Record joblessness contributes to Las Vegas' #1 ranking as Forbes' "riskiest city for homeowners"

Las Vegas ranks at the top Forbes magazine’s list of Riskiest Cities for Homeowners, the magazine reported in its July 9 issue, on newsstands today.

Overall, 7% of all U.S. homes loans are at least 90 days delinquent in the 10 riskiest cities in America – the rate is 10% in Las Vegas. Contrast that to the 4.4% average delinquency rate in the nation’s 100 largest metro markets. And record-high unemployment in Las Vegas and similarly distressed markets is fueling the problem.


"It's not purely a house price story; there's a second story going on," Kyle Lundstedt, a senior managing director at Lender Processing Services, the Jacksonville, Fla.-based mortgage-industry service provider that compiled data for Forbes’ analysis, told the magazine. "When you combine even moderate house price declines with significant unemployment, you get a double whammy that has significant consequences for the consumer."

Along with finances, outlook on life and optimism are casualties of Great Recession, survey says

The Great Recession has left Americans not only financially devastated, but emotionally overwhelmed as well.

More than three-quarters of Americans reported that they have significantly changed their outlook on life since the start of the worst economic downturn since the Great Depression, according to a poll conducted in late June by public opinion consultancy StrategyOne. Other disturbing findings:

• 58% of those surveyed have reevaluated their approach to life since the recession began
• 52% have become less hopeful about the future since the recession began
• 49% now believe that, because of the recession, that they will probably fall short of their personal or professional goals

In addition, significant numbers of Americans report their temperaments and behaviors have changed - for the worse - since the recession began in December 2007:

• 42% have become more easily angry or emotional since the recession began
• 41% have become more depressed or are frequently sad since the recession began
• 33% find themselves screaming or raising their voice more frequently since the recession began
• 15% sought out assistance for mental health problems since the recession began

And a number of Americans are coping with the slow economy by drinking, smoking or using drugs more often.

• 19% started drinking or smoking more
• 6% started using illegal drugs or used them more often

In addition, many on the verge of significant life events - such as marrying, divorcing, having children or retiring - say they have postponed taking that step specifically because of financial considerations caused by the recession:

• 27% of women 18 to 34 years old have delayed having a baby
• 21% of those 55 years or older have postponed retirement
• 18% of single Americans have postponed getting married or engaged
• 9% of married Americans have delayed getting divorced

"There are a number of untold stories out of the 'Great Recession' - Americans changing their outlook on life, becoming less hopeful, and also putting off having a child or leaving a troubled marriage," said Bradley Honan, Senior Vice President of StrategyOne, who authored the study. "The impact of this recession on Americans can't be solely measured by job loss or how much value the stock market has lost. Instead, we must consider how much the emotional and psychological outlook of the country may have been substantially altered by what's happened."

Viewing a Leading Economist's April Predictions About Unemployment Today

The following is from testimony given April 14, 2010, before the Senate Finance Committee by Mark Zandi Chief Economist of Moody’s Analytics. It's frightening how appropro it is three months later to the unemployment situation and debate regarding Congress' decision not to extend unemployment insurance.

 
"The 8.4 million decline in jobs represents over 6% of the pre-recession job base, and the nearly double-digit unemployment rate means some 15 million Americans are looking for jobs. There are nearly five unemployed workers for each available position; normally the ratio is at most one unemployed worker per open position. (Note: It's now estimated that there are more than six unemployed Americans for each job.)

For anyone losing a job, moreover, it is extraordinarily difficult to find another. The average length of unemployment is closing in on eight months, and nearly half of those unemployed have been out of work more than the 26 weeks normally covered by unemployment insurance. (Note: the percentage of Americans who have been out of work for six months or more has now grown to 55%.) Even in the early 1980s—the last time unemployment hit double digits—only 1/4 of the unemployed were out of work that long. During the worst recession of the 1950s, closer to a 1/10 of workers were in this difficult position.
 

The unemployment statistics are bad, but they still understate the stress in the job market. Including those working part-time because they cannot find full-time work, and those who want to work but are not counted as unemployed because they have not looked for jobs in the past month, the so-called underemployment rate jumps to almost 17%.

