More than seven in 10 U.S. teens jobless in summer – USATODAY.com

More than seven in 10 U.S. teens jobless in summer – USATODAY.com:

By Hope Yen, Associated Press

WASHINGTON – Once a rite of passage to adulthood, summer jobs for teens are disappearing.

Fewer than three in 10 American teenagers now hold jobs such as running cash registers, mowing lawns or busing restaurant tables from June to August. The decline has been particularly sharp since 2000, with employment for 16-to-19-year olds falling to the lowest level since World War II.

And teen employment may never return to pre-recession levels, suggests a projection by the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics.

MORE: Graphic: State-by-state data

...Older workers, immigrants and debt-laden college graduates are taking away lower-skill work as they struggle to find their own jobs in the weak economy. Upper-income white teens are three times as likely to have summer jobs as poor black teens, sometimes capitalizing on their parents' social networks for help.    

Overall, more than 44% of teens who want summer jobs don't get them or work fewer hours than they prefer.

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Posted by Chuck Bell at 4:42 AM    

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On U.S. infrastructure, spend now, gain later

On U.S. infrastructure, spend now, gain later
Tampa Bay Times
By William L. Holahan and Charles O. Kroncke, special to the Times
Wednesday, June 13, 2012


"...When the American Society of Civil Engineers issued a report card giving D and F grades for major infrastructure assets in the United States, the group estimated that it would cost $2.2 trillion to rehabilitate them. Even though these public sector assets support the private sector of the economy, and despite the availability of cheap money, Congress has no current plans to remedy this situation.


Its reluctance to support investment in infrastructure is unfortunate because this is an opportune time to earn a better report card; presently, we can borrow at very low interest rates to upgrade our streets, roads, bridges, railroads, school buildings, Internet bandwidth and K-12 education. We have earned the trust of foreign investors, who value the safety of our financial markets and seek to loan us money through their purchases of U.S. Treasury bonds.


In the short run, infrastructure investment would stimulate business growth and employ otherwise unemployed resources of labor and equipment. In the longer run, when these assets are in good working order, they would support faster growth of the economy, a prerequisite for bringing down the national debt and putting workers back on the path to higher after-tax incomes."


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Posted by Chuck Bell at 4:26 AM    

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Loss of government jobs could be drag on growth

Loss of government jobs could be drag on growth | Washington Examiner:
June 07, 2012
Washington Examiner

ATLANTA (AP) -- Government workers didn't lose jobs in droves like their private sector counterparts during the recession, but the jobs of thousands of Georgia teachers and postal and social service workers are now threatened, further dampening the state's tepid economic recovery.

Revenue shortfalls at the local, state and federal levels endanger Georgia's 673,100 public sector employees — 16 percent of all Georgia jobs. Any significant cuts could reverse nine months of job growth and cause Georgia's 8.9 percent unemployment rate to rise once again.

The job cuts would likely come in chunks across the state. Metro Atlanta's major school systems, for example, are threatening to cut 1,800 positions. Collectively, the loss of thousands of relatively well-paid government jobs across Georgia would hurt still-struggling restaurants, beauty salons and county tax coffers.

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Posted by Chuck Bell at 5:19 AM    

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400,000 LONG-TERM JOBLESS LOSE UNEMPLOYMENT INSURANCE AS EXTENDED BENEFITS END IN EIGHT MORE STATES

Cross-posted from UnemployedWorkers.org

400,000 LONG-TERM JOBLESS LOSE UNEMPLOYMENT INSURANCE AS EXTENDED BENEFITS END IN EIGHT MORE STATES

Posted by: Mitchell Hirsch on May 11, 2012

unemployedworkers.org  Blog

An estimated 236,000 long-term unemployed job-seekers will be abruptly cut-off of federal Extended Benefits (EB) this weekend (Saturday May 12), swelling the ranks of those losing the last 13-to-20 weeks of unemployment insurance to more than 400,000.  On Saturday, May 12, eight states fall off the EB program, cutting off the largest number of jobless workers to be hit so far.

California, Florida, North Carolina, Illinois, Pennsylvania, Texas, Colorado and Connecticut will no longer pay Extended Benefits under an arcane eligibility formula that Congress failed to fix when it reauthorized federal unemployment insurance earlier this year.  An estimated 95,300 recipients will be cut off in California alone.

Nineteen other states saw their EB programs end in the first four months of 2012.  The table below lists the states losing EB so far this year and estimated numbers of long-term unemployed job-seekers losing benefits.

Click on the image of the table below for a full size pdf version.

Source: National Employment Law Project

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Posted by Chuck Bell at 5:04 AM    

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