Breaking News
Friday, October 23, 2009
INSTANT VIEW 3-Spain Q3 unemployment unchanged at 17.9 pct
The unemployment rate in Spain stayed unchanged during the third quarter at 17.9% – better than economists had predicted for that country. According to the National Statistics Institute, the number of unemployed workers had dropped in the second quarter by about 14,000 – leaving the count at 4.1 million. The drop was credited to seasonal factors (in Spain the third quarter benefits from summer hirings due to an increase in tourism), but economists expected the rate to break 20% before the end of the year and noted that a lot of employment is still being destroyed in the country. How and in which areas? Must look into this…
Monday, October 19, 2009
Northern Ireland gets boost with NYSE center
Marketplace talks with Michael Smyth, head of economics at Ulster University, about the possible effects of a new service center for the New York Stock Exchange opening in Northern Ireland. The center is expected to provide 400 jobs, most of which will be high-paying ones in computer software development. This should be a benefit to the country, since a big problem there is that the average salary levels are too low to close what some call a productivity gap between them and the rest of the U.K. and Europe.
Click here for more information – it’s a radio show, so in this case, you can listen to neat accents
Thursday, October 15, 2009
Stimulus now! Underemployment at 14 year high
According to figures from the Bureau of Labor Statistics, underemployment in the U.S. was at 11% in September, higher than it’s been in 14 years. Notice that this is also higher than the current jobless rate ~ tricky tricky. Underemployment is a better way to gauge the job market problem since it includes part-time workers who would rather have full-time jobs, highly-skilled workers who are forced to settle for mediocre work due to lack of better jobs, and “marginally attached” workers. Check out the EPI site for more information.
Monday, October 12, 2009
Informal jobs account for 93% of India’s workforce: ILO
According to a report by the International Labour Organization (ILO), all but 7% of India’s working population are employed in informal jobs which do not offer social security. Most Indians work in private, unregistered forms of business that lack basic benefits or insurance and are not regulated by national law. For these workers, who often are self-employed or work together with members of their household, job quality is low, and the risk of falling below the poverty line is high.
Click here to read the details in The Times of India
Friday, October 9, 2009
Japan PM says employment conditions likely to worsen
While in Beijing for a trilateral summit meeting with the Chinese and South Korean heads of state, Japanese Prime Minister Yukio Hatoyama said he expected labor market conditions in Japan to worsen. Although the the unemployment rate fell by .2% in August, job availability remains at a record low as wages are lowered and the jobless population increases. Since recession has damaged the country’s already weak domestic demand, Hatoyama said that the counter-measures to be taken are to boost the safety net and stimulate the economy. Proposed steps in the stimulus plan include allocating allowances for children and repealing a gasoline surcharge, smaller measures than the billion-dollar bailouts given to corporations as part of the economic recovery plan in the United States.
read the article at forbes.com
Thursday, October 8, 2009
European Unemployment
Economix blogger Catherine Rampell overviews a Eurostat report about unemployment across Europe. While the United States had a higher unemployment rate than the European Union as a whole, some individual countries like Latvia and Spain had rates nearly twice as high as that in the U.S. For these countries, hope of a rapid economic recovery seems unlikely, as both are facing massive debt, possible federal budget cuts, and likely tax increases.Even in the recession, richer countries have not had to deal with those factors to such a degree.
See the article in the Economix blog here
Wednesday, September 30, 2009
Unemployment rises at slowest pace in more than a year
This article from the Irish newspaper The Independent shows data on jobless claims in the country within the past month and suggests that the worst may be over as the rate of job losses slows. Although unemployment in Ireland is at the highest level in 14 years, some believe it will improve as an slight upturn begins to stabilize the economy.
