The North Carolina Bankruptcy Information Blog

It would make sense that recent signs of recovering economy would be great news for jobless Americans. But as a report on public polling explains, even though the overall economic picture may be brightening, many job seekers are still very much in the midst of a stark economic haze.

According to a report from The Huffington Post’s Janell Ross, “Economic data suggests the long-stagnant economy may finally be gaining momentum, but Americans aren’t seeing a turnaround yet, according to a pair of newly released polls. The economy — and more specifically the nation’s persistent jobs crisis — remains the number one concern for most Americans, according to a CNN/ORC International poll released Friday.…

In the “new economy,” full of novel financial realities, we often hear a lot about how cash-strapped kids are often coming home to live with and borrow from their better-positioned parents. And now a new report tells us why.

According to a report from the Associated Press, the wealth gap between younger and older Americans has stretched to the widest on record, “worsened by a prolonged economic downturn that has wiped out job opportunities for young adults and saddled them with housing and college debt.”

Based on analysis by the Pew Research Center, the AP says “The typical U.S. household headed by a person age 65 or older has a net worth 47 times greater than a household headed by someone under 35, according to an analysis of census data released Monday.…

The best holiday gift may have been a private sector hiring surge in December 2011, as employers gifted the American job market with 325,000 new workers. At the same time as a the rise in public sector jobs, claims for unemployment benefits fell, raising high hopes that recent labor market woes are over and a new year may mark a new era in employment optimism.

According to a report from Reuters, the surge cam as a shock to those following the job marker trends, which to date had been less than stellar. “The ADP National Employment Report’s December job tally surprised economists who had expected a 178,000 gain.…

Amid encouraging job figures that the private sector is surging, it’s important to take a second look at the sad state of the so-called “American Dream.”

In a new article, the New York Times does just that, finding that “Americans enjoy less economic mobility than their peers in Canada and much of Western Europe. The mobility gap has been widely discussed in academic circles, but a sour season of mass unemployment and street protests has moved the discussion toward center stage.”

A major reason for this upward mobility issue is rooted deep into the results of the recent Recession: more people, are more poor than they’ve ever been, meaning younger generations, including our nation’s children, have farther to climb to get out of poverty.…

Jobs in the private sector may be on the way up—a complete change of pace from the post-Recessionary years—but optimism about the mortgage industry is still way down in the wake of massive foreclosure abuses at major mortgage lenders.

In fact, The New York Times recently published a shocking article detailing the struggles of homeowners facing foreclosure framed by mortgage servicing horror stories piling up all across the nation.

According to the Times, dubious mortgage practices— widespread document execution fraud, misrepresenting fees, forgeries on signatures for your key mortgage documents, and making deceptive statements about efforts to correct paperwork—have become the norm, not the exception, for many a major mortgage lender from the West Coast to the East Coast.…

The days between Thanksgiving and Christmas had many people wondering where America’s lingering financial issues went as millions of shoppers returned to our nation’s stores, malls and gallerias en masse to take advantage of extreme sales (and savings) and, in doing so, generated the most successful Black Friday for retailers ever.

A new report found that, in fact, retailers seduced shoppers at record rates despite the sluggish economy. “The 3.4 percent increase in same-store sales reported by Thomson Reuters was better than expected — an optimistic sign in an ailing economy. Still, it’s unclear how often people will shop in the upcoming year, a factor that will depend more on whether they find jobs than on how much retailers innovate or drop prices.…

We talk a lot about the dangers of using credit cards, the nation’s plastic pariah that contributes to many living beyond their means, causes people to pay incredibly high interest, and in more cases than we care to share, leads a lot of folks to file for bankruptcy.

And so for the many thousands of you who were hoping to pay off credit cards quickly and easily as your New Year’s resolution, we have some bad news.

Credit is getting easier to get and interest rates are getting even higher in 2012.

