All Blog Posts from Econwatch

This post by Jill Schlesinger originally appeared on CBS' MoneyWatch.com.

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10.2% ? that's the most important number from the October Employment Report. For the first time since 1983, the over 1 out of every 10 American is out of work. How's that for starting your Friday with some sobering news?


The 190,000 jobs lost in October means that since the start of the recession in December, 2007, 8.2 million people have lost their jobs and the unemployment rate has grown by 5.3%. The numbers in and of themselves would by bad enough, but they don't accurately reflect just how hard it is to find a job. For that, you need to drill down to the U-6 measure of employment, or as my friend the economist likes to say, "the true pain threshold." U-6 starts with the total number of unemployed and adds part time employees and those who are "marginally attached," which means all of those folks people who took crappy jobs that are beneath their skill levels. The U-6 was 17.5% last month.

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The economy may be growing again, but that's little comfort to Americans struggling to find jobs.

But as the unemployment rate inches steadily toward 10 percent, CBS MoneyWatch editor-at-large Jill Schlesinger says there are still sectors hiring.

The health care industry has added 560,000 jobs and remains a huge part of the U.S. economy. And the government claims to have created or saved 380,000 jobs in education through stimulus efforts.

The government itself is hiring, though some of those jobs ? like census workers ? are temporary.

And the technology sector is experiencing "very good growth," Schlesinger told "Early Show" co-anchor Harry Smith Thursday.

Industries hardest hit by job losses come as no surprise ? construction, manufacturing, restaurants and retail continue to struggle.

As far as geography, Schlesinger says heartland states like Nebraska, North Dakota and South Dakota have been largely spared the full force of the recession, boasting unemployment rates under 5 percent.

Worst areas for job seekers? Michigan, Nevada, Rhode Island and big housing boom states like California.

Climbing the career ladder in today's economy is difficult enough. But young people, from recent college graduates and MBAs to high school dropouts, are finding it harder than ever to even get onto the first rung.

Peter Coy writes in Business Week of "The Lost Generation" ? 16- to 24-year-olds for whom unemployment in the U.S. is now more than 18%, up from 13% a year ago. Including fulltime students, less than half of people age 16-24 had jobs in September, the lowest rate since post-WWII,

College graduates and advanced degree holders are suffering as well. Dan Schmitz, 25, a University of Wisconsin graduate with a bachelor's degree in English, told Business Week, "Every morning I wake up thinking today's going to be the day I get a job. I've not had a job for months, and it's getting really frustrating."

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The recession has thrown a growing number of two-career couples a new challenge in their marriage ? geography.

With the economy sagging, job hunts are increasingly taking laid-off workers to different cities from their already employed spouses, according to a Wall Street Journal report Tuesday.

The Journal cites a recent survey by Challenger, Gray & Christmas that found 18.2 percent of job hunters relocated for their new jobs in the second quarter of this year ? a big jump from 11.4 percent a year ago.

Couple that with Labor Department statistics showing more than half of the country's marriages consisted of two working spouses, and it's easy to see how job hunts present added complications for families with established roots in a given locale.

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California clothing manufacturer American Apparel will lay off 1,500 workers from its downtown Los Angeles factory because the employees are not legally authorized to work in the United States, the Los Angeles Times reports.

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By S.L. Mintz of CBS MoneyWatch.com.

Today?s cautious optimism sure beats the despair that gripped the stock market a few months ago, says chief economist Diane Swonk (at left) of Mesirow Financial. In her view, the markets reached a turning point in the second quarter, or one is imminent in the third quarter, driven more by the tapering off of bad news than the arrival of good news. But net job creation won?t revive before December or January, ?if we?re lucky.?

Swonk has a front-row seat on the nation?s economy, sitting on several advisory committees to the Federal Reserve Board, its regional banks, and the Council of Economic Advisers for the White House. Most recently, she was reappointed to serve on the Congressional Budget Office?s panel of economic advisers, and Swonk is also past president of the National Association for Business Economics (NABE), a title that Federal Reserve Chairman Alan Greenspan and several other Federal Reserve presidents have also held.

Here she discusses whether she thinks the market?s recent rally is sustainable, which market sectors look good and which don?t, and what could derail a recovery.

The markets are now about 50 percent off their lows. What do you think is going on?

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Assuming that the recession ends, what does that mean for you? That?s what Harry Smith of the CBS News Early Show wanted to know this morning.

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The U.S. unemployment rate has reached 9.5 percent, according to the government's figures. Which bring us to today's EconWatch question: Will increasing the minimum wage during a deep recession help -- or hurt -- unemployment?

We're about to live through that experiment in applied economics. On Friday, the U.S. minimum wage is set to increase from $6.55 an hour to $7.25 an hour. That makes it 11 percent more expensive for businesses to employ a minimum-wage worker.

(The last time the minimum wage was increased was July 2008 as part of the second-to-last step in a series of increases required by a law enacted the year before. This week's increase is the last.)

As anyone paying even scant attention to the news in the last year knows, economists often disagree more than they agree. Some economists, including Nobel laureates, say the spending package known as the "stimulus" bill was a great idea. Others, including Nobel laureates, think it wasn't. More generally, business cycle theory and Keynesian economics are points of sharp disagreement.

The effects of a minimum wage on unemployment are an exception to that rule. Perhaps it's because the economic laws at issue are straightforward, but economists generally agree that increasing the minimum wage also decreases employment; workers who aren't worth $7.25 an hour to their employer won't have a job.

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Swear by them or swear at them, it's impossible to be neutral about Crocs.

Even celebrities have trouble making these shoes cool, hip or good looking ? no matter how cool, hip or good looking the celebrities are.

As the economy boomed so did Crocs, 100 million pairs were sold in the past seven years. But now, there's a stunning reversal from a $168-million profit in 2007 to a $185-million loss in 2008, leaving the company with serious debt. Crocs has given 2,000 employees - a third of its work force - their walking papers.

So will they go the way of the earth shoe, mood ring and pet rock? Or will Croc-craving fans come to the rescue?

To watch Katie Couric's complete report, click below:


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Early this year, as the U.S. Congress prepared to debate a $787 billion spending bill that's better known as the stimulus plan, President Barack Obama claimed that immediate action was necessary to prevent unemployment from skyrocketing.

"Experts agree that if nothing is done, the unemployment rate could reach double digits," Mr. Obama said in a January 24 radio address. "If we do not act boldly and swiftly, a bad situation could become dramatically worse." The same month, his economic advisors released a report saying that, without the stimulus, unemployment would hit around 8.5 percent by April 2009, and 7.8 percent with it.

We know what happened next: a Democratic Congress quickly approved the legislation. But what may not be as obvious is that even with the stimulus, current unemployment is far worse than the Obama administration had predicted: it's already 8.9 percent.

In the last few days, a marked-up version of that chart has rocketed around economics and public policy blogs, with some administration critics arguing it showed the stimulus was unnecessary. (For perspective, the stimulus' generous $787 billion is roughly 60 percent of the total revenue that the IRS collects each year from Americans' personal income taxes, or almost seven times the entire GDP of New Zealand.)

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