unemployed

Unemployment 9.6% for September 2010

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The September 2010 monthly unemployment figures are out. The official unemployment rate stayed the same at 9.6% and the total jobs lost were -95,000. -159,000 government jobs were lost and private sector jobs increased by +64,000, with 16,900 of those jobs being temporary. -77,000 of the government jobs lost were temporary Census jobs. U6, or the broader unemployment measurement, jumped up to 17.1%.

IMF - Global Employment Crisis

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The schizophrenic IMF has declared the world has a global jobs crisis:

AMERICA and Europe face the worst jobs crisis since the 1930s and risk ''an explosion of social unrest'', the International Monetary Fund has warned.

''The labour market is in dire straits. The Great Recession has left behind a wasteland of unemployment,'' said IMF chief Dominique Strauss-Kahn at an Oslo jobs summit with the International Labour Federation.

A joint IMF-ILO report said 30 million jobs had been lost since the crisis, three-quarters in richer economies. Global unemployment has reached 210 million. ''The Great Recession has left gaping wounds. High and long-lasting unemployment represents a risk to the stability of existing democracies,'' it said.

The study cited evidence that victims of recession in their early 20s suffer lifetime damage and lose faith in public institutions. A new twist is an apparent decline in the ''employment intensity of growth'' as rebounding output requires fewer extra workers. As such, it may be hard to re-absorb those laid off even if recovery gathers pace. The world must create 45 million jobs a year for the next decade to tread water.

How does this square the IMF demanding austerity measures, gutting employment benefits, wages and security? It doesn't.

Suicides Spike for long term unemployed

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While listening to cable TV idiots prattle on about the wedge issue du jour, we have this:

There is no saying how many suicides the recession has caused.

During the Great Depression, the suicide rate increased about 20 percent, from 14 to 17 per 100,000 people. The Asian economic crisis in 1997 led to an estimated 10,400 additional suicides in Japan, Hong Kong and Korea, with suicides spiking more than 40 percent among some demographic groups. But such statistics can mislead, social scientists say. Joblessness does not cause suicide. Rather, it correlates: Depressed persons tend to lose their jobs due to poor work performance, and a few also commit suicide. Jobless people tend to turn to alcohol, worsening their depression, and increasing the chances that they harm themselves. Still, academic studies show that suicide rates tend to move with the unemployment rate. Researchers in New Zealand found that the unemployed were up to three times as likely to commit suicide, with middle-aged men the most likely.

So how many suicides are associated with the recession? Nobody knows, not yet. The statistics lag about three years, so the official Center for Disease Control numbers still predate the financial crisis. Right now, therefore, the reports remain anecdotal.

We're Broke! Unemployed Getting Down to the Wire on Survival Funds

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A new survey by Career Builder shows people are almost to the point of sifting through the garbage in order to survive. I'm being sarcastic, but this is really bad.

Nearly a quarter of U.S. laid-off workers are relying mostly on unemployment benefits or financial aid, and almost as many are cutting back spending to get by, according to research released on Wednesday.

Asked to list their primary means of making ends meet, a sixth said they are using savings and a fifth said they are relying on a spouse or partner to support the household, according to a survey of unemployed workers by CareerBuilder.com, an online jobs site.

The most common answer was unemployment benefits, at 23 percent, and cutting back spending to just necessities, at 20 percent, it said.

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