According to the consumer information site CreditCards.com, credit card interest rates climbed to record highs last month, reaching an average of 15.22 percent.…

We all know that the Christmas holiday is a time for turkey-filled table settings, overstuffed family reunions, and, quite literally, reflecting on what we are fortunate to have- for large and small blessings throughout the year. But for many jobless Americans from California to the Carolinas, finding even the smallest things to be grateful for is more of a struggle in 2011 than possibly ever before, as they not only face limited unemployment incomes, but diminishing benefits in the new year.

In fact, according to an October analysis released by the National Employment Law Project, 1.8 million out-of-work Americans will have to find a way to live if Congress fails to pass a bill extending federal unemployment payments by year’s end.…

Think your old credit score was bad?

Well, now there’s a new kind of credit score taking center stage…and setting the stage for financial institutions to make even more money off of the poorest Americans.

According to The Huffington Post, “The new CoreScore looks at financial records such as credit card borrowing, bank transactions and mortgage information, much like a traditional FICO credit score. The new rating also examines the kinds of transactions likely to occur at the lower end of the income scale. These include car and rental payments and payday loans. The CoreScore even examines the record for missed child support payments.…

If you’re like many beleaguered and over-budgeted Americans, you grew weary and wary of credit card debt during the throes of the Great Recession.

The Credit Card Accountability Responsibility and Disclosure Act of 2009 (Credit CARD Act) was supposed to address the fact that you’ve been “paying” with plastic both literally and metaphorically ways for years, shielding average Americans from unexpected and massive changes to their credit card terms—terms that had previously led directly to financial hardship for an overwhelming amount of our nation’s families.

Fast Forward to 2011 when new legislation is actually worsening many of the gains from the Credit CARD Act, by tightening federal regulations on debit card usage and causing banks to push their credit card offers to supplement lost debit income.…

As we’re all aware, this decade’s Great Recession has dealt, and continues to deal, a significant blow to the budgets of many American families, leaving millions in debt, underwater in their mortgages, and in some cases falling behind on their tax bills, adding to their economic unrest.

So, even though tax day 2012 is weeks away, and the holidays may already have your full attention, it’s worth noting that there are some timely tips you can take between now and Dec. 31 that will make a real difference when it comes time to deal with the IRS next spring. In part one of its two-part report, according to AOL’s DailyFinance, there are four moves that could benefit your bottom line, and keep the tax man at bay, on April 15.…

A couple of months ago we reported that North Carolina one of ten states with the largest employment gaps. That meant that as of this summer, the state of North Carolina would have needed to generate nearly 500,00 additional jobs in order to keep up with growing population numbers and old and new workers flooding the Tar Heel market in future months and years.

With these disturbing jobless figures in mind, it should therefore come as double-dose of economic reality that the Tar Heel State now also ranks among another not-so-distinguished list: One of the 10 states where the most unemployed could lose benefits.…

The fairer sex appears to be getting a less than fair shake at new jobs created in the wake of the economic downturn. In October, we reported that women have recovered just 9 percent of jobs lost, and men are recovering nearly three times faster. And things haven’t gotten much better.

As The Huffington Post reported this week, “On Friday the Labor Department announced that the unemployment rate among women fell to 7.8 percent in November from 8 percent the month before. The slight improvement belies the fact that the unemployment rate for women has been fairly stagnant since the recovery began in June 2009.…

We’ve talked a lot about the recent record-breaking Black Friday, but it was our nation’s President who instead promoted shopping on the second annual “Small Business Saturday,” a day (November 26) devoted to spurring growth and hiring in some of our country’s most hard-hit business sectors.

According to Reuters, “Promoting “Small Business Saturday”, the second annual event to help Main Street merchants in a tough U.S. economy, [President] Obama visited a local bookstore with Malia, 13, and Sasha, 10, in the diverse, upscale Du Pont Circle area of downtown Washington.

