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• Unemployment data--April 2013 graph: unempl> 6mos. CBPP 4/13
• Analysis
  • "While the total jobs number was somewhat better than the consensus prediction, the composition was disturbing. More than a fifth of the added jobs (34,600) were in employment services. Restaurant employment accounted for 38,000 jobs and the retail sector added 29,300. These three sectors accounted for more than half of April job growth. Health care added 19,000 jobs, a bit less than its 25,000 average over the last year.....The job losers were led by the government sector, with the federal government shedding 8,000 jobs, 3,500 of which were in the Postal Service. State and local governments lost 3,000 jobs, bringing their job loss over the last year to 224,000. Construction shed 6,000 jobs, all in the non-residential sector. This reflects less public building as reported in the March construction data. Manufacturing employment was flat in April for the second consecutive month. There is clearly little momentum in this sector right now.....One issue worth emphasizing from this and past reports is that there is zero evidence that the prolonged period of high unemployment is due to a lack of skills of the workforce. This is known because there are no major areas of the economy in which we see the standard signs of a shortage of skilled workers: rising wages, increasing hours, and large numbers of vacancies. However at an even more basic level, the rise in unemployment rates has been roughly proportionate across education levels." Baker, CEPR, 5/3/13

"This is a classic “hold-steady” report—there were enough jobs to keep the unemployment rate stable, but not much more. In good times this would be fine, but at a time of persistent economic weakness, it represents an ongoing disaster. We need 8.7 million jobs to get back to a healthy labor market. The average growth rate so far in 2013 is 196,000 jobs a month; at that rate, it will take more than five years to return to the prerecession unemployment rate..... It is worth noting that sustained high unemployment among young college graduates underscores that today’s unemployment crisis does not stem from workers lacking adequate education or skills. Rather, a lack of demand for goods and services makes it unnecessary for employers to significantly ramp up hiring..... the majority of this country’s more than 4 million missing workers are “prime-age” workers (age 25–54), particularly prime-age men." See graphs Shierholz EPI 5/3/13

"Unemployment remains stubbornly high and many people who would likely have a job in a stronger economy are not even looking for work. Consequently, the share of the population with a job remains well below what it was over the two decades before the recession started in December 2007.... lawmakers allowed the payroll tax cut to expire at the end of the year (while extending some of the high-income tax cuts that have much lower job-creating, bang-for-the-buck impacts) because they are focused too much on deficit reduction and not enough on job creation, and because many lawmakers insisted on preserving as much of the high-income tax cuts as possible. They have let sequestration’s automatic spending cuts take effect rather than crafting a balanced alternative that would achieve the same deficit reduction over the longer term without hampering the economic recovery (and ideally providing additional short-term infrastructure investment or other stimulus)." Stone, CBPP 5/3/13

"The report beat expectations, but the unemployment rate barely changed at 7.5%, labor force participation is actually down slightly, remaining stubbornly low at 63.3%, and more workers who need full-time work are employed part time. The labor force participation rate and high rate of involuntary part-time workers shows once again that the economy is not able to create adequate jobs for our growing population, to truly recover from the Lesser Depression, or to provide workers with the income they need to meet their basic needs. The rise in involuntary part-time employment helped bump the broader measure of unemployment that includes those workers as well as discouraged workers (“U-6”) up to 13.9%. What job growth we did see in April is welcome, but troublingly concentrated in low-wage sectors or unstable temporary work. 19% of the new jobs were in temporary help services and 18% were in retail, the sector that includes the same employers that workers struck in Chicago because they can’t survive on the low wages." CPEG 5/7/13

"The labor force participation rate, that is the ratio between the labor force as measured by the BLS and the potential labor force (NIP) remained unchanged from March both adjusted and unadjusted. Seasonally unadjusted, it was 63.3%. This is the lowest participation rate since May 1979, that is 34 years ago." Hugh, Naked Capitalism, 5/3/13

See also "Should the United States Have 2.2 Million More Jobs?", Greenstone & Looney, Brookings, 5/3/13

