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Wall St is laying off thousands of people. Ought to make the OWS folks proud.
Without recovery in the housing market there will be no recovery in the labor market.
Jobless Claims Rose in Latest Week - WSJ.com
Seems very odd considering seasonal hires usually aren't let go until mid Jan. I hope this isn't going to continue as a trend.
Wall St is laying off thousands of people. Ought to make the OWS folks proud.
Without recovery in the housing market there will be no recovery in the labor market.
Many foreclosures are still in limbo. I wish they would just get it over with because its killing those in my industry. Not to mention the effect its having depressing values.
Doesn't surprise me any.
Barry better hope his class warfare works. It looks like the economy is gonna stay in the toilet.
He's determined to stay busy, job or no job, for sanity's sake. Maybe he'll help a neighbor. Exercise. Or check out computer blueprints of construction projects around Winston-Salem, N.C., to stay connected to the world where he thrived for three decades. Childress has been laid off twice since late 2009, most recently for 10 months. "Every day is a struggle," he says in a soft drawl. "The struggle is the unknown. You've worked your way up the ladder and you get to a point in life and a position in work where you're comfortable … then all of a sudden everything goes away. It's like being thrown into a hole and you're climbing to get up, but it's greased. There's no way of getting out."
The frustrations of one 53-year-old North Carolina man are multiplied millions of times over across time zones and generations in a country still gripped by economic anxiety, despite increasing signs of recovery. And they resound in a presidential campaign pitting an incumbent defending his economic record against GOP opponents who are attacking it. Unemployment in January was at its lowest level in three years — 8.3% — and 1.8 million jobs were added last year, compared with about 1 million in 2010. But there's still a long way to go: There are 5.6 million fewer jobs than there were when the recession began in late 2007. About 12.8 million people are out of work and what's especially troubling, according to Federal Reserve Chairman Ben Bernanke, is the large number of long-term unemployed — more than 40%• have been jobless more than six months.
The long-term unemployed don't fit into any neat category. They're young and old. They have high school diplomas and master's degrees. Some become so discouraged, they stop looking for a time or become mid-life college students. Others find temporary jobs, then return to the jobless rolls for long stretches. In 2011, the average length of being out of work was 39 weeks — about nine months. But statistics tell only part of the story. They don't gauge the despair of a thirtysomething office manager who has stopped counting how many resumes he's sent out. Or the apprehension of a 60-ish tool-and-die maker who lost his job, returned to school, but still can't find work — and doubts he ever will again.
Or the rejection J.R. Childress feels, declaring that unemployment "makes you feel you're not a part of society because you're not earning your way." Childress started working after high school, first in factories, then in construction, eventually earning a six-figure salary as vice president of operations at a company. In October 2009, he was laid off when road construction and building projects came to a near halt. After a year without work, Childress took a huge pay cut to be a construction foreman, but that job ended last April. He's convinced he has two strikes against him: his age and lack of college degree.
"I'm putting out resumes, but they're going into a black hole," he says. Prospective employees, he says "want 33, not 53. … They say, 'We really like you, but if we spend our time training you, when construction comes back, you're going to leave.'" He pauses, and adds: "That's not paying my bills." Childress' wife works and their 24-year-old twins are out of college so that eases their financial burden, but he says he asks himself: "'Am I going to be 75 or 80 and not be able to retire? … What did I do to deserve this? When is it going to turn around for me?'"
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The economic climate is causing a rise in the number of exaggerated insurance claims, a survey suggests. Insurance firm Axa questioned 2,000 policy holders with various companies, and less than half said they considered an exaggerated claim to be dishonest. Axa said insurance was seen as a "soft target" for people wanting extra cash in times of austerity.
Last year, the Association of British Insurers said fraudulent claims had risen 10% in one year. In the survey, 9% of people who said they had made a claim in the last five years said they had exaggerated it, typically adding £607 to the claim. Some said they claimed for non-existent jewellery or cash, designer goods which were in fact fake and freezers full of expensive food rather than more basic items.
'Not victimless'
More than one in 10 people said they would be more likely to consider trying to bump up a claim than they were three years ago, and men (12%) were found to be more likely to exaggerate then women (6%). "It's not a victimless crime, honest customers end up footing the bill through higher premiums," said Axa head of fraud Steve Gaywood. But he revealed that pushing your luck with an exaggerated claim could often leave policy holders in a much worse position. "If consumers get caught out they run the risk of having the whole claim turned down as well as facing problems getting insurance in the future," he said.
Earlier this year, the House of Commons Transport Select Committee said car insurance costs could be substantially reduced if claimants were made to provide more proof that they had suffered whiplash injuries. Over the last six years, despite a 23% fall in the number of casualties caused by road accidents, there has been a 70% rise in motor insurance injury claims in the past six years, with the vast majority of them being claims of whiplash injury.
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-16998687
