Unemployment rates rose last month in 28 states

The country's labor market recovery was uneven last month with unemployment rates rising in 28 states and falling in eight, according to figures released Monday by the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics.

Monday's data show that 11 states and the District of Columbia with jobless rates higher than the overall U.S. unemployment rate of 7.4%. California, which released its job report Friday, added 38,100 jobs in July, one of its best showings this year. Still, the state's unemployment rate rose 0.2 of a percentage point to 8.7%.

Nationwide, employers added 162,000 net positions last month, but the state job markets turned in mixed performances. The Bureau of Labor Statistics reported that the number of payroll jobs grew in 32 states but declined in 17.  Read more >>

Greek Youth Unemployment Soars To Record 65%

What little hope there may have been that bad and/or deteriorating Greek economic data had peaked in the early part of 2013 and the country was set for a long overdue "recovery" was promptly extinguished following today's latest release of the Greek May labor force survey.

The headline news for the broader population was ugly:

The number of employed was 3,621,153, a decline of 14,889 from April, and down 171,356 from a year earlier

The number of unemployed was a record high 1,381,088, an increase of 43,467 from April, and up 193,668 from a year earlier

The unemployment rate was a record high 27.6%, up from 26.9% in April and 23.8% a year earlier

But that was the "good" news. Read more >>

Underemployment Rate Soars To 14.3%

So much for any doubts about a September taper: with the street expecting a 165K NFP number for June, the actual print of 195K following an upward revised May print of 195K as well, means the Fed's September flow fade, aka Taper, is now virtually assured. On the other side, the Household Survey printed a 160K increase in jobs.

The Unemployment Rate stayed at 7.6% despite expectations of a drop to 7.5%, although the real action was in the underemployment rate which exploded from 13.8% to 14.3%. The Civilian Labor Force rose once again, printing at 63.5% with the labor force rising from 155,658
to 155,835. Read more >>

Federal budget cuts take a big bite out of unemployment checks

Precisely how those cuts are being carried out varies by state. Most are enacting an across-the-board reduction for all federal unemployment insurance recipients, but some are ending the program early or slashing benefits only for new enrollees.

And in some states, recipients should brace for an upcoming shock. The places that took the longest to implement the cuts will need to compensate by slicing off a bigger chunk of recipients' remaining checks.

Federal unemployment insurance, which kicks in when state benefits run out, is one of the programs caught up in the forced budget cuts known as sequester. An estimated 3.8 million people will see their federal payments reduced this fiscal year, which ends in September. Federal benefits can last up to 47 weeks. State benefits, which last up to 26 weeks, are not affected.

The overall cut equals about 10.7% of each recipient's benefits this year, or an average of about $450 per person. Some states began trimming their payments right after sequestration began in March. For others, the hit is still looming. Read more >>

Strongest employment growth is temporary help agencies

Unemployment in May ticked up to 7.6 percent as employers added 175,000 jobs, a tepid report that may cheer investors hoping for interest rates to stay low, boosting stocks.

Economists including JJ Kinahan, chief derivatives strategist of TDAmeritrade, had expected the addition of 167,000 jobs with the unemployment rate unchanged at 7.5 percent.

The industries with the strongest employment growth in the last month were temporary help agencies, which added 26,000 jobs; and food services, which added 38,000 jobs in May and 337,000 over the past year.

...The Labor Department revised the number of jobs added in April lower to 149,000 from 165,000. March's number was revised higher to 142,000 from 138,000. Read more >>

For the unemployed, no reprieve on budget cuts

Starting this week, many in California collecting federal unemployment benefits will get about 17.7% less than they got last week, thanks to Washington's across-the-board budget cuts. Those cuts -- the so-called sequester -- require that states pay out less on federal extensions of benefits, and the reduction is retroactive to March 1, when the sequester went into effect.

Federally extended benefits, which may last for up to 47 weeks, kick in after a jobless worker has exhausted state unemployment benefits, which last up to 26 weeks.
Nationwide, the cuts will affect an estimated 3.8 million people through Sept. 30, the end of the fiscal year.