This represents an astounding 26 million Americans. On top of that are those whose hours have been cut back; the average number of hours worked per week remains just above record lows.

... The recession’s severe job losses erased a decade of U.S. employment growth. Not until 2013 are payrolls expected to regain their previous peak. 

... It will take even longer for unemployment to decline to its full-employment rate. The estimated full-employment unemployment rate has already risen from below 5% prior to the Great Recession to nearly 5.5% now and could go even higher unless unemployment begins to decline soon. Assuming job growth performs as expected, unemployment will not fall back to a rate consistent with full employment until 2014.

It is ... important that policymakers provide emergency benefits to those who will lose their jobs this year. No form of the fiscal stimulus has proved more effective during the past two years than emergency UI benefits, providing a bang for the buck of 1.61—that is, for every $1 in UI benefits, GDP one year later is increased by an estimated $1.61. 

This economic boost is large because financially stressed unemployed workers spend benefits quickly, as opposed to saving them ... if emergency UI benefits are not extended ... the recovery would struggle to evolve into an expansion as anticipated.
 

... If large numbers of unemployed workers begin running out of UI benefits this spring and summer, consumer sentiment could sink further. Attitudes would sour not only among the unemployed but also among their relatives, friends and neighbors, as they worry more about their own situations."

June Jobless Rate Falls as Many Quit Looking

The nation's unemployment rate fell to 9.5% in June but only because 652,000 Americans quit looking for work, as conflicting economic signals cause investors and consumers to wonder whether the nation is continuing to recover or sliding back toward recession.

Unemployment fell from 9.7% in May even though the nation lost 125,000 jobs in June, the Labor Department reported today.

Nigel Gault, chief U.S. economist with economic, business and political forecasting consultancy IHS Global Insight, said the jobless rate depends on how many people are looking for work. So many Americans have been unemployed for so long that their benefits are expiring, which perversely contributed to June's statistical dip.

"The rate declined, but for all the wrong reasons," Gault told the San Francisco Chronicle.

Republicans Block Unemployment Insurance Extension for 4th Time

The Senate Thursday rejected yet another attempt to authorize extended unemployment insurance, falling one vote short of stopping a Republican filibuster that essentially killed the bill until after Congress' Fourth of July vacation.

As of today, 1.2 million unemployed Americans will stop receiving aid from the federal government, according to a report in the International Business Times.

The stopgap bill was the fourth attempt to revive unemployment insurance. To win Republican support, Democratic leaders slashed the bill's 10-year deficit impact from $134 billion to $33 billion, but Republicans still refused to budget from their "No" stance. "The only reason the unemployment extension hasn't passed is because our friends on the other side have refused to pass a bill that doesn't add to the debt," said Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.)

Not true, according to The Washington Post. The only reason 2 million out-of-work Americans will have lost their unemployment benefits by Independence Day is because Sen. Robert Byrd (D-W. Va.) died Monday, robbing the Democrats of the additional single vote they needed for passage.

The bill will be re-introduced on July 14, after the July 4 recess and when Byrd's replacement is likely to be named.

A more callous, uncaring Congress?

Since the 1950s, extended federal benefits have never been allowed to expire with a national unemployment rate of more than 7.2%. The Bureau of Labor Statistics shows that the current rate stands at 9.7%, and some business analysts predict it will climb another tenth of a percentage point, to 9.8%, in the latest federal unemployment figures set to be released Friday morning.

Survey: More than half of all Americans have taken job hit in Great Recession

From:     To:

More than half of all adults in the U.S. labor force say that since the Great Recession began 30 months ago, they have suffered a spell of unemployment, a cut in pay, a reduction in hours or been moved involuntarily to part-time work, a new survey by the Pew Research Center has found.

The survey also finds that the recession has reduced spending and borrowing by Americans, diminished expectations about retirement and their children's future, and fueled beliefs that it will take several years - at a minimum - for family finances and house values to recover.

Some findings are:

• One-third have lost jobs. In addition to pay cuts and reductions in hours, the survey finds that about one-third of working adults have been unemployed during at least some portion of the recession. 

• It ain't over 'til ... A majority of Americans believe the U.S. economy is still in a recession.

• Earning less, spending less. More than six-in-ten Americans say they have cut back on their spending since the recession began in December 2007.