• State, Met. Area Employment and Unemployment Data, BLS, monthly
• Interactive map: Unemployment rates by state, BLS; also WSJ
• Interactive map: Job loss by state. EPI
• Geography of Recession chronological map of unemployment rates by county
• Going Nowhere: Workers Wages since the Mid-1970s, TCF, 1/13
• Are We Winning the War on Poverty? Landy, TCF 9/12
• No Relief in 2012 from High Unemployment for African Americans and LatinosEPT, 2/12
• Who Has Benefitted from the Post-Great Recession Recovery? Sum &McLaughlin 7/11
• Global Employment Trends 2013, ILO 1/13
• Jobs Missing in the Great Recession. 12/11
• Downturn Continues to Lower Union Membership, Zipperer, CEPR 1/11
• Long Road Ahead, Krugman blog, 1/11
• How Government spent your income taxes, National Priorities Project
• Unemployment Insurance Extension May Be Short-Lived, Bloom, WDL10/10
• International Unemployment Rates and Employment Indexes 2008-2009, BLS
• The Stagnating Labor Market Jayadev & Konczal, Roosevelt Institute 9/10
• The Good, the Bad and the ERGly, Stecker, NJPP 9/10
• How America Can Create Jobs, Andy Grove, Intel, BW 7/10
• SF Labor Council demands U.S. enforcement of treaties & laws ensuring Full Employment, Right to a Job & Union Rights, 3/10
• Jobs Crisis Fact Sheet, A.Turner, 3/10
• How a New Jobless Era Will Transform America, D.Peck,, Atlantic, 3/10
• Many highly profitable companies cut jobs in 2009, Orr, EPI 12/09
• "Generation Recession," Ratner, the Nation, 11/09
• The safety net and the recession, Mishel, EPI, 10/09
• The Great Recession of 2007-2009: PostWW II Record Impacts on Rising Unemployment and Underutilization Problems, Sum & al, 7/09
• Work-Sharing May Help Companies Avoid Layoffs, Greenhouse, NYT 6/09
• Work Sharing--an Alternative to Layoffs for Tough Times, Ridley, CLASP 3/09
• Welfare Aid Isn’t Growing as Economy Drops Off, NYT, 2/09
• Where Homes Are Cheaper Than Cars: Bankruptcy Weighs Heavily on Real Estate, Timiraos, WSJ 6/05
• Why labor law doesn't work for workers, Bacon [EFCA], 3/09
• Variations in Government Aid Across the Nation, NYT, 5/09
• Illegal Firings During Union Election Campaigns, CEPR 3/09
• Interactive map: Unemployment rates by state
• Conference Board Employment Trends Index
• Median income rose as did poverty in 2007 2000s have been extremely weak for living standards of most households, Bernstein, EPI 8/08
• The medicare myth that refuses to die, Lorinc, Globe and Mail, 8/08
• Dr. Wall Street: How the American Health Care System Got So Sick, Brecher, 7/08
• Equality in Job Loss: Women Are Increasingly Vulnerable to Layoffs During
  Recessions, US Congress, JEC , 7/08
• Job Opportunities for the Green Economy: A State-by-State Picture of Occupations that Gain from Green Investments, Pollin & Wicks-Lim
• Woe is the American Worker, Waldman, Am. Prospect, 12/07
• What We’re In For: Projected Economic Impact of the Next Recession, Schmitt & Baker, 1/08
• The Good, The Bad, and the Ugly: Job Quality in the United States over the Three Most Recent Business Cycles, Schmitt, CEPR, 11/07
• Typical families see income and earnings decline, Irons, EPI, 9/07
• Bridging the Gaps:A Picture of How Work Supports Work in Ten States, 10/07
• No-Benefit Jobs Leave Parents Struggling, H. Boushey, Sojourners, S/O 07
• The 2007 Labor Day List: Partnerships that Work
• CEO pay: 364 times more than workers, 8/07
• Neither Free Nor Fair:The Subversion of Democracy Under NLRB Elections,7/07
• Americans' ambivalence about the economy, Mishel et al, 6/07
• Unemployment depresses immune function, Psychosom. Med. 9/07
• Making the Federal Minimum Wage a Living Wage , R. Pollin, 6/07
• A Tale of Two Time Periods for Low-Income Families, Bernstein, 6/07
• The Gender Pay Gap is the Smallest on Record—Not Necessarily Good News 9/06
• Jobs for All: The Key to Rebuilding after Katrina, Kochan, CAP
• Data--employment, earnings, family income, hours, prices, unionization
• The Bush Tax Cuts, 3/07
• 99 Percent... are Net Losers Under Bush Tax and Spending Policies 6/06
• The Middle Class on the Precipice, by Elizabeth Warren, Harvard Mag.,J/F 06
• What's wrong with the economy? Mishel & Eisenbrey, 12/05
• Without defense-related spending private sector would still be in a jobs hole 8/05
• Finding the better fit: Receiving unemployment insurance increases likelihood of re-employment with health insurance, Heather Boushey
• Ownership Society--Social Security Is Only the BeginningWray, Levy Inst.
• Operating Instructions [employer power]
• U.S. workers enjoy far fewer vacation days than Europeans, EPI, 8/05
• Injuries to All [workplace injuries]
• Undermining the Right to Organize: Employer Behavior During Union Representation Campaigns
• Whatever Happened to Private Pensions? C. R. Morris, TCF, 2/06
• Whoops! There Goes Another Pension Plan M.W. Walsh, NY Times , 9/18/05
• Riding into the Sunset [retirement], Wm Greider, Nation, 6/05
• Productivity growth and profits far outpace compensation in current expansion, EPI. April 21, 2005
• "As Goes Wal-Mart," Beth Shulman 5/05
• Corporate America Pulling Back Pension Safety Net, LA Times, 5/15//05
• Government Budget Calculator, CEPR
• The Permanent War Economy: Real Security or False Promise? Resource written by ministers for church bulletins. Feedback welcomed.
• The Late, Great Income Tax Max B. Sawicky, 4/15/ 2005
• International comparisons: Beyond the U.S. model, EPI; Book chapter
• The Rise in Job Displacement, 1991-2004, Crisis in Manufacturing, CEPR, 8/04
• Middle-Class Tightrope, Jacob Hacker, August 2004
• Miltary Spending and Jobs: A Quiz
• The Job Market--Down and Out in White-Collar America, Fortune, June, 2003
• Special Report 4: The Permanent War Economy: Real Security or False Promise? by C. Bell, S. D. Collins, H. L. Ginsburg, and M. Malloy
• Job Deficits Deepen as Budget Deficits Explode, by Gregory DeFreitas
• Poison pill: Why the new reform bill will make Medicare's problems bigger--and even harder to fix, J. S. Hacker & T. R. Marmor, Boston Globe, December 7, 2003
• The Savings from an Efficient Medicare Drug Plan, D. Baker, 1/06
• "Jobs for All": Another Dream of the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. by Mathew Forstater 
• Innocent Fraud, by John Kenneth Galbraith
• Better than Money: Alternatives to GDP, Nordic New Network