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 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 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 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 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 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 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, December 20, 2010 @ 12:28 pm

For the most optimistic Americans, facing the notion of job insecurity, layoffs can be seen as an opportunity: for new and possibly better-paying work, to start a business, or pursue other career paths. But in tough economic times, these dreams for a better option can quickly become a nightmare as the realities of the nation’s employment scarcity take hold, turning what can normally be an exciting time of self-discovery into a fearful world of self-doubt.…

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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 Thursday, August 12, 2010 @ 2:04 pm

Political satirist P.J. O’Rourke once said, “Politicians are interested in people. Not that this is always a virtue. Fleas are interested in dogs.”

This quote could be said to ring true today as ever, since not yet a week after the Obama Administration pushed for more economic stimulus spending meant to benefit “the people,” Congress refuses to act, distracted by election-year anxiety about the deficit.…

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Published Friday, June 18, 2010 @ 8:28 am

The times they are a’ changing.’ But are they really getting better for the unemployed?

Back in the 1980s, laws like COBRA were enacted to protect laid-off workers from losing their precious health care immediately following their job loss. COBRA allowed, and currently allows, for unemployed Americans to keep their former employer-provided health care benefits for up to 18 months, assuming those same employees pay the full amount of their premiums along with additional administrative charges.…

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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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Published Thursday, January 21, 2010 @ 7:45 am

According to a January 8 article in the Huffington Post, lack of confidence in the recent economic recovery led employers to shed an unanticipated 85,000 jobs in December 2009—even as the unemployment rate held steady at 10 percent.  While it may seem strange that unemployment rates flatlined as American jobs continue to disappear, the explanation is even more disconcerting; in truth, the rate would have been higher if more people had been looking for work instead of ending their search because they can’t find jobs.…

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Published Thursday, June 11, 2009 @ 4:44 pm

Some 330,477 people filed bankruptcy between January and March of this year. Do the math. That’s an average of more than 110,000 filings per month, 27,500 per month, and just shy of 1,000 per day. These numbers are up ten percent over last quarter, and 35 percent from a year ago.…

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Published Thursday, June 4, 2009 @ 8:39 am

Nestled within the vast expanse of the ocean waters, hundreds and hundreds of miles off the Pacific coast, the islands of Hawaii probably don’t bring to mind thoughts of unemployment, foreclosures, bankruptcies, or the other recession-related concerns of the day. Hawaii’s geographic isolation makes it seem insulated from the difficult realities here on the mainland – economic and otherwise.…

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