The North Carolina Bankruptcy Information Blog

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.

As a result, those in the lowest income brackets face higher bills while the wage floor remains where it was years ago, leaving millions of Americans squeezed under it. But these facts aren’t lost on the experts—from financial insiders to those most financially impacted.…

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.…

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.…

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.…

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.…

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.

These Gallup polling numbers explain why the Obama Administration’s recent announcement, and submission to Congress, of the American Jobs Act—combining stimulus and tax cuts to spur job growth—is more important than ever to a nation struggling to find a solution to its rampant unemployment and underemployment problems.…

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.

(7) Revise Union Contracts
Another 18% trimmed union agreements as a way to cut salaries and reduce previously bargained-for benefits.…

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.

Already dealing with double-digit unemployment in July 2011 (10.1 percent) due to over 100,000 state government layoffs, the state’s impending loss of additional jobs for thousands in the languishing local private financial industry could mean the slow-to-recover North Carolina economy could get much worse before it gets better.…

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.

According to a Gallup poll released Thursday, almost 40 percent of Americans said in September that unemployment or joblessness is the biggest issue facing the country. This figure lept up from 29 percent figure in August.…

Are you buying forecasts of an economic recovery? Don’t believe another global recession is possible? Just ask Michael Spence, professor at New York University’s Stern School of Business and winner of the 2001 Nobel Prize in economics. Recently, Professor Spence told Bloomberg Television Wednesday that there’s “probably a 50 percent” chance of the global economy slipping into recession.

The notion of the United States reverting back into another recession has been on the minds of many economists throughout 2011. But Prof. Spence forecasts that any measurable economic downturn here at home would likely spread like wildfire throughout the rest of the world.…

At a time when a full-fledged recovery remains a distant prospect for many average Americans and their beleaguered budgets, the outlook is also pretty grim for the overall American economy itself.

As millions of men and women flood unemployment lines awaiting word of jobs that may never return, and with few signs that the federal government nor the nation’s central bank will make any further efforts to stimulate our flagging financial state, according to government estimates released Friday, the United States economy grew at a slower pace this spring than even previously thought.

A report on these estimates by The Huffington Post, says, “the news is grim for anyone looking for signs that the recovery has taken hold, and that hiring and expansion are on the way once more… The new figures arrive at a time when investors and analysts are increasingly weighing the possibility of a double-dip recession, following weeks of uncertainty in the stock market and anxiety over political gridlock in Washington.”

This grim report is coupled with more news reflecting high unemployment, dismal consumer confidence and a paltry housing market—all of which have been working in concert to stall the nation’s financial growth in the two years following the official end of the economic recession, and remain unchanged in recent months.…

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.

According to a new repot from The Huffington Post, “The announcement that the rating agency had reduced the U.S. government’s AAA rating for the first time in history came after days of punishing declines in the stock market, and has now cast a shadow over economic prospects in the months ahead.…

Are you buying forecasts that we’re in a slow-but-steady economic recovery?

Well some believe the economic recovery never actually happened.

Just ask Nobel Prize winning economist and New York Times columnist Paul Krugman. On the heels of the recent debt ceiling crisis, 600-point plunge in the Dow Jones industrial average and the drop in interest rates to near-record lows, Krugman warns that the United States economy was never truly ‘on the road to recovery.’

As Krugman writes in this week’s New York Times, “It’s not just that the threat of a double-dip recession has become very real. It’s now impossible to deny the obvious, which is that we are not now and have never been on the road to recovery.…

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.

In fact, according to an article by The Huffington Post, “The CRS report shows that very long-term unemployment is more likely to afflict older workers than younger ones.…

Are You Prepared for an American Recession Turned Great Depression?

Just as many Americans had begun to believe the worst of the economic downturn had passed, some experts are saying that the nation’s reemerging job woes are signs of something more sinister afoot: a potential Great Depression.

So what could cause America’s Recession to turn into a Great Depression?

One commentator for The New Republic, Dean Baker, also co-director of the Center for Economic and Policy Research, says our biggest problem is now ideological: more focus around the Beltway on cutting deficits rather than spurring the labor market and housing markets.…

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.

But another new report reveals that these new and improved numbers touting a rebounding labor market may be a bit premature: unemployment rates may be dropping, but not necessarily for the right reasons.

According to Bloomberg, “About half of the fall in the jobless rate during the last four months was caused by Americans who gave up looking for work and left the labor force — a development that he said isn’t something to welcome….…

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.

“North Carolina Gov. Bev Perdue (D) does not like the latest attempt by Republicans in the General Assembly to link unemployment benefits and budget cuts, which is bad news for the tens of thousands of jobless North Carolinians who want their benefits back.…