counties and significantly higher than the state average of 5.6 percent.

Cumberland County was worst, with 8.3 percent of the work force unemployed in October, the last month for which data were available. Cumberland's rate already rivaled the 8.2 percent high it experienced last winter, in February.

The October unemployment rate was 7.6 percent in Cape May County and 7.3 percent in Atlantic. The numbers represent about 20,000 workers without jobs region wide.

"Those numbers are gruesome because we know the winter is when people hunker down and don't spend money," said Anthony Perniciaro, research dean at Atlantic-Cape May Community College.
He said that in a recession, people cut out vacations, travel and gambling - the economic drivers in this region, especially in Atlantic and Cape May counties. People also shop less, affecting the retail industry that had been steadily bolstering Cumberland County's economy.

U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics show the Atlantic City-based hospitality industry shed nearly 3,000 jobs from September to October, with 1,500 of them lost in the casinos.

State Sen. Jeff Van Drew said the numbers forecast more tough times.

"We're hurt when the casino industry takes a hit. And we're going to take a larger hit as we move into a cold, hard winter," said Van Drew, D-Cape May, Cumberland, Atlantic.

Business has been brisk at the One Stop Career Center in Pleasantville, which houses one of the few walk-in unemployment offices remaining in the state. A rope was put up in November to keep lines of benefit applicants orderly. On many mornings, center officials find unemployed workers lined up on the Main Street sidewalk before the office even opens.

On Wednesday, Colleen Ross, of Mays Landing, waited with her husband, Daniel, an out-of-work bricklayer seeking benefits. Colleen's mother recently was laid off six months before retirement after working 23 years at a title company. While Colleen waited in the One Stop office, her sister called on her cell phone to say that she had just been laid off.

"Every day, you wake up with a knot in your stomach," Colleen said of the economic stress.

"When you come home, you cringe turning on the light switch, wondering whether the lights will still come on," her husband said.

Daniel Ross said that at least Colleen still works as a title searcher. But the couple, who have grown children, admitted they have accepted food donations from churches and a food bank where Colleen volunteers.

Geneva Jackson, of Atlantic City, has been out of work since being let go from the Atlantic City Hilton Casino Resort in October. She said she must take showers at friends' houses because her gas service is shut off.

One unemployed union pipe fitter who declined to identify himself said he hasn't worked in months and was seeking a benefits extension. The Galloway Township resident said his family accepted a charity basket for Thanksgiving. He and his wife cut the free ham they received into 13 meals and are eating "ham and eggs, ham and beans, ham and rice We're eating lots of rice."

The couple will be forced to scale back when buying for their two children this holiday.

"It will be a dollar-store Christmas," he said. "Luckily they're not old enough to know better."

He joked that his caller ID service was turned off, "so now I can't screen out the bill collectors." But he clearly was worried because he owes back taxes on his house and is late making mortgage payments.

Susan T. James, who oversees housing services at Tri-County Community Action Partnership in Bridgeton, said home foreclosures are a likely byproduct of the spike in unemployment.

She said her social services agency is getting 25 calls per day from southern New Jersey residents facing foreclosure. James said lower-middle-class workers who qualified for affordable mortgages are especially in jeopardy. They don't have much of a financial cushion when they lose their jobs, which don't pay much in the first place.

But it's not only the working poor who are in trouble, James said. Tri-County's energy assistance program is being overwhelmed with requests from people who never took aid before. The center has hired more workers and expanded hours because of the demand for services.

"These are middle income people who never asked for assistance - ever. All they ever did was pay their taxes. And now they need help," she said.

"During our night hours, we have people wearing suits and ties coming in for help."

Officials agreed the economy will get worse before it gets better.

"In the short term, there are going to be more layoffs," said Perniciaro, of the community college.

He said he fears the bad national economy will encourage surrounding states to expand gambling options, generating more competition for Atlantic City casinos.

Van Drew said government should bolster the casino industry by legalizing sports betting. He said state government should provide incentives for businesses to be established in this region, which would help diversify the area's economy.

Training also is needed, said Stephen Bruner, director of the Atlantic-Cape May Workforce Investment Board. The board is a public-private partnership that coordinates worker training and job development out of the One Stop center. Bruner said teaching new skills to dislocated workers must be part of a long-term strategy.

Press business editor Kevin Post contributed to this report.