“This is Small Business Saturday so we’re out here supporting small businesses,” said Obama, standing next to Malia who was hugging an armful of books to her chest.…

Many are saying global economic events mean that stock market investors had little to be thankful for during this opening to the official holiday season.

According to CNN Money, “The holiday season has officially arrived, but whether investors will have much to be jolly about next week is uncertain, as Europe’s debt woes continue to weigh on the market. Pessimism and optimism over Europe’s debt crisis have been whipsawing stocks for months, and investors will likely continue to react to headline after headline, keeping the market’s roller coaster in high gear. ‘We’ll probably see more fear, carnage and uncertainty,’ said Ethan Anderson, senior portfolio manager at Rehmann Financial.…

Historically speaking, the day after Thanksgiving often leaves many people asking, “what Recession?” as millions of American shoppers cut coupons, stand in long lines, and bombard our nation’s stores for extreme sales on what has now come to be know as “Black Friday.” In fact, last year we saw even bigger crowds at many stores including Best Buy, Sears, Macy’s and Toys R Us, which offered earlier openings than in past years or even round-the-clock hours meant to draw in average American shoppers.

Apparently, if television retailers are any indication of shopping season insanity, 2010 Black Friday trends will only continue in earnest this year as many Big Box stores shell out big deals to keep you coming back for more.…

We’ve already heard a lot here about “The 99ers,” the long-term unemployed who have not only became a new byproduct of an unprecedented string of Congressional extensions to unemployment benefits, but who have also long-since exhausted the maximum 99 weeks of unemployment benefits available to them in many states in the wake of the recent economic downturn. The group, inauspiciously dubbed “The 99ers” for the remarkable amount of time they went without a job and with benefits, have come to represent the collective face (and plight) of many jobless Americans from across the country, forced to hang on every tea leaf, smoke signal, and whisper from the halls of Congress for signs of a new job plan, a new stimulus package, and more help for the recession-weary.…

Or, at least that’s what older workers believe.

According to a new survey from AARP, older workers say economy worse than last year. Nearly two thirds of workers in the 50+ age group first surveyed by AARP’s Public Policy Institute in 2010 said things had gotten worse by the time the senior lobbying powerhouse followed up in August. Fewer than one in 10 said their view of the economy had improved. The remainder felt like things were close to the same.

According to The Huffington Post’s Arthur Delaney, “Of the more than 5,000 people surveyed last year, 16.7 percent said they were jobless.…

Solid sales figures in prior pre-holiday shopping seasons combined with large crowds during the biggest shopping day of the year (AKA November’s “Black Friday”) had previously emboldened many eager employers to hire more seasonal staff leading up to an even busier holiday season. For example, the result of strong consumer demand in 2010—only one year out from the official end of the economic recession—was that hundreds of thousands of Americans were being hired for temporary jobs at retailers across the country—employment many hoped would eventually translate into full-time work.

But fast forward to fall 2011, as many retailers begin testing the waters for another tepid month of consumer confidence by announcing less-than-cheery holiday hiring.…

You’ve probably seen the hordes of protesters converging on New York in recent weeks, hell bent on occupying the very place where income inequity arguably began: the home of America’s financial markets, Wall Street.

But a new poll shows these self-professed 99 percenters, boycotting the privileged elite at the highest 1% of the income range, aren’t the only ones deeply troubled by the high incidences of income inequity in this country.

According to a new poll conducted by The Hill, nearly three-quarters of the people say that income inequality is a problem for the United States. More than half (55%) surveyed described income inequality is a big problem, while another 19 percent said it was “somewhat of a problem.”

These findings correspond with new information from a Congressional Budget Office report which reveals that the very highest American earners have, as the Huffington Post put it, “been pulling away from the rest of the population for over 30 years.”

As HuffPost writes, “According to the CBO’s report, income for the top 1 percent of earners has grown massively since 1979 — shooting up 275 percent in that time — while incomes for those in the middle 60 percent grew by only 40 percent.…