Published Friday, February 3, 2012 @ 4:13 pm

You’ve read the headlines. You’ve heard the network commentators. Despite the reported recent economic recovery, post-recessionary American is marked by a new, and troubling, era of economic inequality.

One of the major reasons for the widening gaps between rich and poor is that minimum wage remains at $7.25, the same rate as it was in 2009, despite dramatic rises in the cost of living.…

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Published Tuesday, January 31, 2012 @ 7:27 pm

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.…

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Published Sunday, January 22, 2012 @ 9:08 am

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.…

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Published Wednesday, January 11, 2012 @ 6:30 pm

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.…

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Published Friday, December 16, 2011 @ 5:34 pm

Despite a few recent hints that the sluggish U.S. economy might be improving—including record-breaking consumer spending figures from the recent Black Friday shopping boom—U.S. President Barack Obama is ready to warn the American masses that it could take longer than expected before the country gets back on its financial feet again.…

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Published Monday, November 28, 2011 @ 7:11 pm

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.…

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Published Sunday, October 23, 2011 @ 8:16 am

With news this month that almost 40 percent of Americans belive unemployment is the biggest issue facing the country—a figure that leapt from 29 percent between August and September 2011—it’s clear that folks are beginning to believe that joblessness more than “the economy” as a whole is the nation’s most important problem as well as a primary concern for them as part of a larger pool of citizens just struggling to get by in post-recessionary America.…

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Published Wednesday, October 5, 2011 @ 3:53 pm

You might think when city officials need to cut personnel costs, they start by letting public employees go.  But according to a new article from The Huffington Post, “firing people isn’t the first thing they look to do: it’s the third.” Ranking the reduction methods, HuffPost evaluates the eight top ways that city officials are dealing with budgetary woes—according to the National League of Cities—including:

(8) Reduce Pension Benefits
A full 18% of cities facing increasingly thin budgets cut back on pension benefits to shore up spending costs in 2011.…

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Published Monday, October 3, 2011 @ 3:44 pm

When home prices plunged, the stock market crashed, and nationwide hiring froze, many desperate debtors were left destitute, depressed and feeling without hope—all at the height of our recent Great Recession. But fast forward to nearly three years since the recession officially ended, and today many of the most mentally hard-hit Americans are those facing long-term unemployment.…

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Published Sunday, September 25, 2011 @ 3:20 pm

Last week, Charlotte, North Carolina-based Bank of America said it would cut about=a35,000 jobs and reduce annual expenses by $5 billion, as it struggles with costs from its 2008 takeover of Countrywide Financial Corp and a nearly 50 percent drop in share price this year.

The layoffs could have huge ripple effects for the North Carolina economy.…

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Published Monday, September 19, 2011 @ 10:00 am

President Barack Obama, who submitted his American Jobs Act to Congress earlier this week—including bills that aim to use a combination of spending and tax cuts to spur job growth—seems to be on the pulse of a larger political issue.

Though the unemployment rate has been high for months, it’s never been more clear that joblessness is the primary concern for nearly a majority of average American voters.…

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Published Thursday, September 8, 2011 @ 6:42 pm

A fascinating new article from The Associated Press reveals that the one of the toughest challenges facing unemployed Americans isn’t a job market currently stagnated at 9.1 percent unemployment rate, or even that 14 million unemployed are competing with each other in a country that posted no new jobs in August; rather the AP says the most challenging thing the unemployed are currently contending with is the underemployed.…

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Published Sunday, September 4, 2011 @ 5:05 pm

If you’re unemployed you have a ton to worry about.

Past due bills, mounting debts, going without health insurance, possible repossession of your car or foreclosure of your home, are just some of the not-so-pleasant thoughts plaguing the millions of average Americans facing extended joblessness.

Unfortunately, now there’s one more concern to add to the job market meltdown mix: a new report by the National Employment Law Project has found that employers are continuing to discriminate against unemployed people in their online job ads despite increased scrutiny surrounding the nation’s hiring practices.…

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Published Saturday, September 3, 2011 @ 4:51 pm

As things heat up in the waning days of summer, the job growth cooled down in August, with the U.S. economy picking up [read my lips:] no new jobs in August as the unemployment rate stayed steady at 9.1 percent. These figures from the Bureau of Labor Statistics reported on Friday now stand as the most clear and present symbol yet of a stalled economic recovery that has the words “double-dip recession” written all over it.…

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Published Monday, August 15, 2011 @ 6:20 am

U.S. Credit Downgrade Ramps Up Fears of Another Recession

Standard and Poor’s recent downgrade of U.S. government debt is capturing headlines across the country and around the world. And with the major agency’s actions to cut the United States government’s top credit rating, financial experts and commentators are finding themselves increasingly concerned that the American economy is headed back into another economic downturn.…

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Published Tuesday, July 26, 2011 @ 1:11 pm

Just when the financial experts said it was safe to call the economy “in recovery,” Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner says many Americans will face hard times for a long time to come.