see the details here at www.independent.ie
Thursday, September 24, 2009
Brazil’s Jobless Rate Seen Returning to Pre-Crisis Levels
A .1% rise in Brazil’s unemployment rate in August did not deter experts’ beliefs that the rate is stabilizing, according to the Wall Street Journal. Unemployment in the country is at 8.1%, which puts it ahead of the United States as far as weathering the global economic crisis. After peaking at 9.0% in March, the jobless rate fell steadily from April to July, and is not expected to fall much more. The Brazilian Census Bureau declared the rate to be “technically stable,” as the labor market signals a return to normal after ‘necessary economic adjustments.’
click here to read the article
Wednesday, September 9, 2009
UK employment market ‘recovering’
According to monthly research from the United Kingdom’s Recruitment and Employment Confederation, there have been “marginal increases” in August appointments for gainful employment. This is some of the first positive news concerning the job crisis in 17 months, BBC.com reports. Nevertheless, projections that these developments signal the end of the recession are premature.
and here for the video at news.bbc.co.uk
Monday, September 7, 2009
Out of Work, and Too Down to Search On
This New York Times article published in the first week of September examines how the true number of unemployed workers can be skewed by leaving out several different groups of people without jobs. Among these are “discouraged workers” (people who still want to work but have not looked for a job in the past four weeks), those who are “marginally attached to the labor force” (people who have stopped looking because of problems like family responsibility or illness), and those who have chosen to retire, go back to school, or become homemakers instead of continuing a search that they believe is all in vain.
- Ray Rutger, 62, sits in his living room at home. Rutger gave up his job search this year after continuously being turned down in job interviews, he believes on the basis of his age. Photo: Steve Hebert for The New York Times
As the recession wears on, the effects of unemployment can be seen in the lives of these unseen victims. The number of social security claims has skyrocketed as more and more people retire or go on disability. Many quit their job searches to become early retirees or stay-at-home parents even though they would prefer to be working. After continuously being turned down even from jobs for which they are overqualified, some quit searching for work out of sheer frustration. Interviews with four unemployed citizens in the following article reveal how the disappointment of fruitless job searching has simply become too much for them to bear. The rising numbers in these groups is in some ways the most direct measure of job market hopelessness.
Read the details at nytimes.com here
Wednesday, January 7, 2009
‘Workshy’ accusation sparks political storm in Japan
Japan has maintained the second-largest economy in the world, with an unemployment rate that actually dipped two percentage points to 5.5% in July. This relatively low figure is due to the country’s use of so many part-time and temporary workers, who make up roughly a third of the labor force. They include everyone from greeters in supermarkets (mostly elderly) to office workers in corporations (mostly women) to contractors in the auto industry and dispatch laborers in the manufacturing sector (mostly men). Now these workers are bearing the brunt of the recession as their jobs are becoming the first targets during layoffs. Because they are seen as the most expendable positions, more than 85,000 temporary and part-time workers are set to lose their jobs by the end of March.
Volunteers cook food at a soup kitchen for temporary workers in Tokyo's Hibiya Park. Katsumi Kasahara, Associated Press photo.
Many of those who have already lost their jobs used to live in company housing; the newly unemployed were promptly evicted, leaving thousands with nowhere to go. Unions and community groups have opened soup kitchens and provided temporary housing, but are being vastly overwhelmed by the number of those in need. Many of the new destitute have been moved to vacant schools and government buildings, but will only be allowed to stay until January 12.
Friday, December 5, 2008
The underemployment problem
A Marketplace (American Public Media) report that goes into more in-depth explanation of what it means to be underemployed. Especially important when it was broadcasted after more than half a million jobs dropped off payrolls last year, leaving workers scrambling to find even mediocre jobs where their skills often go to waste.
Unemployment: a measure of economic conditions worldwide 
First of all, I would like to say that your blog is really well organized and well-done. Also, I would also like to comment on the Japanese article about how it said that the economy was heading deeper into a recession. As of August 17th, Japan had officially gotten out of their recession and is steadily looking better. Therefore, I am just slightly confused on how they so rapidly got back into a recession or if the writer was just misinformed. Anyway, good luck on your blog!