E-mail John Froonjian: JFroonjian@pressofac.com

Economics UnboundMale Unemployment Rates At Or Near Post-War Highs

Grandpa — Sat, 09 May 2009 14:59:36 -0700

Economics UnboundMale Unemployment Rates At Or Near Post-War Highs
Posted by: Michael Mandel on May 08

Overall, this morning’s labor report was not fun reading. Overall, the unemployment rate rose to 8.9%, and the number of jobs dropped by 539K. Manufacturing jobs dropped by 149K, somewhat slower than the previous 2 months but still harsh.

But the real news is that in every age group, the male unemployment rate is at or near the post-war high. For example, the unemployment rate for men 55 years and older is 6.7%. That matches the post-war high of 6.7% set in 1949! Yowza!

Another example is the crucial 45-54-year-old age group (crucial because I am in it, natch). For males, the unemployment rate of 7.1% over the past two months exceeds the previous record of 7% set in 1983. No wonder things feel tough….for men, the labor market pain is now into uncharted territory.

http://www.businessweek.com/the_thread/economicsunbound/archives/2009/05...

By contrast, the unemployment rate for women in most age groups is well shy of post-war highs. For example, in the 25-34 year old age group, women have an unemployment rate of 7.9%, compared to a postwar record of 10.3%. In other words, for women this is a bad recession, but nowhere near the worst.

The difference in the pain being absorbed by men and women is astonishing, and may have long-term social and political implications.

TrackBack URL for this entry: http://blogs.businessweek.com/mt/mt-tb

NJ Nets offer free tickets, job fair to unemployed

tdsollog — Wed, 12 Nov 2008 18:44:51 -0800

Nets offer free tickets, job fair to unemployed
By TOM CANAVAN
AP Sports Writer
Published: Wednesday, November 12, 2008

http://www.pressofatlanticcity.com/190/story/313211.html
http://www.nba.com/nets/news/Employment_Program.html
http://www.nj.com/starledger
EAST RUTHERFORD, N.J. Plenty of sports teams have given fans bobblehead dolls. But the New Jersey Nets are trying to do more for their fans in these hard economic times: Get them jobs.
The Nets on Wednesday announced that they are giving away 1,500 tickets over the next two months to unemployed fans who submit resumes to the team.

The NBA team plans to send the resumes to its 120 corporate sponsors and a couple of hundred firms that own season tickets.

"Our belief right now is let's invest in people who might invest in us later," Nets chief executive Brett Yormark said in a telephone interview. "In doing so, we can help people who need it most."

However, Yormark said the Nets are not guaranteeing jobs for anyone.

"Our sponsors and season ticket holders are always looking for good talent," Yormark said. "They have not given us any commitment. Hopefully, if they see a talented person they will call them in for an interview."
The Labor Department last week announced that the nation's employers cut 240,000 jobs in October, hurtling the U.S. unemployment rate to a 14-year high of 6.5 percent.

The ticket giveaway for the unemployed will be for five games in November and December, starting with the Nov. 22 contest against the Los Angeles Clippers at the Izod Center.

Three hundred tickets in the upper level of the arena will be available on a first-come, first-serve basis with each fan getting four tickets to only one of the five available games.

Fans seeking jobs can sign-up for free tickets through the Nets' Web site; they must e-mail their résumé, former employer, contact information, and career field of interest.

"This is an outlet for people to get their resume out there, free of charge, in front of the right people, even if they take advantage of the Nets' ticket offer or not," Yormark said.

The Nets also plan to have a career day at the Nov. 22 game with companies setting up informational booths at the arena.

If the program is successful, Yormark said the team would continue it next year.

Unemployed Japanese finds 10,000 dlrs in mailbox

justingirl1989 — Sat, 29 Mar 2008 07:27:24 -0700

TOKYO (AFP) - An unemployed man in Japan had an unexpected windfall in his mailbox when he found one million yen (10,000 dollars) in cash from an anonymous benefactor, police said Friday.

The 61-year-old man discovered the wad of cash last week along with a slip of paper with the message, "Please make use of this in your everyday life," written with a black ballpoint pen.

But instead of following the advice, the jobless man in the ancient capital of Nara in western Japan turned over the gift to police.

The sender has until June 27 to claim the money or the unemployed man will get it.

Along with the letter, the envelope contained a partial photocopy of a map of nearby Osaka without any address marked or further explanation.

"He has absolutely no clue who it is," a police official said.

Japan has seen a string of cases in which large sums of cash have been left anonymously in people's mailboxes or public restrooms.

