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Recession Briefing: Failure to Green

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

A new report due out this morning will show the $5-billion Obama administration program to make homes more energy efficient is so riddled with problems that so far it’s weatherized only about 9,000 homes. (Los Angeles Times)

Thousands are discovering an unexpected kink in the system that can mean drastic cuts in their unemployment benefits. Workers who seek to renew their benefits for a second year are finding that their new benefits are based on their most recent wages, even if it was low pay for temporary or part-time work. (Boston Globe)

Federal and state officials, many facing record budget deficits, are starting to aggressively pursue companies that try to pass off regular employees as independent contractors. (New York Times)

The U.S. unemployment rate was 9.7% in January. But that big number blurs what’s happening in hundreds of local economies during this harsh, job-destroying recession. The nation’s 372 metropolitan areas are experiencing an extraordinary range of jobless rates — from a low of 4% in Grand Forks, N.D., to a high of 27.7% in El Centro, Calif. (USA Today)

President Obama defended his year-old economic stimulus package on Wednesday, as Republicans and Democrats took to the Internet and the airwaves to wage a furious partisan battle over whether the bill was a monumental waste of taxpayer money or had rescued the economy from catastrophe. (New York Times)

Federal Reserve officials, their eyes on a recovery that is gradually becoming more entrenched, are intensifying planning for a reversal of emergency policies put in place during the financial crisis. (Wall Street Journal)

The Obama administration is facing increasing pressure from lawmakers and housing advocates to retool its troubled mortgage relief program a year after its debut as the housing crisis continues to deepen and spreads to more creditworthy borrowers. (Washington Post)

The U.S. economy has been growing for more than half a year. Yet employers continue to cut jobs, and the unemployment rate remains at a high 9.7 percent. This kind of hiring lag is by no means unusual. “Companies need to have profits and need to see an improvement in their top-line growth before they make the commitment to actually hiring,” says Diane Swonk, an economist with Mesirow Financial. (NPR)

Women comprise just under half of the U.S. economy and have lost fewer jobs than men in this recession, putting them in position to become the majority of the nation’s workers. Yet women remain concentrated in low-paying sectors of the workforce. (Forbes)

States underfunded their pension plans and retiree health benefits by $1 trillion in 2008, a new report says. The report, released Thursday by the Pew Center on the States, says 21 states had less than 80% of the money they needed to pay for future retiree pensions. In 2006, that was true of 19 states. (Gannett News Service)

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