Just how much a recipient's benefits will be cut depends on how quickly a state implements the change. "In the best case scenario, where the states implemented the cuts right away, the average worker will receive about $31 less each week (10.7% less) in benefits from her $294 weekly check," said Judith Conti, the federal advocacy coordinator for the National Employment Law Project, in recent testimony before a House Ways and Means subcommittee. Read more >>

People Making Over $100K Received Unemployment Benefits in 2011

With all the media panic about sequestration, one would think a study finding billions of dollars of fraud in a government program would be national news.

Apparently not, for with few exceptions, a report published by the St. Louis Federal Reserve last week finding $3.3 billion in fraudulent unemployment claims in 2011 got almost no attention:

The unemployment insurance program in the U.S. offers benefits to workers if they lose their jobs through no fault of their own. In 2011, this program cost $108 billion, of which nearly $3.3 billion was spent on overpayments due to fraud.

Unemployment insurance fraud occurs when an ineligible individual collects benefits after intentionally misreporting his or her eligibility. Recent headlines have brought attention to extreme forms of fraud, such as the collection of unemployment benefits by prisoners. The dominant form of unemployment insurance fraud, however, is what's called concealed earnings fraud. This fraud occurs when individuals collect unemployment benefits while they are employed and are earning wages. The overpayments due to concealed earnings accounted for almost $2.2 billion in 2011, two-thirds of the total overpayments due to all categories of fraud. Read more >>

Spanish Unemployment Tops Record, Rising At Fastest Rate In A Year

In yet another worse-than-expected macro data point, Spain has just breached the 27% unemployment level - the highest since at least 1976, when data began following dictator Francisco Franco's death. At 27.2% this is already higher than the IMF's year-end estimate of 27% suggesting growth estimates are already overly optimistic.

What is more concerning is the rate of increase in the joblessness is rising once again. The 1.1 percentage point rise is the largest in a year and 177,700 more households now have no actively employed members than a year ago. The greatest fear though, for European leaders and the Spanish people themselves, is the surge in youth unemployment.

As we have noted a number of times in the past, the possibility of social unrest is exaggerated significantly by this number and at an incredulous 57.2% of under-25s out of work, Spain is closing in on Greece, according to official data, for the worst youth unemployment situation in Europe. Read more >>

Real March Unemployment Rate: 11.6%

Today, we got the laughable news that the unemployment rate declined even as those not in the labor force grew by over 660,000, while the total civilian non-institutional population grew by just 167,000 to 244,995, meaning the actual labor force declined by 496,000. Which is precisely the issue: fudging the labor force participation rate is how the Obama administration has managed to maintain the myth the economy has grown under his leadership for the past 4+ years.

It hasn't, and in fact if one renormalizes for the recent long-term average participation rate of 65.8%, one gets a very different number. How different? A difference that is now at a record compared to what is reported. As the chart below shows, a "renormalization" process indicates a massive and record 4% difference between the reported unemployment rate of 7.6%, and what the real unemployment rate is assuming normal growth of the labor force, which in March was 11.6%, up from 11.3% in February, and the highest since August 2012 when it was 11.7%. More importantly, as the real unemployment chart shows, the economy has not improved by one bit since 2009! Read more >>

Job Insecurity High as Layoffs Show Huge Surge

The number of planned layoffs at U.S. firms fell in March but downsizing by retail companies still helped the first quarter rack up the largest amount of cuts in over a year, a report showed on Thursday. Employers announced 49,255 planned job cuts last month, down 11 percent from 55,356 in February, according to the report from consultants Challenger, Gray & Christmas.

But March's layoffs were still up 30 percent from the same time a year ago, the fourth time in the last six months that monthly job cuts have been higher than the year before. For the quarter, there were 145,041 workers let go, up 5.6 percent from the fourth quarter of last year. It was the worst quarter for layoffs since the third quarter of 2011.

Retailers cut the most employees in March, announcing 16,445 layoffs, up from 2,279 in February. In the first three months of the year, retail firms have cut 25,400 jobs, second only to the financial sector's 33,819 for 2013 so far. Read more >>

Unemployment in Euro Zone Reaches a Record High

Unemployment in the euro zone rose to yet another record high in the first two months of the year, official data showed Tuesday, providing confirmation that the economy remains in a deep freeze.