The largest single drop-off so far was in the city of Kyoto last year, astonishing a 67-year-old woman who found an envelope containing 10 million yen of stacked bills in her mailbox.

wow

source: yahoo.com

He is unemployed and moody, what to do?

Wed, 15 Oct 2008 18:10:04 -0700

I have been with him for a year now, everything was going well. well, except a few things that I saw, that really bothered me. i.e.
-- he is very nice to me, but unforgiving towards others
-- whenever we have sex, he never tried to find out how to make me come, and I am just too shy to direct him - ok, he did oral for me several times, but thats it - yet he complains that I don't come the "natural way".

now he is unemployed, I know he's been desperately trying to find a job, but he wants to find the "right" job, not just any job such as in retail, even as temp solution. meanwhile, he borrowed money from me several times. I don't mind helping out, but what should I tell him next time when he wants to borrow again? just seems to me he is not trying as hard as he can, and not cutting back some unnecessary expense.

Yet when we take a weekend trip, he wants take my car, that REALLY bothered me. I understand he doesn't have a job now and doesn't have much to spend, but driving his car doesn't cost anything besides wear & tear! That really made me upset and almost want to cancel the trip.....

Millions of Unemployed Face Years Without Jobs

Roarman — Tue, 23 Feb 2010 08:42:41 -0800

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.

Here in Southern California, Jean Eisen has been without work since she lost her job selling beauty salon equipment more than two years ago. In the several months she has endured with neither a paycheck nor an unemployment check, she has relied on local food banks for her groceries.

She has learned to live without the prescription medications she is supposed to take for high blood pressure and cholesterol. She has become effusively religious - an unexpected turn for this onetime standup comic with X-rated material - finding in Christianity her only form of health insurance.

“I pray for healing,” says Ms. Eisen, 57. “When you’ve got nothing, you’ve got to go with what you know.”

Warm, outgoing and prone to the positive, Ms. Eisen has worked much of her life. Now, she is one of 6.3 million Americans who have been unemployed for six months or longer, the largest number since the government began keeping track in 1948. That is more than double the toll in the next-worst period, in the early 1980s.

Men have suffered the largest numbers of job losses in this recession. But Ms. Eisen has the unfortunate distinction of being among a group - women from 45 to 64 years of age - whose long-term unemployment rate has grown rapidly.

In 1983, after a deep recession, women in that range made up only 7 percent of those who had been out of work for six months or longer, according to the Labor Department. Last year, they made up 14 percent.

Twice, Ms. Eisen exhausted her unemployment benefits before her check was restored by a federal extension. Last week, her check ran out again. She and her husband now settle their bills with only his $1,595 monthly disability check. The rent on their apartment is $1,380.

“We’re looking at the very real possibility of being homeless,” she said.

Every downturn pushes some people out of the middle class before the economy resumes expanding. Most recover. Many prosper. But some economists worry that this time could be different. An unusual constellation of forces - some embedded in the modern-day economy, others unique to this wrenching recession - might make it especially difficult for those out of work to find their way back to their middle-class lives.

Labor experts say the economy needs 100,000 new jobs a month just to absorb entrants to the labor force. With more than 15 million people officially jobless, even a vigorous recovery is likely to leave an enormous number out of work for years.

Some labor experts note that severe economic downturns are generally followed by powerful expansions, suggesting that aggressive hiring will soon resume. But doubts remain about whether such hiring can last long enough to absorb anywhere close to the millions of unemployed.

A New Scarcity of Jobs

Some labor experts say the basic functioning of the American economy has changed in ways that make jobs scarce - particularly for older, less-educated people like Ms. Eisen, who has only a high school diploma.

Large companies are increasingly owned by institutional investors who crave swift profits, a feat often achieved by cutting payroll. The declining influence of unions has made it easier for employers to shift work to part-time and temporary employees. Factory work and even white-collar jobs have moved in recent years to low-cost countries in Asia and Latin America. Automation has helped manufacturing cut 5.6 million jobs since 2000 - the sort of jobs that once provided lower-skilled workers with middle-class paychecks.

“American business is about maximizing shareholder value,” said Allen Sinai, chief global economist at the research firm Decision Economics. “You basically don’t want workers. You hire less, and you try to find capital equipment to replace them.”

During periods of American economic expansion in the 1950s, ’60s and ’70s, the number of private-sector jobs increased about 3.5 percent a year, according to an analysis of Labor Department data by Lakshman Achuthan, managing director of the Economic Cycle Research Institute, a research firm. During expansions in the 1980s and ’90s, jobs grew just 2.4 percent annually. And during the last decade, job growth fell to 0.9 percent annually.

