Since 1982

Jobless claims largest in 26 years

THE ASSOCIATED PRESS 7:38 AM CST, December 11, 2008

WASHINGTON – The government says new claims for unemployment benefits reached their highest level in 26 years last week, as companies cut workers at a rapid pace.

The Labor Department said Thursday that initial applications for jobless benefits rose to a seasonally adjusted 573,000, from an upwardly revised figure of 515,000 in the previous week. That was far more than the 525,000 claims Wall Street economists expected.

A Labor Department analyst says the jump is partly due to a rebound in claims from the Thanksgiving holiday week when government offices were open for fewer days.

Still, the four-week average, which smooths out fluctuations, was a seasonally-adjusted 540,500, the highest since December 1982, when the economy was emerging from a steep recession.

“Breaking” news: it’s a recession

UPDATE: Site working. Here’s the link to NBER’s release.

Oh really? Economic turmoil is all of a sudden news? 

I tried to click on the NBER web site to see what they are reporting. As of noon-ish Dec. 1, the server’s down. Guess most of America had the same idea as me — who in heck are these people that just figured it out now?

December 1, 2008 

FROM THE ASSOCIATED PRESS

The NBER – a private, nonprofit research organization — said its group of academic economists who determine business cycles met and decided that the U.S. recession began last December.

The White House commented on the news that a second downturn has officially begun on President George W. Bush’s watch without ever actually using the word ”recession,” a term the president and his aides have repeatedly avoided. Instead, spokesman Tony Fratto remarked upon the fact that NBER ”determines the start and end dates of business cycles.”

”What’s important is what is being done about it,” Fratto said. ”The most important things we can do for the economy right now are to return the financial and credit markets to normal, and to continue to make progress in housing, and that’s where we’ll continue to focus.”

Many economists believe the current downturn will last until the middle of 2009, and will be the most severe slump since the 1981-82 recession.

By one benchmark, a recession occurs whenever the gross domestic product, the total output of goods and services, declines for two consecutive quarters. However, the NBER’s dating committee uses broader and more precise measures.

The GDP did contract by 0.2 percent at an annual rate in the fourth quarter of 2007. However, that drop was followed by a 0.9 percent rate of increase in the first quarter and a 2.8 percent spurt in the second quarter, when the economy was boosted by the distribution of millions of economic stimulus payments.

However, employment, one of the measurements tracked by the NBER, has been falling since January.

The GDP turned negative again in the July-September quarter of this year, falling at an annual rate of 0.5 percent. Many economists believe the GDP is falling in the current quarter at an even sharper rate of 4 percent, and that the economy won’t begin to rebound until late 2009.

In a news release, the NBER said its cycle dating committee held a telephone conference call on Friday and made the determination on when the recession began. Founded in 1920, the NBER has more than 1,000 university professors and researchers who act as bureau associates, studying how the economy works

The NBER decision means that the economic expansion lasted from November 2001 until December 2007. Economic expansions peak and recessions begin in the same month, according to the NBER’s dating methods.

The decision on the recession means that during the eight years that Bush has been in office, the country has seen two recessions. The first downturn lasted from March 2001 until November of that year.

Department of Labor offers some ideas

So call the press folks if you still have questions. It is, after all, why they get paid. And tell me what you think about the much-touted site.

Contact Name: Jennifer Coxe or Otto Heck
Phone Number: (202) 693-4676
Release Number: 08-1540-NAT

U.S. Labor Department economic resources on-line for workers
www.EconomicRecovery.gov is gateway for information and assistance

WASHINGTON — The U.S. Department of Labor announced its participation in a one-stop Web tool offering a number of resources to assist those negatively impacted by the recent turmoil in the worldwide economy.

“We want to make information easily accessible and quickly available to American workers affected by the economic downturn,” said Secretary of Labor Elaine L. Chao. “The new www.EconomicRecovery.gov one-stop Web page gives workers easy access to Department of Labor resources including unemployment insurance, local job openings and retirement security information as well as help available at other government agencies.”

Affected workers and employers are encouraged to visit the federal government’s Economic Recovery Web site at http://www.EconomicRecovery.gov. Useful information and links will assist Americans with questions about benefits, eligibility, locations of operating One-Stop Career Centers and career service centers, unemployment insurance information by state, and available assistance from other government departments and agencies.

Workers can call the department’s toll-free number at 866-4-USA-DOL (487-2365) to obtain the latest information on where to file a claim and access temporary job information. Impacted workers can place their calls from anywhere and will be directed to sites near them that can take their claims.

The kinds of records that shouldn’t be broken

Jobless claims jump unexpectedly to 16-year high
November 20, 2008
FROM THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
WASHINGTON — New claims for unemployment benefits jumped last week to a 16-year high, the Labor Department said Thursday, providing more evidence of a rapidly weakening job market expected to get even worse next year.

