While the health care battle continues and we await what Barack Obama will finally indicate as to what he wants for health insurance reform, the Obama Administration should be very worried about people unable to find a job. Also, folks who have a job but hours have been sliced, which is boomeranging into the housing market. The record foreclosures now are PRIME MORTGAGES, not SUBPRIME.
If we want to talk the recession is over, tell that to someone else who is buying it. Most Americans don't feel any recession is over and for the jobless that sell is a real empty vacuum.
Employers kept Americans’ working hours near a record low in August, signaling that economic growth is poised to reward companies with added profits while postponing any recovery in the job market.
The average workweek held at 33.1 hours, six minutes from the 33 hours in June that was the lowest since records began in 1964, the Labor Department said yesterday. The report also showed that while payrolls fell by the least since August 2008, the unemployment rate rose to a 26-year high of 9.7 percent.
The preconditions for gains in payrolls, including giving the army of part-timers longer hours and taking on additional temporary employees, weren’t met last month. At the same time, with economic growth forecast to resume this quarter, the figures set the stage for a surge in worker productivity and drop in labor costs that will stoke corporate profits.
“It’s disappointing and it tells us that we are not quite there yet,” said Michael Feroli, an economist at JPMorgan Chase & Co. in New York who used to work at the Federal Reserve. “It’s great for business and terrible for households” for coming months, Feroli said. read more here....
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