The jobless rate reached 12 percent in both January and February, the highest since the creation of the euro in 1999, Eurostat, the statistical agency of the European Union, reported from Luxembourg. The January jobless rate for the 17-nation currency union was revised upward from the previously reported 11.9 percent.

For the overall European Union, the February jobless rate rose to 10.9 percent from 10.8 percent in January, Eurostat said, with more than 26 million people without work across the 27-nation bloc.

European officials continue to hold out hope that the economy, which continued to shrink in the first quarter of 2013, will begin turning around in the second half of the year. Many private sector forecasters are more pessimistic, expecting a contraction of as much as 2 percent in the euro zone’s gross domestic product this year, after a 0.9 percent contraction last year. Read more >>

The Chart That Proves Mainstream Media Is Lying About Unemployment

The mainstream media is absolutely giddy that the U.S. unemployment rate has hit a "four-year low" of 7.7 percent.  But is unemployment in the United States actually going down?  After all, you would think that it should be.

The Obama administration has "borrowed" more than 6 trillion dollars from future generations of Americans, interest rates have been pushed to all-time lows, and the Federal Reserve has been wildly printing more money in a desperate attempt to "stimulate" the economy.  So have those efforts been successful?

Well, according to the mainstream media, the U.S. unemployment rate is falling steadily.  Headlines all over the nation boldly declared that "236,000 jobs" were added to the economy in February, but what they didn't tell you was that the number of Americans "not in the labor force" rose by 296,000.

And that is how they are getting the unemployment rate to go down - by pretending that huge numbers of unemployed Americans don't want jobs.  Sadly, as you will see below, the truth is that the percentage of working age Americans that have a job is just 0.1% higher than it was exactly three years ago.  And we have not even come close to getting back to where we were before the last economic crisis. Read more >>

1 in 10 Unemployed Denied Jobs Due to Credit Checks

Employer credit checks are preventing the nation's hardest hit job seekers from entering the workforce, a new study shows.

One in four unemployed Americans have been required to go through a credit check when applying for a job, and one in ten have been denied jobs due to information in their credit report, according to a survey by liberal think-tank Demos of about 1,000 low- and middle-income households with credit card debt.

"Employer credit checks are common and they're keeping people from getting jobs," said Amy Traub, Demos senior policy analyst and author of the report.

While people tend to think credit checks are only conducted for senior level positions, the study found they are often used for entry-level, low-paying positions as well -- even for jobs like delivery drivers and frozen yogurt servers.

Bad credit is often a result of unemployment and the loss of health insurance, which makes it difficult for people to keep up with the bills, Demos found. Another common cause of poor credit is medical debt, which only gets harder to manage when compounded by unemployment. Read more >>

Euro-Area Unemployment Climbs to Record

The euro-area jobless rate rose to a record in January as austerity measures taken to counter the debt crisis deepened the currency bloc’s recession.

Unemployment in the 17-nation euro area rose to 11.9 percent from a revised 11.8 percent in December, the European Union’s statistics office in Luxembourg said today. That’s the highest since the data series started in 1995. The figure is higher than the 11.8 percent median estimate of 33 economists in a Bloomberg News survey.

“The situation is very serious,” said Alexander Krueger, chief economist at Bankhaus Lampe in Dusseldorf. “There’s no support any more from Germany. It’s more or less a sideways movement which I expect to continue. Other economies like Italy, Spain and Portugal are very bad at the moment, so in the end the unemployment rate can only climb.”

The euro-area economy recorded its worst performance in four years in the fourth quarter with a contraction of 0.6 percent. Gross domestic product will decline again in the first three months before returning to growth in the second quarter, according to the median of 21 economists’ estimates in a separate Bloomberg survey. The European Commission forecasts unemployment rates of 12.2 percent and 12.1 percent for this year and next. Read more >>

Unemployed lose benefits if federal budget cuts go through

The long-term unemployed can kiss goodbye almost 10% of their weekly jobless benefits if federal budget cuts go into effect on March 1.

Many safety net programs, such as food stamps and Medicaid, are protected from the $85 billion in forced spending cuts, but extended federal unemployment benefits are vulnerable.

