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Recession Briefing: Hiring Finally Happening
What you need to know today to survive and thrive in the recession.
Job openings rose sharply earlier this year, evidence that employers are slowly ramping up hiring as the economy improves. The number of openings in January rose about 7.6 percent, to 2.7 million, compared with December, the Labor Department said. That’s the highest total since February 2009. (Associated Press)
IRS agents will be more flexible with taxpayers who have seen their incomes drop during the recession. (USA Today)
The number of U.S. households with a net worth of $1 million or more — excluding wealth derived from a primary residence — grew 16 percent last year, according to a new report. (Huffington Post)…
Recession Briefing: Discount Strategists Shop for Free
What you need to know today to survive and thrive in the recession.
Discount devotees have formed vast online communities that collectively unearth and swap digital, mobile-phone and paper coupons. The cleverest shoppers combine dozens of coupons and go from store to store buying items in quantity, getting stuff free of charge. (Wall Street Journal)
The recession and continuing high unemployment are taking a psychological toll on individuals. There’s been a startling increase in the number of calls to employee-assistance programs regarding violence, psychosis and dementia in the workplace, including calls about suicidal and homicidal threats, program directors say. (Wall Street Journal)
In an effort to end the foreclosure crisis, the Obama administration has been trying to keep defaulting owners in their homes. Now it will take a new approach: paying some of them to leave. (New York Times)…
Recession Briefing: Why Yellow Lights Are Shorter
What you need to know today to survive and thrive in the recession.
Some cash-strapped cities have been shortening yellow lights in order to nab more drivers with tickets — and raise revenue. (AlterNet)
A little-noticed effect of the recession is the incredible shrinking work shift. Millions of workers are taking multiple part-time or freelance jobs, jumping back and forth repeatedly between work, other pursuits and more work. These weird schedules are creating new challenges. (Wall Street Journal)
In an era of populist outrage and nearly double-digit unemployment, the average Wall Street bonus jumped 25% in 2009 to $123,850 as financial firms rebounded from the recession with help from U.S. taxpayers’ money. (USA Today)…
Recession Briefing: Courtroom Drama
What you need to know today to survive and thrive in the recession.
In this time of double-digit unemployment and shrinking benefits for those who do have jobs, courts are finding it more difficult to seat juries for trials running more than a day or two. And in extreme cases, reluctance has escalated into rebellion, experts say. (Los Angeles Times)
More waves of foreclosures will keep downward pressure on home prices in parts of the U.S. over the next several years, two new studies project. The studies both conclude that most efforts to modify loans with easier terms will delay, not prevent, the loss of homes to foreclosure. (Wall Street Journal)
Over the next six months, the federal government plans to wind down many of its emergency programs for housing. Then it will become clear if the market can function on its own. People in Elkhart, Ind., are pretty sure the answer will be no. (New York Times)…
Recession Briefing: Less Spending on Love
What you need to know today to survive and thrive in the recession.
Two-thirds of Americans (67%) say they plan to spend less than $50 on Valentine’s Day this year, a new survey of adult Americans finds. One-quarter of Americans (25%) say they plan to spend nothing. (Zogby International)
New data shows that poor people face a much higher rate of unemployment than people with higher incomes. “A true labor market depression faced those in the bottom two deciles of the income distribution, a deep labor market recession prevailed among those in the middle of the distribution, and close to a full employment environment prevailed at the top. There was no labor market recession for America’s affluent.” (Time/Curious Capitalist)
The White House expects nonfarm-payroll employment to increase by an average of 95,000 jobs a month this year, suggesting the U.S. labor market will continue to heal slowly as the economy emerges from its two-year slump. (Wall Street Journal)…
Recession Briefing: Relationship Rockiness
What you need to know today to survive and thrive in the recession.
Money doesn’t buy love and it doesn’t buy happiness, as we should all know by now. But money woes can certainly cause problems for couples, especially during the economic downturn. The bottom line: It’s complicated. (New York Times/City Room)
The Great Recession may be over, but this era of high joblessness is probably just beginning. Ultimately, it is likely to warp our politics, our culture, and the character of our society for years to come. (The Atlantic)
Finding a job got much tougher last year, as the number of available openings fell by nearly one quarter. At the same time, the unemployed population soared by more than one-third, leaving more laid-off workers competing for fewer jobs. (Associated Press)…
11 Easy Steps to Relocating
If Tom Joad were here today (and real), he might just sit tight in his home state of Oklahoma.
That’s because, despite record high unemployment and an unequal distribution of jobs across the fifty states, fewer unemployed Americans are hitting the road in search of work since World War II.
Worse: only 7.3% of job seekers relocated for work in the fourth quarter of 2009, according to Challenger, Gray & Christmas.
Perhaps employers just aren’t hiring across state lines, but some people have it tough—saddled with debt, or a home that they can’t sell. Who’s got the cash for a big move into the unknown?…
Recession Briefing: Highway Robbery on the Rise
What you need to know today to survive and thrive in the recession.
Thieves are increasingly swiping tractor-trailers filled with goods, triggering a spike in cargo theft on the nation’s highways. (Wall Street Journal)
Nationally, 37 million people — about one in eight Americans — visited food pantries and soup kitchens in 2009, compared with 25 million in 2006, according to Feeding America, the national hunger-relief network that did the study. Officials say the numbers really began to skyrocket at the onset of the recession in late 2007. (Chicago Sun-Times)
President Obama’s proposals to tax and curb the activities of Wall Street have thrown an unpredictable element into the debate over financial regulatory reform. They also have touched off an intensive new round of lobbying and raised questions in Congress over whether his plan will add urgency or merely bog things down. (New York Times)…
Recession Briefing: Bonuses are Back
What you need to know today to survive and thrive in the recession.
Goldman Sachs, the world’s richest investment bank, could be about to pay its chief executive Lloyd Blankfein a bumper bonus of up to $100 million in defiance of moves by President Obama to take action against such payouts. (Times of London)
Professional sports teams, concert venues and opera houses may all be seeing drops in attendance as a result of the recession, but suburban community colleges are having the opposite problem. They’re running out of room. (Chicago Daily Herald)
California wine shipments fell in 2009 for the first time in 16 years as purchases in the U.K., the biggest export market, plunged during the global recession. (Bloomberg)…
Recession Briefing: Americans Have Money for Gifts, But Not Food
What you need to know today to survive and thrive in the recession.
Nearly one in five Americans said they lacked the money to buy the food they needed at some point in the last year, according to a survey co-sponsored by the Gallup organization and released Tuesday by an anti-hunger group. (New York Times)
Consumers spent an average of $811 on holiday gifts, significantly more than the $699 they initially planned to spend, according to a survey. About 4 in 5 consumers bought gifts, and many shoppers bought for themselves, the poll found. (Los Angeles Times)
“How do I know when the next recession will occur? All I have to do is ask my wife,” writes Gene Marks. “That’s because women know this answer. Not men.” (Bloomberg BusinessWeek)
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