• Family Finances: Slightly more than half are in worse financial shape now than before the recession began, while just more than 20% say they are in better shape.

• Lower Expectations for Children's Future: Slightly more than a quarter of Americans say their children will have a worse standard of living than they now have.

Read the full report at pewsocialtrends.org .

"Underemployed" and long-time unemployed continue to struggle in jobless recovery

Although the U.S. unemployment rate dipped slightly in May - to 9.7% from 9.9% - two factors in it spell more difficulty and frustration for the nation's 15 million unemployed, 6.8 million who have been out of work six months or longer.

Although about 430,000 people found jobs in May, leading to the drop in the unemployment rate, almost all of the hiring was of temporary U.S. census workers by the federal government. Private employers, the true drivers of the economy, added just 41,000 jobs, about one-quarter what economists had predicted would be created. It also was the fewest added since January, the Labor Department reported this morning, and 177,000 fewer than were created in the previous month.

The "underemployment" rate - made up of those who have given up looking for work and part-timers who would rather be working full time - fell to 16.6% from 17.1% in the prior month. But the number of people out of work six months or longer reached 6.76 million, a new high. They made up 46% of all unemployed people, also a record high.

The Gallup organization Thursday also detailed one aspect of the difficult psychological toll long-term unemployment has on individuals. Unemployed Americans' hopes for finding work drop sharply as their length of unemployment increases. Among job seekers who have been unemployed less than one month, 71% think they'll find work within the next month. For those who have been unemployment for more than six months, that percentage drops by almost one-half, to 36%, the organization found in the latest installment of a tracking poll it conducts.

Gallup also called for greater attention to the millions of underemployed Americans, which its research placed at 19.1%, far higher than the official government number. Gallup speculated that the financial crisis in the European Union, the decline in the stock market, and Gulf oil spill have spooked employers. "Regardless, the nation needs to expand its focus to include not only the unemployed, but also the underemployed," Gallup opined.

About 125,000 new jobs are needed each month just to keep up with population growth and prevent the unemployment rate from rising. Hiring isn't expected to be consistently strong enough to quickly drive down the unemployment rate for at least the remainder of this year.

Employers allege wrongdoings against laid-off workers - but is motivation to illegally keep from paying unemployment taxes?

As if giving terminated employees a few minutes to collect personal effects under the watchful eye of a security guard and showing them the door with a week or two of severance isn't a humiliating enough, businesses are zeroing in on yet another indignity to cut costs during the Great Recession: falsely accusing laid-off workers of wrongdoing in an effort to stem employer-paid unemployment taxes.

In 2006-07, employers lodged about 306,000 accusations of misconduct against terminated employees, a number that soared 46% in 2008-09, to almost 447,000, according to data from the National Employment Law Project.

"The likelihood that the amount of misconduct would jump as the labor market worsened is extremely low," Bruce Nissen, director of research at Florida International University's Center for Labor Research and Studies, told Orlando Sentinel reporter Jim Stratton. "If anything, workers would be more likely to ‘toe the line' during times of high unemployment. "This is a way to reduce their costs."

Companies have good reason to limit the number of former workers filing unemployment benefits claims. Businesses pay state unemployment taxes based, in part, on how much their former employees collect over time. Workers fired for misconduct are ineligible for benefits and don't count as marks against businesses when states calculate new state unemployment contribution rates. So, alleging that an employee has committed wrongdoing can disqualifying them from receiving benefits and the company usually pays less in taxes.

Some researchers, however, told Stratton that assuming ill intent on the part of employers because of increasing misconduct allegations is spurious; the recent jump is tied to the sheer volume of claims, not to fraudulent employer claims. But others countered that misconduct firings should be driven by the size of the labor pool, not by recession-related layoffs. When viewed that way, there were about 17 misconduct objections for every 1,000 workers in Florida in 2006, a number that jumped to 33 in 2009, Stratton reported.

Is the Great Recession Drawing to a Close? 162,000 jobs added in March, most in 3 years

The U.S. Labor Department is heralding March’s employment figures – the addition of 162,000 jobs, the most since the recession began but below analysts' expectations of 190,000 – as a sign that the Great Recession has drawn to a close.