Those payments kick in when state benefits, which last up to 26 weeks, run out. Eligible workers can then collect federal benefits for up to 47 weeks. The payments, which average $300 a week, are an emergency measure Congress has been authorizing since 2008. It's a stopgap aimed at protecting the millions of Americans struggling to find new jobs in a challenging economy.

The forced spending cuts scheduled to take effect next month trim the program's funding. Recipients of those payments could lose an average of more than $400 in benefits each through the end of the federal fiscal year, according to the Department of Labor. The fiscal year ends on Sept. 30. Read more >>

Greek Youth Unemployment Tops 60%

Optimism it seems is all that matters (or is all that is allowed) as we are battered by dismal data left, right, and center. Of course, a reflection on the markets tells any 'smart' person that it all must get better - or why would stocks or sovereigns, or EURUSD be where it is?

However, the 6 out of 10 15-24 year olds in Greece (61.7% to be exact) would beg to differ with that view of the world (as their economy grinds to a halt) - and with Spain reaching new highs at 55.6% (as well as the Euro-zone over 24%), all the bureaucratic lip-service in the world won't stop the revolt that is coming we fear. Read more >>

World Unemployment to Hit Record High in 2013

World unemployment could top record levels this year and continue rising until 2017, the International Labour Organization (ILO) said on Tuesday in its annual employment report. 2009 currently stands as the worst recorded year for world unemployment, with 198 million people across the globe without work.

In its 2013 Global Employment Trends report, the ILO forecasts unemployment numbers will rise by 5.1 million in 2013 to reach 202 million, topping 2009's record. The report also predicts unemployment will rise further in 2014 to reach 205 million.

"Unemployment remains as dire as it was during the crisis in 2009," Ekkehard Ernst, chief of the employment trends unit at the ILO, which wrote the report, told CNBC.

While the crisis may have originated in the developed world, the report noted that 75 percent of 2012's newly unemployed came from outside it, with East Asia, South Asia and Sub-Saharan Africa being the worst affected.

Ernst attributed this to the "spillover effect" of weak growth in advanced economies, and in particular, the recession in Europe.

"The main transmission mechanism of global spillovers has been through international trade, but regions such as Latin America and the Caribbean have also suffered from increased volatility of international capital flows," the report said. Read more >>

Greek Unemployment Soars To New Record, 56% Of 15-24 Year Olds Without Job

Judging by ongoing momentum moves in various European stock and bond market indicators, one could be left with the impression that something in the continent is actually improving.

And while hope of improvement is certainly be high, the reality is vastly different as confirmed by the just released Greek unemployment data, which saw the broad unemployment rate soar to a fresh record high of 26.8% in October (24.1% males, 30.4% females - that's nearly one in three), up from a pre-revision 26.0% in September, and up from 19.7% a year ago, the youth (15-24 age group) unemployment rising again to a new all time high of 56.6% (up from 56.4%), and the ratio of those employed (3.68MM) to unemployed (1.34MM) plunging to a record low 2.75x.

At this rate it may well hit 1.00x quite soon. But even sooner, perhaps in a few months, the total number of inactive workers (3.34MM) will surpass all those who are working. In short, the Greek collapse is just getting worse and worse. Read more >>

Eurozone crisis: Unemployment rate hits new record high

The eurozone unemployment rate has hit a new record high of 11.8% in November, up from October's 11.7%. Eurostat reported that there are now 18.820 million people out of work in the euro area.

The wider EU unemployment rate remained at 10.7%,with 26.061m million men and women out of work. The lowest unemployment rates were recorded in Austria (4.5%), Luxembourg (5.1%), Germany (5.4%) and the Netherlands (5.6%).

Again, the highest rates were seen in Spain (26.6%). (In Greece, the most recent data shows a 26.0% rate in September 2012). Read more >>

Where The Jobs Are: "55 And Older"

In December the American jobs gerontocracy continued its relentless course, and as the two charts below summarize since Obama's first term, some 2.7 million jobs in the 16-55 year old category have been lost. The "offset": 4 million jobs for Americans between 55 and 69.

For all those young people graduating from college (with $150,000 in student loans) who are unable to get a job, here is our advice: tell your parents, and grandparents, to retire already. Oh wait, they can't because Bernanke destroyed their savings. Oops - better luck next time. Read more >>