“The pace of job growth has been getting weaker in each expansion,” Mr. Achuthan said. “There is no indication that this pattern is about to change.”

Before 1990, it took an average of 21 months for the economy to regain the jobs shed during a recession, according to an analysis of Labor Department data by the National Employment Law Project and the Economic Policy Institute, a labor-oriented research group in Washington.

After the recessions in 1990 and in 2001, 31 and 46 months passed before employment returned to its previous peaks. The economy was growing, but companies remained conservative in their hiring.

Some 34 million people were hired into new and existing private-sector jobs in 2000, at the tail end of an expansion, according to Labor Department data. A year later, in the midst of recession, hiring had fallen off to 31.6 million. And as late as 2003, with the economy again growing, hiring in the private sector continued to slip, to 29.8 million.

It was a jobless recovery: Business was picking up, but it simply did not translate into more work. This time, hiring may be especially subdued, labor economists say.

Traditionally, three sectors have led the way out of recession: automobiles, home building and banking. But auto companies have been shrinking because strapped households have less buying power. Home building is limited by fears about a glut of foreclosed properties. Banking is expanding, but this seems largely a function of government support that is being withdrawn.

At the same time, the continued bite of the financial crisis has crimped the flow of money to small businesses and new ventures, which tend to be major sources of new jobs.

All of which helps explain why Ms. Eisen - who has never before struggled to find work - feels a familiar pain each time she scans job listings on her computer: There are positions in health care, most requiring experience she lacks. Office jobs demand familiarity with software she has never used. Jobs at fast food restaurants are mostly secured by young people and immigrants.

If, as Mr. Sinai expects, the economy again expands without adding many jobs, millions of people like Ms. Eisen will be dependent on an unemployment insurance already being severely tested.

“The system was ill prepared for the reality of long-term unemployment,” said Maurice Emsellem, a policy director for the National Employment Law Project. “Now, you add a severe recession, and you have created a crisis of historic proportions.”

Fewer Protections

Some poverty experts say the broader social safety net is not up to cushioning the impact of the worst downturn since the Great Depression. Social services are less extensive than during the last period of double-digit unemployment, in the early 1980s.

On average, only two-thirds of unemployed people received state-provided unemployment checks last year, according to the Labor Department. The rest either exhausted their benefits, fell short of requirements or did not apply.

“You have very large sets of people who have no social protections,” said Randy Albelda, an economist at the University of Massachusetts in Boston. “They are landing in this netherworld.”

When Ms. Eisen and her husband, Jeff, applied for food stamps, they were turned away for having too much monthly income. The cutoff was $1,570 a month - $25 less than her husband’s disability check.

Reforms in the mid-1990s imposed time limits on cash assistance for poor single mothers, a change predicated on the assumption that women would trade welfare checks for paychecks.

Yet as jobs have become harder to get, so has welfare: as of 2006, 44 states cut off anyone with a household income totaling 75 percent of the poverty level - then limited to $1,383 a month for a family of three - according to an analysis by Ms. Albelda.

“We have a work-based safety net without any work,” said Timothy M. Smeeding, director of the Institute for Research on Poverty at the University of Wisconsin, Madison. “People with more education and skills will probably figure something out once the economy picks up. It’s the ones with less education and skills: that’s the new poor.”

Here in Orange County, the expanse of suburbia stretching south from Los Angeles, long-term unemployment reaches even those who once had six-figure salaries. A center of the national mortgage industry, the area prospered in the real estate boom and suffered with the bust.

Until she was laid off two years ago, Janine Booth, 41, brought home roughly $10,000 a month in commissions from her job selling electronics to retailers. A single mother of three, she has been living lately on $2,000 a month in child support and about $450 a week in unemployment insurance - a stream of checks that ran out last week.

For Ms. Booth, work has been a constant since her teenage years, when she cleaned houses under pressure from her mother to earn pocket money. Today, Ms. Booth pays her $1,500 monthly mortgage with help from her mother, who is herself living off savings after being laid off.

“I don’t want to take money from her,” Ms. Booth said. “I just want to find a job.”

Ms. Booth, with a résumé full of well-paid sales jobs, seems the sort of person who would have little difficulty getting work. Yet two years of looking have yielded little but anxiety.

She sends out dozens of résumés a week and rarely hears back. She responds to online ads, only to learn they are seeking operators for telephone sex lines or people willing to send mysterious packages from their homes.

