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Recession Briefing 12.4: Even Restaurants Are Swapping Services

What you need to know today to survive and thrive in the recession.

As they struggle to keep customers and pay the monthly bills, some restaurants are swapping food for services like oven-hood cleaning and pest control. (Wall Street Journal)

The United States economy shed 11,000 jobs in November, and the unemployment rate fell to 10 percent, down from 10.2 percent in October, the Labor Department said Friday. (New York Times)

Laid-off workers seeking unemployment benefits today are almost twice as likely as their counterparts during the recession of the 1980s to be accused of misconduct by their former employers. (Huffington Post)

If flippers were the poster children of the real estate boom, then nesters are becoming the icons of the new housing market. (CNN/Money)

Mark Gongloff says fast-snapback hopes are countered by a mountain of data suggesting the recovery from this recession will be just as jobless as the prior two. (Wall Street Journal)

Why businesses can’t create jobs even if the recession is over. (U.S. News and World Report)

President Obama’s jobs summit was aimed at producing ideas to battle a surging unemployment problem exacting ever greater economic and political toll, but the event only highlighted the tough dilemma he confronts. (Washington Post)

Bruce Bartlett writes that the stimulus did its job, but that tax cuts yielded the least bang for the buck. (Forbes)

A generation of young people is being forced to make life adjustments after the recession. And as more young people move home, default on their debts and scuttle their career plans, the aftershocks will linger for years, economists warn. (Globe and Mail)

An underemployed victim of the recession, ill and facing eviction, tells her story. (New York Times)

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Tags: eating, economy, politics, The Unemployed Life