The government said new applications for jobless benefits rose to a seasonally adjusted 542,000 from a downwardly revised figure of 515,000 in the previous week. That’s much higher than Wall Street economists’ expectations of 505,000, according to a survey by Thomson Reuters.

That is also the highest level of claims since July 1992, the department said, when the U.S. economy was coming out of a recession.

The four-week average of claims, which smooths out fluctuations, was even worse: it rose to 506,500, the highest in more than 25 years.

In addition, the number of people continuing to claim unemployment insurance rose sharply for the third straight week to more than 4 million, the highest since December 1982, when the economy was in a painful recession.

Dodging the Pink Slip Club in the Star-Ledger Mailroom

Buyout-Depleted ‘Star-Ledger’ Reassigns Two Journos — To Mailroom 
By Joe Strupp 
Published: November 19, 2008 10:55 AM ET 

NEW YORK When a newspaper cuts its staff, those who remain in the depleted newsroom become valuable. But as The Star-Ledger of Newark, N.J. slowly says farewell to 151 newsroom folks who took buyouts last month, at least two longtime journalists have been reassigned to the mailroom.

Reporter Jason Jett and Assistant Deputy Photo Editor Mitchell Seidel have been filing, sorting, and delivering mail for more than a week, according to sources.

Jett and Seidel, who could not be reached for comment, apparently declined to take one of the buyouts offered this fall as part of a companywide move to cut costs.

Read more here. On the one hand, the mailroom’s a job. With benefits. On the other hand, the mailroom’s the entry point to a company, when, in days long gone, one could get a foot in the door and then move up.

Pink Slip Club: Even a Pulitzer can’t guarantee a reporting job

From The Reader’s Michael Miner in a post here:

On Wednesday the Tribune’s editor, Gerould Kern, and associate managing editor for national news Joycelyn Winnecke dropped in on the Washington bureau and laid (John) Crewdson off. They also laid off national correspondents Bay Fang and Stephen Hedges, national security correspondent Aamer Madhani, and, I’m told, a fifth Washington staffer who worked part-time.

At the same time, I hear, eight Washington staffers from the Los Angeles Times lost their jobs too.

As Chicago’s own Barack Obama prepares to move into the White House, Tribune journalistic talent is in increasingly short supply in Washington. Bureau chief Michael Tackett resigned last summer, and acting chief Naftali Bendavid quit the other day and is heading to the Wall Street Journal. Last week the Tribune Company appointedCissy Baker vice president of a consolidated Washington bureau serving the Tribune,the LA Times, and the rest of the company’s newspaper, broadcasting, and new media operations. Since 2003 she’d been a vice president of Tribune Broadcasting.

Crewdson won a Pulitzer in 1981 for his reporting while at The New York Times on illegal immigration. Hurry up and read his DC stuff for the Tribune here before they take it down.

Job losses looming

Mayor Daley said Wednesday he’s been warned by a parade of corporate CEOs that a blizzard of job cuts are about to bury the souring Chicago economy.

“Huge layoffs are coming in November and December. And next year, there’s going to be [even more] huge layoffs. All the corporation CEOs have come in to tell me. That’s just the beginning. It’s not their end result,” Daley told reporters after a City Council meeting.

Read the rest here in the Sun Times.

Ugh.

New jobs in the White House

Recently reemployed: Barack Obama.

Pay raise, better digs all company funded, impressive title. 

But a lot more responsibility.

Pink Slip Club: Chicago attorneys

Two Chicago law firms lay off attorneys, staff

By Ameet Sachdev Tribune staff reporter
1:37 PM CDT, October 16, 2008

Two Chicago law firms have fired attorneys this week, moves to cut cost during precarious economic times.

Sonnenschein Nath & Rosenthal let go about 24 lawyers across its practices and offices, according to an e-mail Chairman Elliott Portnoy sent out late Wednesday.

Katten Muchin Rosenman laid off 21 lawyers, partner Tasneem Goodman said in a statement.

The cuts come as their corporate clients hunker down amid the nation’s worst financial crisis in decades.

More here.

Pink Slip Club: GM

GM to lay off 1,600 workers at 3 factories
By TOM KRISHER, AP Auto Writer
DETROIT – Another 1,600 workers at three General Motors Corp. factories will be laid off indefinitely over the next few months as the company tries to control its inventory amid a worsening U.S. sales slump.

About 700 workers at GM’s pickup truck plant in Pontiac will be furloughed starting Feb. 1, while another 500 at the Detroit-Hamtramck sedan factory will be laid off starting Jan. 12, spokesman Chris Lee said Thursday. In addition, 400 workers at a two-seat sports car assembly plant in Wilmington, Del., also will be out of work starting Dec. 8.

The rest is here.

I talked to a certain local Ford union leader last week, and by talked, I mean listened to his stories while a foreign colleague fired away. His insights on how the car industry’s successes like the Ford Taurus were also its downfall as execs rested on their laurels instead of continuing to innovate.