She spends weekdays in a classroom in Anaheim, in a state-financed training program that is supposed to land her a job in medical administration. Even if she does find a job, she will be lucky if it pays $15 an hour.

“What is going to happen?” she asked plaintively. “I worry about my kids. I just don’t want them to think I’m a failure.”

On a recent weekend, she was running errands with her 18-year-old son when they stopped at an A.T.M. and he saw her checking account balance: $50.

“He says, ‘Is that all you have?’ ” she recalled. “ ‘Are we going to be O.K.?’ ”

Yes, she replied - and not only for his benefit.

“I have to keep telling myself it’s going to be O.K.,” she said. “Otherwise, I’d go into a deep depression.”

Last week, she made up fliers advertising her eagerness to clean houses - the same activity that provided her with spending money in high school, and now the only way she sees fit to provide for her kids. She plans to place the fliers on porches in some other neighborhood.

“I don’t want to clean my neighbors’ houses,” she said. “I know I’m going to come out of this. There’s no way I’m going to be homeless and poverty-stricken. But I am scared. I have a lot of sleepless nights.”

For the Eisens, poverty is already here. In the two years Ms. Eisen has been without work, they have exhausted their savings of about $24,000. Their credit card balances have grown to $15,000.

“I don’t know how we’re still indoors,” she said.

Her 1994 Dodge Caravan broke down in January, leaving her to ask for rides to an employment center.

She does not have the money to move to a cheaper apartment.

“You have to have money for first and last month’s rent, and to open utility accounts,” she said.

What she has is personality and presence - two traits that used to seem enough. She narrates her life in a stream of self-deprecating wisecracks, her punch lines tinged with desperation.

“See that,” she said, spotting a man dressed as the Statue of Liberty. Standing on a sidewalk, he waved at passing cars with a sign advertising a tax preparation business. “That will be me next week. Do you think this guy ever thought he’d be doing this?”

And yet, she would gladly do this. She would do nearly anything.

“There are no bad jobs now,” she says. “Any job is a good job.”

She has applied everywhere she can think of - at offices, at gas stations. Nothing.

“I’m being seen as a person who is no longer viable,” she said. “I’m chalking it up to my age and my weight. Blame it on your most prominent insecurity.”

Two Incomes, Then None

Ms. Eisen grew up poor, in Flatbush in Brooklyn. Her father was in maintenance. Her mother worked part time at a company that made window blinds.

She married Jeff when she was 19, and they soon moved to California, where he had grown up. He worked in sales for a chemical company. They rented an apartment in Buena Park, a growing spread of houses filling out former orange groves. She stayed home and took care of their daughter.

“I never asked him how much he earned,” Ms. Eisen said. “I was of the mentality that the husband took care of everything. But we never wanted.”

By the early 1980s, gas and rent strained their finances. So she took a job as a quality assurance clerk at a factory that made aircraft parts. It paid $13.50 an hour and had health insurance.

When the company moved to Mexico in the early 1990s, Ms. Eisen quickly found a job at a travel agency. When online booking killed that business, she got the job at the beauty salon equipment company. It paid $13.25 an hour, with an annual bonus - enough for presents under the Christmas tree.

But six years ago, her husband took a fall at work and then succumbed to various ailments - diabetes, liver disease, high blood pressure - leaving him confined to the couch. Not until 2008 did he secure his disability check.

And now they find themselves in this desert of joblessness, her paycheck replaced by a $702 unemployment check every other week. She received 14 weeks of benefits after she lost her job, and then a seven-week extension.

For most of October through December 2008, she received nothing, as she waited for another extension. The checks came again, then ran out in September 2009. They were restored by an extension right before Christmas.

Their daughter has back problems and is living on disability checks, making the church their ultimate safety net.

“I never thought I’d be in the position where I had to go to a food bank,” Ms. Eisen said. But there she is, standing in the parking lot of the Calvary Chapel church, chatting with a half-dozen women, all waiting to enter the Bread of Life Food Pantry.

When her name is called, she steps into a windowless alcove, where a smiling woman hands her three bags of groceries: carrots, potatoes, bread, cheese and a hunk of frozen meat.

“Haven’t we got a lot to be thankful for?” Ms. Eisen asks.

For one thing, no pinto beans.

“I’ve got 10 bags of pinto beans,” she says. “And I have no clue how to cook a pinto bean.”

Local job listings are just as mysterious. On a bulletin board at the county-financed ProPath Business and Career Services Center, many are written in jargon hinting of accounting or computers.

