Tag: unemployment

The new ADP National Employment Report, which measures only private, non-farm jobs and not government jobs, says that the economy produced 211,000 new private jobs in the past month.

There’s a bit of good news on the economic front as the latest report from the Bureau of Labor Statistics shows a decline in initial unemployment claims to 385,000, a drop of 16,000 from the previous week.

Bill McBride of the Calculated Risk blog explains why the participation rate — the percentage of Americans either working or actively seeking a job — is crucial in determining how far and how fast the unemployment rate drops.

Our Fiscal Security, a partnership of progressive policy organizations Demos, the Economic Policy Institute and the Century Foundation, unveiled a deficit reduction plan Monday,...

In a new paper released Wednesday, entitled “How the Great Recession Was Brought to an End,” prominent economists Alan Blinder and Mark Zandi say...

Sometime this spring, Republicans turned against unemployment. In Nevada, Sharron Angle (R), the candidate facing incumbent Sen. Harry Reid (D), told local reporters, “You can make more money on unemployment than you can going down and getting one of those jobs that is an honest job.” (Untrue.) Angle also called the unemployed “spoiled.”

Late Thursday afternoon, President Obama signed into law a bill granting workers out of a job for more than 26 weeks additional unemployment insurance payments, paid for by the federal government. The benefits had been in place since November 2009, but had lapsed for seven weeks — an unprecedented hiatus, given the 9.5 percent unemployment rate. The bill, held up in the Senate by Republicans concerned about the deficit, makes benefits retroactive to June 2 and forward to Nov. 30. In states with higher than 8 percent unemployment, workers will continue to receive up to 99 weeks of benefits.

Tonight, after waiting 30 hours for a cloture vote, the Senate reauthorized the federal extension of unemployment benefits — moving one step closer to...

Coloradans are suffering directly because lawmakers in Washington can not find a way to work together to pass vital federal unemployment insurance benefits extensions. Like many states, Colorado tied benefits to federal payments and in Colorado the federal money pays larger percentages of claims. As Republicans and Democrats face off on Capitol Hill, thousands of Coloradans are being dropped from the rolls. Some of them will be hungry. Others homeless. And some of them jailed for not paying debts. Kelly, for example, a former Westminster financial analyst whose unemployment insurance recently ended and who didn't want the Colorado Independent to post her full name, is working to avoid arrest for not paying fees incurred in the wake of a misdemeanor traffic violation.

Tea party favorite Sharron Angle, the Nevada GOP’s candidate for Senate, is arguing that the government should cut unemployment benefits to get the jobless...