However:

• The U.S. unemployment rate remained at 9.7% for the third straight month. (More Americans entered the work force last month, which prevented the increase in jobs from reducing the unemployment rate.)

• The total includes 48,000 temporary workers hired for the U.S. Census – fewer than many economists forecast.

• 15 million Americans are out of work, roughly double the number before the recession began in December 2007.

• The number of Americans out of work for six months or longer increased to 6.5 million, a record high.

• More than 44% of those out of work are long-term unemployed – or out of work six months or longer – also a record.

• More Americans say they are working part-time, although they prefer full-time work. When they and discouraged workers who have given up searching for jobs are included, the "underemployment" rate increased slightly to 16.9%.

• Average hourly earnings fell by two cents to $22.47, a result of high unemployment enabling companies to hold down wages.

• At the same time, average weekly earnings rose by about $3 to $629.37, showing that most employers probably are having current employees work longer hours before hiring new workers.

"For those laid off, unemployment is stretching longer and longer and putting severe distress on families." - Christine Owens, executive director of the National Employment Law Project

Although the increased employment is welcome news, the below-project figure confirms predictions that it will be a very slow recovery. Most economists – who had predicted growth of 190,000 jobs – don't expect new hiring to be fast enough in 2010 to meaningfully reduce the unemployment rate.

"It is still disappointing that it took roughly nine months before we started to see any meaningful rebound" in jobs, Paul Ashworth, senior U.S. economist at Capital Economics, wrote in a note to clients.

Case Against Layoffs: Killing workers (literally), the economy — and even the bottom line

In today's slash-and-burn labor economy, Newsweek's latest cover story will be blasphemous to many of America's titans of industry: "Lay Off the Layoffs — Our over-reliance on downsizing is killing workers, the economy — and even the bottom line."

Could it be that the millions of Americans who have been left jobless in the Great Recession are suffering for naught?

Jeffrey Pfeffer, professor of organizational behavior at Stanford University's Graduate School of Business, suggests just that in his almost 3,000-word manifest in the Feb. 15 issue of the magazine.

"Companies have always cut back on workers during economic downturns, but over the last two decades layoffs have become an increasingly common part of corporate life — in good times as well as bad." But "companies now routinely cut workers even when profits are rising ... to minimize hits to profits, not to ensure their survival." 

— Jeffrey Pfeffer, professor of organizational behavior at Stanford University's Graduate School of Business

Pfeffer, co-author of the new Hard Facts, Dangerous Half-Truths and Total Nonsense: Profiting From Evidence-Based Management, details the ill that layoff can cause, including some surprising ones. 

"Even if downsizing ... is an accepted weapon in the modern management arsenal, it's often a big mistake," Pfeffer writes. "In fact, there is a growing body of academic research suggesting that firms incur big costs when they cut workers." These include:

• severance pay
• paying out accrued vacation and sick pay
• outplacement costs
• higher unemployment-insurance taxes
• cost of rehiring employees when business improves
• low morale
• risk-averse survivors
• potential lawsuits, sabotage, or even workplace violence from aggrieved or former employees
• loss of institutional memory and knowledge
• diminished trust in management
• reduced productivity

Other consequences are surprising. Conventional wisdom that large-scale restructurings automatically boost a company's stock price is nothing more than the equivalent of a corporate urban legend, Pfeffer writes. Three academic studies looking at more than 2,000 restructurings between 1979 and 1998 "found negative stock returns to companies announcing layoffs, with larger and permanent layoffs leading to greater negative effects."

However, no consequence to companies is nearly as serious as those felt by downsized employees, Pfeffer says. "Layoffs literally kill people," he concludes, noting that Americans' health insurance is generally tied to their employment, and studies consistently show a connection between not having health insurance and individual mortality rates. He also cites a recent National Bureau of Economic Research report that showed U.S. job displacement leads to a 15%-to-20% increase in death rates in the following 20 years. This would extrapolate to a loss in life expectancy of 1.5 years for an employee who loses a job at the age of 40.

"Layoffs are mostly bad for companies, harmful for the economy, and devastating for employees. This is not news, nor should not be," Pfeffer concludes. "There is substantial research literature in fields from epidemiology to organizational behavior documenting these effects. The damage from overzealous downsizing will linger even as the economy recovers."