“Nothing I’m qualified for,” Ms. Eisen says. “When you can’t define what it is, that’s a pretty good indication.”

Her counselor has a couple of possibilities - a cashier at a supermarket and a night desk job at a motel.

“I’ll e-mail them,” Ms. Eisen promises. “I’ll tell them what a shining example of humanity I am.”

Source: http://www.nytimes.com/2010/02/21/business/economy/21unemployed.html?sq=... New Poor&st=cse&scp=1&pagewanted=all

Smart debt, dumb debt -- there is a difference

liliblu — Thu, 11 Mar 2010 06:55:58 -0800

By E.J. Dionne Jr.
Thursday, March 11, 2010

Because we never face up to how much we need government to do, there is a pathetic quality to our discussion of big deficits.
It's a debate also characterized by a politically convenient amnesia. Just a decade ago, we were running surpluses so big that Alan Greenspan, then chairman of the Federal Reserve, worried about what would happen once our national debt was liquidated. We had this problem well in hand until we started waging wars and cutting taxes at the same time.
What would a rational approach to the budget look like? It would begin by accepting that running deficits at a time of high unemployment is a good thing. We would celebrate the fact that the world's governments were far wiser in this downturn than their counterparts were during the Great Depression.
It is a hugely underrated achievement of international cooperation that the world's 20 leading economic powers pumped trillions of dollars into the global economy to prevent collapse. Catastrophe was averted, and growth, although sluggish, has resumed.
True, unemployment in our country is still too high. But the lesson here is not that President Obama's economic stimulus failed but that it was too small to do all that was needed. Those who would repeal stimulus spending -- the bright idea of the House Republican Study Committee -- would take us backward.
Yet no one should doubt that we must put our long-term fiscal house in order. The discussion should not be confined to Medicare, Medicaid and Social Security. We need to ask a basic question: What do we want government to do, and, yes, how much will taxes have to go up so we can pay our bills?
Like it or not, government must grow in the coming decades because the private economy will not offer the same security it once did through employer-provided health and pension plans.
On health care, the status quo means that more Americans will find themselves without insurance because an ever-growing number of employers simply won't be able to afford the expense. This is unsustainable. Enacting health reform now will allow us to plan how government can take on these costs gradually.
As for retirement security, most Americans know their private pensions will be nothing like those enjoyed by their parents or grandparents.
So reforming Medicare and Social Security can never be a simple matter of cutting spending. We have to look at the entire health-care picture and rethink our whole retirement system.
Rep. Paul Ryan (R-Wis.) has gotten credit for doing a version of this in his "Roadmap for America's Future." He proposes to balance the budget by, among other things, turning Medicare into a voucher program and partially privatizing Social Security.
Ryan gets points for being a genuinely nice person (no small thing in our mean moment) and for saying outright what many other Republicans only mumble. But the path he suggests is exactly wrong. Weakening social insurance is the opposite of what the country needs, and it doesn't even get us to fiscal nirvana. Ryan's plan, according to the Congressional Budget Office, would still leave a deficit of 5 percent of gross domestic product in 2034 (partly because of the tax cuts he also proposes) and would only start shrinking after that.
Nor does our current debate address what government must do to keep our country competitive. Our schools, roads, bridges and airports are crumbling. This calls for new investments in transit and energy, in higher education, and new technologies and research. We have forgotten the Dwight Eisenhower lesson: that government investment is essential to private-sector growth.
So how should the various deficit-reduction commissions, including the one Obama created, proceed? Here are three suggestions.
First, start not with "entitlements" but with a broader assessment of what we will ask government to do over the next two generations. Be candid about priorities. This includes entitlements and what we should spend on national defense.
Second, offer a menu of the fairest and most economically efficient ways of raising the needed revenue.
Third, propose a capital budget for the federal government so debt can be used the way it's supposed to be used. Except in bad economic times, we shouldn't borrow to cover government's day-to-day costs. But government activities that enhance the prospects of future generations should be financed over time, much as successful companies use debt for long-term investments. There's smart debt and there's stupid debt. We need to recognize the difference.
ejdionne@washpost.com
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2010/03/10/AR2010031002851_Comments.html

Great breakdown of unemploment , race, education, sector of economy

Grandpa — Sat, 09 May 2009 15:06:17 -0700

http://correspondents.theatlantic.com/richard_florida/2009/05/class_race...

