America Severely Crippled
Unemployment claims continues to drop in 2013, while job seeker continually struggles to find work. The economy may be recovering but the individuals that were effected since The Great Recession of 2008, are not recovering from the brunt of it’s massive force of financial devastation, in regards to the massive tuition inflation, increase in bankruptcies, foreclosures and poverty.
The numbers of average Americans filing for bankruptcy in our unstable economy rose to 1.57 million bankruptcies, up 20 percent from the year before.
"We know the causes of bankruptcy are principally job losses and health care, with the overlay of the foreclosure crisis," said Deborah Thorne, an associate professor of sociology at Ohio University. "It feels very unsettled, and I'm not surprised the numbers are going up. Until we get our feet on the ground, provide decent-paying jobs, and do something with the housing crisis, bankruptcies will continue to go up."
On Thursday, the Department of Labor reported that the number of new people filing for unemployment benefits fell to just 330,000, a huge drop from the previous week and a new five-year low. This is usually a good indicator of the state of the labor market, so that’s a healthy sign. What’s more, initial jobless claims have been dropping far faster than economists have expected all January.
The only way to measure job growth is knowing how many people were hired for totally New jobs. If an individual is given the job, which is open at Wal-Mart since another individual left that job, you do not have job growth. Corporations cannot say they have job growth because less people are being fired in the country this week than the number of people that were fired last week. –Bob, New Jersey
Economic boom?
Does that mean we’re on the verge of an economic boom? Not likely, here's why, according to Wall Street Journal’s Vincent Cignarella, the recent plunge in jobless claims might just be a weird statistical fluke due to the fact that California has failed to report its claims for the past two weeks in addition to Virginia. A small San Francisco research firm also validated Vincent Cignarella theory by stating it has more to do with the fact that California, whose 38 million populations gives it the biggest workforce in the nation.
“U.S. Poverty: Census Finds 46.2 Million Impoverished As Median Income Drops”. The ranks of America's poor remained stuck at record levels, although dwindling unemployment benefits and modest job gains helped stave off what experts had predicted would be the fourth rise in a row in the poverty rate.With joblessness persistently high, the gap between rich and poor increased in the last year, according to two major census measures.
According to Boston College’s Sloan Center on Aging & Work and the Heldrich Center for Workforce Development at Rutgers University.
The percent of job seekers designated as “long-term unemployed” – those unemployed 27 or more weeks – has never been higher. Less likely to find new employment, older job seekers are currently feeling financial pressure:
- 40% rated their financial situation as poor, and 61% said they have adjusted their plans for retirement.
- 41% of older workers (employed and unemployed) indicated they have no health care benefits.
- Over half (51%) of older workers reported foregoing medical care for themselves or their families, compared to 35% of younger workers.
- 30% of older workers indicated that they had more in credit card debt than retirement savings.
- Fully two thirds (67%) reported using money from savings to make ends meet.
In order to land a job, older job seekers have been willing to make sacrifices, including:
- Willingness to adapt to the depressed job market by changing careers (69%).
- Willingness to take a pay cut (77%), compared to 64% of prime age job seekers
However, only 12% of older workers had taken a class or training course for skills to get a new job, compared to 20% of younger workers.
Job gains averaged 153,000 jobs per month in 2012, little changed from 2011. The sluggish labor market and subdued inflation pressures appear likely to keep the Federal Reserve on its ultra easy monetary policy course.
Contributing writer from The Washington Post
Feature Videos
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