It’s been three years of some rough stuff, but Americans are starting to report that when they’ve changed jobs, it’s been for something better paying or a higher-level position, according to a report from Experian Simmons.

According to the research firm, 6.5% of those who changed jobs in the last year moved into a better spot. No, it’s not much, but it turns out that moving up has never been something experienced by the majority of the population. In January 2008, when the economy was still mostly strong (the official start of the recession came in December 2007, but took months to ripple through the general economy), 9.9% of Americans said they had moved into better jobs in the previous year. The latest figure is also up significantly from April’s 4.6%.

Some further “good” news, that just 2.4% of Americans who switched jobs in the last year moved into lower level or lower paying positions. Bright side.

We’re not jumping up and down about any sort of real recovery yet, and the current unemployment and new-jobs numbers (9.8%; a mere 39,000 new jobs) indicate a seriously bleak backdrop. Which lends a sort of cognitive dissonance to Experian’s claim that slightly more Americans are starting to look hopeful about job opportunities (8.2% compared to 6.6% in July). But let’s take the good news where we can.

Where does poverty live? In the U.S., we think of it existing in rundown rural trailer parks or dangerous inner city neighborhoods. Today Zachary Roth digs into the the rise in suburban poverty brought on by the recession. More poor Americans now live in the suburbs than in cities. That may especially be a problem because “many suburbs may not be as well set up as urban areas are to provide much-needed social services,” he says.

99er n./ a person who has gone through all 99 weeks of unemployment benefits.

This is one of the sadder definitions in our recession glossary. According to a story in the New York Times several days ago, the Bureau of Labor Statistics estimates that by June, 1.4 million people had been out of work for at least 99 weeks–the maximum time you can collect unemployment, even with all the extensions that Congress has tacked on to give people more of a safety net in tough times.

Let’s put that a different way: A population almost the size of Philadelphia has been out of work for nearly two years. Discuss.

From today’s New York Times:

Many economists — concerned about the sluggish pace of job creation, dwindling housing activity and decelerating retail sales — say that slowdown is continuing this summer and have recently downgraded their expectations for the second half of the year.

Read more here.

Apparently, some people are still concerned about the stability of U.S. banks. In a recent article in the Wall Street Journal, cable titan John Malone, for one, noted that his wife had pulled all of her money out of American financial institutions and parked it in Australia and Canada.

“She wants to have a place to go if things blow up here,” he told the paper in an interview. “Canada has a lot more fiscal and bank responsibility than most places in the world and lots of natural resources. We have a retreat that’s right on the Quebec border. We own 18 miles on the border, so we can cross. Any time we want to, we can get away. It would probably be illegal, but we could go. Actually, our snowmobile trail goes right on the border.”

So far this year, the FDIC has seized about 100 banks. Maybe she’s on to something.

If you care about this issue, you’ve probably heard that the US Senate voted 60-40 to keep emergency unemployment benefits going. Long story short: Good for jobless peeps, bad for the deficit.

Millions of people stopped getting checks in June when the program expired in June. According to the Washington Post: 8.7 million people were receiving jobless benefits at the end of June. A little more than half received state benefits, which are typically available for 26 weeks. The rest were receiving extended benefits financed by the federal government, which are due to run out soon unless the bill before the Senate passes. The Labor Department estimates that 2.5 million people had been cut off by the end of last week.

The House is expected to okay the bill this week–possibly today–and forward it on to the prez for his signature.

Start-up activity, which got a boost from the recession as millions of people looked for new work opportunities or rethought their careers, is on the slide. According to a new survey by executive outplacement firm Challenger, Gray and Christmas, 3.7 percent of job seekers were looking to start something up in the first half of 2010. That’s a big drop from the 7.6 percent in the first half of 2009. That’s a low point since 1986, when the company began tracking this stuff.

What gives? It could be that more people are getting jobs and don’t feel like starting a business is necessary. “Then there is the fragility of the recovery and the uncertainty that comes with it,” said John A. Challenger, CEO of Challenger, Gray &
Christmas.. “Many small business owners are increasingly pessimistic about business conditions and still find it difficult to get a loan.”

That’s bad news for America, if we are to believe the many experts who say a recovery depends on a rebound for small businesses.

From a Sunday New York Times story on how the economic recovery has slowed down in the U.S.:

“We may have seen the best of employment for some time,” said Paul Kasriel, chief economist at Northern Trust. “In general the economy is downshifting, maybe to stall speed, or just above stall.”

Ugh.

Here’s some discouraging news about the direction of the economy: An economist predicts that up to 400,000 government workers could lose their jobs over the next year, because state and local governments will be laying off people en masse to close budget gaps.

According to a story in USA Today, New York City is planning 4,500 layoffs, and Washington state stands to lose 6,000 positions without an extension of extra Medicaid money from the federal government.