Uneven Unemployment

The U.S. lost 563,000 jobs in April, down 100,000 or so from the 663,000 jobs lost in March. But the unemployment rate continued to rise, increasing from 8.5 percent in March to 8.9 percent last month, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS). This brings total job loss to 5.7 million since the onset of the recession in December 2007. (Yesterday, the Wall Street Journal reported reported that unemployment was "less bad" in April as private companies cut 491,000 jobs, compared to 708,000 in March, according to data from payroll processor Automatic Data Processing and forecasting firm Macroeconomic Advisers.)

But the real unemployment rate is as high as 15.8 percent according to the BLS U6 measure which includes marginally attached and discouraged workers.

And, the impact of the recession continues to be extremely uneven by gender, race, class, and occupation.

Race: The unemployment rate for whites was eight percent compared to 11.3 percent for Hispanics, 15 percent for blacks, and 17.2 percent for black men.

Gender: Men continue to experience higher rates of unemployment than women - 10 percent vs. 7.6 percent (for those over 16 years of age) - due to the concentration of men in manufacturing jobs. BusinessWeek's Michael Mandel notes that the unemployment rate among men is now "at or near the post-war high," causing him to worry that, "The difference in the pain being absorbed by men and women is astonishing, and may have long-term social and political implications."

Human Capital/ Education: Unemployment is even more uneven by education or human capital level.

The unemployment rate for college graduates is 4.4 percent, half that for high school (only) graduates (9.3 percent), and one-third of the 14.8 percent rate facing those without a high school diploma.

Class: And there remain huge differences in unemployment by class or occupation (PDF).

The highest rates of unemployment remain concentrated in working class occupations. For production, transporation and moving occupations overall the rate is 13.6 percent. For production workers it's 14.7 percent; movers and transportation workers, 12.5 percent; and construction and extraction jobs, 19.7 percent. For service occupations, the unemployment rate is 8.7 percent.

Unemployment is significantly lower for the creative class. For management and business occupations - including hard-fit financial jobs - overall the unemployment rate is 4.0 percent; and for professional and technical occupations, it remains less than four percent (3.6 percent

The end of the road for Barack Obama?

samantha999 — Wed, 10 Mar 2010 05:14:59 -0800

Barack Obama seems unable to face up to America's problems, writes Simon Heffer in New York.

By Simon Heffer Published: 8:16AM GMT 08 Mar 2010

t is a universal political truth that administrations do not begin to fragment when things are going well: it only happens when they go badly, and those who think they know better begin to attack those who manifestly do not. The descent of Barack Obama's regime, characterised now by factionalism in the Democratic Party and talk of his being set to emulate Jimmy Carter as a one-term president, has been swift and precipitate. It was just 16 months ago that weeping men and women celebrated his victory over John McCain in the American presidential election. If they weep now, a year and six weeks into his rule, it is for different reasons.

Despite the efforts of some sections of opinion to talk the place up, America is mired in unhappiness, all the worse for the height from which Obamania has fallen. The economy remains troublesome. There is growth – a good last quarter suggested an annual rate of as high as six per cent, but that figure is probably not reliable – and the latest unemployment figures, last Friday, showed a levelling off. Yet 15 million Americans, or 9.7 per cent of the workforce, have no job. Many millions more are reduced to working part-time. Whole areas of the country, notably in the north and on the eastern seaboard, are industrial wastelands. The once mighty motor city of Detroit appears slowly to be being abandoned, becoming a Jurassic Park of the mid-20th century; unemployment among black people in Mr Obama's own city of Chicago is estimated at between 20 and 25 per cent. One senior black politician – a Democrat and a supporter of the President – told me of the wrath in his community that a black president appeared to be unable to solve the economic problem among his own people. Cities in the east such as Newark and Baltimore now have drug-dealing as their principal commercial activity: The Wire is only just fictional.

Last Thursday the House of Representatives passed a jobs Bill, costing $15 billion, which would give tax breaks to firms hiring new staff and, through state sponsorship of construction projects, create thousands of jobs too. The Senate is trying to approve a Bill that would provide a further $150 billion of tax incentives to employers. Yet there is a sense of desperation in the Administration, a sense that nothing can be as efficacious at the moment as a sticking plaster. Edward B Montgomery, deputy labour secretary in the Clinton administration, now spends his time on day trips to decaying towns that used to have a car industry, not so much advising them on how to do something else as facilitating those communities' access to federal funds. For a land without a welfare state, America starts to do an effective impersonation of a country with one. This massive state spending gives rise to accusations by Republicans, and people too angry even to be Republicans, that America is now controlled by "Leftists" and being turned into a socialist state.

