Recession Briefing: C.E.O.’s Start Apologizing

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

Since the job market’s peak in June 2007, there are approximately 50 percent fewer job openings for the 15.3 million U.S. citizens who are officially unemployed, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics. (Huffington Post)

As America recovers from the recession, some of the nation’s chief executives are offering that rarest of statements — an apology. But often, their words are so carefully parsed, scrubbed by lawyers or picked over by public relations professionals that it is unclear just how much mea is in their culpa. (New York Times)

The $787 billion economic stimulus package was responsible for keeping between 1.5 million and two million jobs in the economy through the end of 2009, White House economists said Tuesday. (Wall Street Journal)…

Recession Briefing: Workers Liberated from Cubicles!

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

Two years of the Great Recession have done more to liberate workers from their offices than a decade of stressed-out employees pleading to telecommute. Dilberts worldwide are losing their cubes. (Global Post)

Even when the U.S. labor market finally starts adding more workers than it loses, many of the unemployed will find that the types of jobs they once had simply don’t exist anymore. (Wall Street Journal)

Wall Street firms aren’t the only banks that had a banner year. The Federal Reserve made record profits in 2009, as its unconventional efforts to prop up the economy created a windfall for the government. (Washington Post)…

Recession Briefing: One in Five Men Unemployed

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

The recession and the resulting shortage of good jobs have spurred a jump in applications to law schools and a growing interest in graduate programs. (New York Times)…

One in five working-age American men does not have a job, according to the latest federal employment numbers, an all-time high that illustrates the extraordinary toll this recession has taken on male-dominated professions in particular. (Huffington Post)

The porn industry is wrestling with a recession deeper and more severe than what’s constraining the mainstream entertainment businesses. (Daily Finance)

Recession Briefing: Can’t Drive 55

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

Just what Americans need as they try to dig out from the Great Recession: gas prices headed back toward $3 per gallon. The average price of a gallon of regular gasoline hit $2.70 on Thursday, according to the auto club AAA. That’s up 67 percent from this time last year. (Washington Post)

The decimated housing market may get considerably worse before it gets better, according to housing-industry professionals, who expect foreclosures and home-price declines to continue pressuring the sector through at least the first half of 2010. (Time)

Apartment vacancies hit a 30-year high in the fourth quarter, and rents fell as landlords scrambled to retain existing tenants and attract new ones. The vacancy rate ended the year at 8%, the highest level since Reis Inc., a New York research firm that tracks vacancies and rents in the top 79 U.S. markets, began its tally in 1980. (Wall Street Journal)…

Recession Briefing: Goodbye, Tavern on the Green

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

Despite extensive government intervention in the housing market, some policy makers at the Federal Reserve are worried that even more might need to be done. (New York Times)

The aftershocks from deep recessions reverberate for years, even decades, and take an enduring toll on everything from government finances to countless upended individual lives. What economist John Irons calls “economic scarring” will long serve as a reminder of the 2007-09 recession. (USA Today)

Lacking a license and loaded with debt, Tavern on the Green, the glittery New York City eatery, went dark after a final champagne-drenched fete on New Year’s Eve. On Jan. 13 relics of the shuttered restaurant will be auctioned off over three days. (Wall Street Journal)…

Recession Briefing: Job Doesn’t Equal Happy

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

Hit by the recession, many families are moving their children from private to public schools. The shift is already bringing subtle changes to the culture of many public schools as some families seek the personal attention they received from private schools. (USA Today)

As the sour economy leaves people less and less able to pay their debts, the abuses by debt collectors have become so flagrant and numerous that authorities have moved to shut down several agencies where the most heartless and bullying telephone calls originated. At least 20 people have been sued or arrested on criminal charges. (Associated Press)…

Recession Briefing: Now, We’re in a Phase of Ambiguity

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

If the Great Recession has indeed relaxed its grip on American life, it has been replaced by something that might be called the Great Ambiguity — a time of considerable debate over the clarity of economic indicators and the staying power of apparent improvements. (New York Times)

92 percent of the top managers and directors at the top 17 companies that received TARP funds are still in their same positions. (The Big Picture)

Heather MacDonald writes that the recession of 2008-09 has undercut one of the most destructive social theories that came out of the 1960s: the idea that the root cause of crime lies in income inequality and social injustice. (Wall Street Journal)…

Recession Briefing: Take the Foreclosure Tour!

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

Cape Coral, Fla., is a reluctant symbol for the excesses of the great American real estate bubble: foreclosed homes served up as tourist attraction. A shiny green tour bus takes speculators around the town looking for deals. Nearly a third of the houses in the area have been touched by foreclosure in the past three years. (New York Times)

With food-stamp use at a record high and surging by the day, an overlooked subgroup is growing: recipients with no cash income who live solely off of the government food subsidies. (New York Times)

As a result of the glut of foreclosures, agents and homebuilders across the country are complaining too many appraisals are coming in low, scuttling deals. The National Association of Realtors says nearly one in four of its members has reported clients losing a sale due to botched appraisals. (USA Today)

Recession Briefing 12.31: Brits Move Back Home

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

Nearly 500,000 British adults aged 35 to 44 moved back into their parents’ home in the past year. Devastated by the recession and rising rates of relationship breakdown, many had no option but to return to mother. (Daily Mail)

Companies in the U.S. expanded in December at the fastest pace in almost four years, signaling the economic recovery is gaining speed heading into 2010. (Bloomberg)

Employers say they plan to tread carefully in the coming year, and those that are hiring say they will wait until the second half to fill jobs. (Los Angeles Times)

Recession Briefing 12.30: Workers Abandoning Vacation Days

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

The rough economy has claimed another victim: employee vacations. Two-thirds of American workers failed to use all of their vacation days this year, according to a survey released Tuesday. (New York Daily News)

Though single women account for only 46.5 percent of the female labor force, six in 10 are now jobless. 59 percent of adults in poverty are women, according to the latest Census report, which found an extraordinary discrepancy between the poverty rates of single women (20.8 percent) compared with married ones (6.2 percent). (The Big Money)

Nearly one in three metro areas have started to recover, but virtually none of the nation’s biggest cities. One likely reason is that the nascent economic recovery started in the nation’s midsection, from south to north, a part of the country that has relatively few big cities. (MSNBC)…