Geithner reemphasized in an episode of “Meet the Press” that we remain in the midst of a very tough economy in which, for a lot of people, “it’s going to feel very hard, harder than anything they’ve experienced in their lifetime now, for a long time to come.” He also revealed that he believed  President Barack Obama has rescued the United States from a second Great Depression and will continue the hard work of trying to strengthen the economy.  Unfortunately, Geithner also predicted that it would be some time before many people actually feel like the country is recovering.…

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Published Sunday, June 26, 2011 @ 2:09 pm

It seems like only yesterday that being termed “one in a million” was a good thing.

But that was apparently before the economic crisis.

Today, there are over one million Americans (1.4 million to be exact) who have been out of work for 99 weeks or longer. Deemed as the “very long-term unemployed,” this overflowing group of unfortunate unemployed workers tends to skew more mature, with little discrimination between those with (or without) a college education.…

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Published Friday, June 3, 2011 @ 2:52 pm

Just released unemployment numbers in North Carolina are showing some promising signs of post-recessionary economic improvement. Unemployment officially dropped in 93 of 100 North Carolina counties from last month’s figures.The state’s adjusted unemployment rate is at 10.1%, with 36 counties at that level and the number of workers who found jobs in February up by16,500.…

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Published Wednesday, June 1, 2011 @ 2:49 pm

Tens of thousands of jobless North Carolinians are wondering when the stalemate will end between a Republican-led state legislature and the Democratic governor—both wanting to pass a state budget, but with little to agree on other than that.

According to a new article from Arthur Delaney, entitled “North Carolina Unemployment Standoff Drags Endlessly,” a reporter who has been watching the now more-than-a month-long budget boondoggle play out in front of both local and national media outlets, the disagreements between the legislative and executive branches is unchanged this week despite attempts at concessions on both sides.…

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Published Sunday, May 29, 2011 @ 2:38 pm

When markets crashed, home prices fell, and unemployment rates rose, many desperate debtors were left destitute, depressed and feeling without hope in the height of our recent Great Recession. And as you might imagine, and as researchers at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention confirmed last week, some of these desperate Americans even took their own lives—in greater number—during the tough economic times of the 2000s.…

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Published Sunday, May 29, 2011 @ 8:24 am

We talk a lot about the impact of the recent economic downturn on seniors: how hard is to retire, or even remain employed, as debt rises and dreams of post-career, golden years spent without worry fade as quickly as home prices.

But what about the millions of Americans who have yet to embark on careers, now facing a rude awakening that the jobs that used to pad their wallets and prepare them for college and the workforce, are now disappearing or filled by fellow workers twice their age?…

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Published Friday, May 27, 2011 @ 3:45 pm

If you’re one of the hundreds of thousands of Americans working for state and local governments or other agencies, you may be one of the many wondering why so many so-called “financial experts” are saying the economic recovery is all around us. For you, it likely feels like the same old lingering economic malaise—especially as news emerges that your job may be on the chopping block in 2011, with even more cuts slated for 2012.…

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Published Tuesday, May 24, 2011 @ 3:48 pm

For those of you who live in North Carolina, does this story sound familiar?

Charlotte’s John Allison, 37, told HuffPost the [political] stalemate [over jobless benefits] reminds him of a game of chicken, except “the person controlling the car’s not even in it.” “It’s a remote control game of chicken and I’m tied in the seat,” he said.…

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Published Tuesday, May 3, 2011 @ 9:29 am

As we’ve been reporting, thousands of North Carolinians were on course to lose their unemployment benefits as North Carolina lawmakers failed to revise the calculations used to determine when these payouts from the Extended Benefits program could be distributed. These same benefits were then placed in limbo when the Governor vetoed a bill in which Republican legislators in the North Carolina General Assembly attached budget cuts to the state’s eligibility for these federal benefits.…

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Published Thursday, April 21, 2011 @ 5:44 pm

As we reported just last week, 37,000 North Carolinians were on course to lose their unemployment benefits as North Carolina lawmakers failed to revise the calculations used to determine when these payouts from the Extended Benefits program could be distributed.

This week, however, the legislative actions were more purposeful as Republican legislators in the North Carolina General Assembly attached budget cuts to a bill maintaining the state’s eligibility for these federal benefits.…

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Published Thursday, April 21, 2011 @ 4:37 pm

Apparently the lingering economic malaise has its limits: according to the Federal Bureau of Labor Statistics, the U.S. economy added 216,000 new jobs last month. This good news appears to support recent claims that the labor market recovery, as Bloomberg put it, is finally “gaining traction”.