"Obama's big problem," a senior Democrat told me, "is that four times as many people watch Fox News as watch CNN." The Fox network is a remarkable cultural phenomenon which almost shocks those of us from a country where a technical rule of impartiality is applied in the broadcast media. With little rest, it pours out rage 24 hours a day: its message is of the construction of the socialist state, the hijacking of America by "progressives" who now dominate institutions, the indoctrination of children, the undermining of religion and the expropriation of public money for these nefarious projects. The public loves it, and it is manifestly stirring up political activism against Mr Obama, and also against those in the Republican Party who are not deemed conservatives. However, it is arguable whether the now-reorganising Right is half as effective in its assault on the President as some of Mr Obama's own party are.

Mr Obama benefited in his campaign from an idiotic level of idolatry, in which most of the media participated with an astonishing suspension of cynicism. The sound of the squealing of brakes is now audible all over the American press; but the attack is being directed not at the leader himself, but at those around him. There was much unconditional love a year or so ago of Rahm Emanuel, Mr Obama's Chief of Staff; oleaginous profiles of this Chicago political hack, a veteran of that unlovely team that polluted the Clinton White House, appeared in otherwise respectable journals, praising the combination of his religious devotion, his family-man image, his ruthless operating technique and his command of the vocabulary of profanity. Now, supporters of the President are blaming Mr Emanuel for the failure of the Obama project, not least for his inability to construct a deal on health care.

This went down badly with friends of Mr Emanuel, notably with Mr Emanuel himself. His partisans, apparently taking dictation from him, have filled newspaper columns and blogs with uplifting accounts of the Wonder of Rahm: as one of them put it, "Emanuel is the only person preventing Obama from becoming Jimmy Carter". They attack other Obama "sycophants", such as David Axelrod, his campaign guru, and Valerie Jarret, a long-time friend of Mrs Obama and a fixer from the office of Mayor Daley of Chicago who now manages – or tries to manage – the President's image. These "sycophants" have, they argue, tried to keep the President above politics, letting Congress run away with the agenda, and gainsaying Mr Emanuel's advice to Mr Obama to get tough with his internal opponents. This naïve act of manipulation has brought its own counter-counterattack, with an anti-Emanuel pundit drawing a comparison with our own Prime Minister and ridiculing the idea that Mr Obama should start bullying people too.

The root of the problem seems to be the management of expectations. The magnificent campaign created the notion that Mr Obama could walk on water. Oddly enough, he can't. That was more Mr Axelrod's fault than Mr Emanuel's. And, to be fair to Mr Emanuel, any advice he has been giving the President to impose his will on Congress is probably well founded. The $783 billion stimulus package of a year ago was used to further the re-election prospects of many congressmen, not to do good for the country. America's politics remain corrupt, populated by nonentities whose main concern once elected is to stay elected; it seems to be the same the whole world over. Even this self-interested use of the stimulus package appears to have failed, however. Every day, it seems, another Democrat congressman announces that he will not be fighting the mid-term elections scheduled for November 2. The health care Bill, apparently so humane in intent, is being "scrubbed" (to use the terminology of one Republican) by its opponents, to the joy of millions of middle Americans who see it as a means to waste more public money and entrench socialism. For the moment, this is a country vibrant with anger.

A thrashing of the Democrats in the mid-terms would not necessarily be the beginning of the end for Mr Obama: Bill Clinton was re-elected two years after the Republicans swept the House and the Senate in November 1994. But Mr Clinton was an operator in a way Mr Obama patently is not. His lack of experience, his dependence on rhetoric rather than action, his disconnection from the lives of many millions of Americans all handicap him heavily. It is not about whose advice he is taking: it is about him grasping what is wrong with America, and finding the will to put it right. That wasted first year, however, is another boulder hanging from his neck: what is wrong needs time to put right. The country's multi-trillion dollar debt is barely being addressed; and a country engaged in costly foreign wars has a President who seems obsessed with anything but foreign policy – as a disregarded Britain is beginning to realise.

There are lessons from the stumbling of Mr Obama for our own country as we approach a general election. Vacuous promises of change are hostages to fortune if they cannot be delivered upon to improve the living conditions of a people. The slickness of campaigning that comes from a combination of heavy funding and public relations expertise does not inevitably translate into an ability to govern. There is no point a nation's having the audacity of hope unless it also has the sophistication and the will to turn it into action. As things stand, Barack Obama and America under his leadership do not.

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/northamerica/usa/barackobama/7...