Have you been displaced by the downturn? Finding it hard to meet new peeps?

Perhaps this scene is familiar: You’re in a coffee shop, i.e., your new office. You notice a delightful specimen across the room immersed in your favorite novel. Handing off a business card on the way to the loo feels a little douchey. So you do nothing. Pretty soon, Mr./Ms. Sexy has vanished.

Missed connections. Opportunities wasted.

Enter Cheek’d. The new offline/online dating concept gives you a set of saucy calling cards to give to someone you’d like to know better. The recipient is invited to go online to check out your profile, and decide whether he or she would like to make contact with you.

The Recession left many of us disconnected from the ways we used to meet people (work conferences, expensive clubs). And many of us have lots more time to hang out in coffee shops. The cheeky phrases printed on the Cheek’d cards (a pack of 50 costs $25) reflect our post-crash emotional landscape, from the wistful, “I used to be an investment banker”, to the celebratory, “I still have a job”.

In the wake of the financial crisis, Lori Cheek (a former purveyor of high-end furniture), Charlie Kickham (a freelance business consultant) and Locke Raper (a former VP of business development for Air America and, full disclosure, a friend of mine) were struggling through their own displacement — either out of work or dissatisfied with their jobs. But their entrepreneurial energies were a-stirring.  They met up while enjoying a stint of funemployment at a Mardis Gras party in 2009 and decided to turn Match.com burnout into a business.

“Online dating can seem like an impersonal market for love,” explains Raper. “People thirst for a more personal interaction; they want to get a measure of the people they encounter. The Recession has left us longing for what’s real, what’s genuine.  Handing someone a social card instead of a business card has a nostalgic aspect, harkening back to a simpler time.”

Cheek’d is part of a growing trend of finding new ways to connect with one other as the contours of our lives change. The iPhone app Urban Signals, launched in January, allows you to reach out to other users who happen to be online. Pictures of members pop up on a GPS map of your location, and if you see someone you’d like to know, you can send a message. If you’re gay, you can use Grindr, another iPhone app that lets you zone in on the hottie across the street using GPS technology.

Or you could just walk up and say ‘hi’. But when was the last time you did that?

At Recessionwire, we call it “She-orientation” — a powerful, society-wide shift in which women are coming to play an increasingly important role in determining our economic, cultural, and political path. The trend has become evident in recent discussions of how to get more women into corporate boardrooms.

It may be that more skirts on Wall Street would have prevented the financial crisis.  The dominance of adrenaline-fueled males on the Street, some argue, creates an atmosphere with less restraint and circumspection than an Animal House-style frat party.

What to do about it?

The Norwegians passed a law in 2003 requiring that 40% of all company board members be women. Whoa! Even Scandinavian sophisticates balked — one CEO scoffed that the country would have to hire escort girls because there weren’t enough qualified women to fill the slots.

Yet company boards went from just 7% female in 2003 to 40% in January 2008, and did not, after all, have to recruit hookers.

Since the Norwegians adopted their quota system, Spain and the Netherlands passed their own versions. France, Belgium, Britain, Sweden, and Germany are considering legislation. And some companies aren’t waiting for laws. Germany’s Deutsche Telekom vows that by 2015, 30% of its middle and upper management positions be filled by women — the first gender quota adopted at a top 30 DAX-listed company.

Crashing the glass ceiling is not all about fair play and social progress. Actually, it makes good business sense. McKinsey recently discovered that large European companies with three or more women board members performed better than more male-dominated companies in return on equity, operating results, and share price growth – findings echoed by a similar study by Catalyst.

The pro-quota camp argues that the pace of getting women into top level positions has been glacial, partly because boards are often beset with cronyism. Others see such policies as too restrictive and warn of stigmas for women who will be viewed as holding their positions simply because they are women. A recent article in The Economist warns, “If you are a youngish man who sits on a European corporate board, you should worry: the chances are that your chairman wants to give your seat to a woman.”

Scary!  However, The Economist concedes that having women board members can improve the chances of a company in dire straits. And that low female representation indicates a lack of meritocracy. But that old belief in self-regulating markets seems to hold sway. Everything will eventually sort itself out, the thinking goes.

Beth Brooke, named by Forbes as one of the World’s 100 Most Powerful Women, isn’t buying it. In fact, she sees the promotion of women in the corporate sector as a key factor in global economic recovery. ‘‘It is a smart thing to do, and frankly in these economic times around, it is an absolute imperative to appreciate the power of diversity from innovation perspectives and achieve better outcomes for society.’‘ It would be nice if companies would take the initiative themselves, but, she notes, quota systems like Norway’s can be ‘‘the last resort to force change’’ when voluntary efforts don’t cut it.

Was that the sound of glass breaking?