But according to a new report from The Huffington Post, those who have been lucky enough to find work, any work, are also often finding their former standard of living to be completely out of reach.…

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Published Tuesday, April 12, 2011 @ 7:34 am

Just this month it was announced that about 37,000 North Carolinians would suddenly lose their unemployment benefits. This news emerged as at least eight other states avoided a similar fate by changing the calculations used to determine when these benefits could be distributed.

But according to Bloomberg Businessweek, the same revisions weren’t considered in the Tar Heel State.…

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Published Monday, February 7, 2011 @ 7:18 pm

With all of the 2011 headlines touting a strengthening American economy and falling unemployment, many are wondering how either can actually be true in light of a recent Bureau of Labor statistics report. The Labor stats found that while the unemployment rate fell to 9% in January 2011, the country only added a paltry 36,000 jobs last year.…

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Published Monday, January 31, 2011 @ 9:28 am

Maybe you feel you’ve avoided financial calamity during the major years of the American economic meltdown: You’ve managed to avoid foreclosure and credit card debt, stave off a major medical injury or illness, without cutting into savings or retirement plans. You’ve possibly even avoided being fired or laid off from your job.…

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Published Friday, September 10, 2010 @ 10:26 pm

You may have been waiting and hoping and wishing and praying that things will soon get back to normal. Maybe you’ve lost your job. Maybe you’re close to losing your home. Maybe you’re even thinking you may lose it all. But you don’t file for bankruptcy. You wait, hope, and believe that economic times can’t be tough forever; and that you can make it through without the help of a bankruptcy lawyer.…

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Published Tuesday, August 10, 2010 @ 9:53 am

In the wake of the worst economic conditions since the Great Depression, millions of people are finding themselves bankruptcy bound. And with so many people forced to find relief in the protections a bankruptcy filing can provide, gone are the days of societal stigmatization and shame.

Yet, many debtors enduring tough financial times are still stuck in an old mindset that bankruptcy is a measure of last result.…

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Published Wednesday, July 28, 2010 @ 6:16 pm

It may come as no surprise that long-term unemployment has a greater effect on layoff victims compared with shorter spells of joblessness. What you may not know is that this impact has far-reaching implications for family, friends and feelings about oneself.

According to a new Pew Research Center survey, more than four in ten (44 $) of people out of work for six months or longer said unemployment had led to “major changes” in their lives, compared with 31 percent of people jobless for less than six months.…

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Published Monday, July 12, 2010 @ 5:20 pm

Every 10 years, the U.S. Census Bureau takes a demographic snapshot of the American population, determining how many people reside within our country’s borders, who they are, and where they live. The results help determine our representation in government, as well as how federal funds are spent in our communities on things like roads, parks, housing, schools, and public safety.…

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Published Tuesday, June 15, 2010 @ 2:13 pm

As has been widely reported, whether you feel the country’s moving toward a great recovery or still floundering in a great recession is still largely determined by where you live and whether you can find a job there. And along with the highest rates of unemployment in a generation, current economic conditions are also typified by astronomical levels of long-term unemployment.…

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Published Thursday, May 27, 2010 @ 8:11 am

While many economists and financial experts are now saying that this decade’s Great Recession ended in the middle of 2009, millions of struggling Americans who have been working diligently for a year or more to find meaningful employment would definitely disagree.

In fact, a new report has found that just one in five people who were out of work at this time last year have found meaningful employment since then.…

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Published Sunday, May 9, 2010 @ 8:28 am

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 looking for any means necessary to get back on a financially-healthy course.  Now, in the weeks following this tax season’s deadline, important financial news abounds for many cash-strapped citizens and the struggling states they live in.…

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Published Monday, April 5, 2010 @ 8:27 am

While the unemployment rate remained steady at 9.7 percent for the third straight month, in March the nation’s economy posted its largest job gain in three years.

According to recent Labor Department calculations, employers added 162,000 jobs last month— the most since the recession began more than two years ago. As The Huffington Post reports, “The total includes 48,000 temporary workers hired for the U.S.…

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Published Sunday, January 24, 2010 @ 6:34 pm

A January 22 government report announced that unemployment rates rose in 43 states in December 2009, painting an all too bleak portrait of the job market—even as the economy continues to grow—and leaving many unemployed Americans bankruptcy bound.  This jump in joblessness marked a sharp turn from November 2009’s numbers, when 36 states had actually reported their unemployment rates fell.…

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