Stimulus-subsidized jobs in jeopardy, By Alexandra Zavis and Rong-Gong Lin II, September 29, 2010, Los Angeles Times: “Michael Beightol has 12 years of retail experience, but that was no help when he was looking for a job earlier this year. ‘I must have put in 1,000 applications or more, and no one was hiring because of the economy,’ said the 34-year-old Covina resident, who is raising an 8-year-old daughter on his own. His luck changed when Los Angeles County offered to pay his salary at Americal Contractors Corp., a small, veteran-owned painting firm in Pomona that is teaching him a new career as an estimator. ‘I’m so happy that they had this program, because I feel like I am being a productive part of society instead of sitting at home doing nothing,’ Beightol said. Using funding from last year’s $787-billion stimulus bill, California counties have put to work more than 35,000 people by subsidizing their employment for up to a year, according to figures from July. Many of those jobs are now in jeopardy unless Congress extends the funding beyond Thursday, the end of the fiscal year…”
Month: September 2010
US Rebuilding Aid for Haiti
Haiti still waiting for pledged US aid, By Jonathan M. Katz and Martha Mendoza (AP), September 29, 2010, National Public Radio: “Nearly nine months after the earthquake, more than a million Haitians still live on the streets between piles of rubble. One reason: Not a cent of the $1.15 billion the U.S. promised for rebuilding has arrived. The money was pledged by Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton in March for use this year in rebuilding. The U.S. has already spent more than $1.1 billion on post-quake relief, but without long-term funds, the reconstruction of the wrecked capital cannot begin. With just a week to go before fiscal 2010 ends, the money is still tied up in Washington. At fault: bureaucracy, disorganization and a lack of urgency, The Associated Press learned in interviews with officials in the State Department, the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, the White House and the U.N. Office of the Special Envoy. One senator has held up a key authorization bill because of a $5 million provision he says will be wasteful. Meanwhile, deaths in Port-au-Prince are mounting, as quake survivors scramble to live without shelter or food…”
US Census Releases: Recession, Income, and Marriage
- Census Bureau to release flood of numbers in coming weeks, By Ed O’Keefe, September 29, 2010, Washington Post: “In the coming weeks, Americans will be swimming in statistics released by the U.S. Census Bureau. Remember, the Census Bureau doesn’t just tabulate the nation’s population every decade; it also compiles important economic, employment, educational and demographic statistics that are used for determining such things as the allocation of federal funding, where to build new roads and how to market new products…”
- Census finds record gap between rich and poor, By Hope Yen (AP), September 28, 2010, Detroit Free Press: “The income gap between the richest and poorest Americans grew last year to its widest amount on record as young adults and children in particular struggled to stay afloat in the recession. The top-earning 20% of Americans – those making more than $100,000 each year – received 49.4% of all income generated in the U.S., compared with the 3.4% earned by those below the poverty line, according to newly released census figures. That ratio of 14.5-to-1 was an increase from 13.6 in 2008 and nearly double a low of 7.69 in 1968. A different measure, the international Gini index, found U.S. income inequality at its highest level since the Census Bureau began tracking household income in 1967. The U.S. also has the greatest disparity among Western industrialized nations. At the top, the wealthiest 5% of Americans, who earn more than $180,000, added slightly to their annual incomes last year, census data show. Families at the $50,000 median level slipped lower. ‘Income inequality is rising, and if we took into account tax data, it would be even more,’ said Timothy Smeeding, a University of Wisconsin-Madison professor who specializes in poverty. ‘More than other countries, we have a very unequal income distribution where compensation goes to the top in a winner-takes-all economy…'”
- Census: Recession affects all aspects of American life, By Haya El Nasser and Paul Overberg, September 28, 2010, USA Today: “The nation’s financial crisis is altering Americans’ way of life from the home and the workplace to the highway and the altar, according to the Census Bureau’s 2009 American Community Survey out Tuesday. Median household income fell 2.9% from $51,726 in 2008 to $50,221 last year. It dropped in 34 states and increased in only one -North Dakota…”
- For many adults, marriage can wait, census shows, By Conor Dougherty, September 28, 2010, Wall Street Journal: “Marriage is so over. For the first time in at least a century, the proportion of U.S. adults between 25 and 34 who have never been married last year exceeded those who are married, marking a reversal that follows years of decline in marriage rates, according to data released Tuesday by the Census Bureau. Marriage rates among young adults have been dropping for decades, a decline that accelerated during the 2007-2009 recession that was the longest and deepest since the Great Depression. With stagnant paychecks and a 9.6% unemployment rate, many young adults are delaying marriage until they are better set financially, or forgoing matrimony altogether…”
- Cohabitation numbers jump 13%, linked to job losses, By Sharon Jayson, September 24, 2010, USA Today: “Cohabitation in the USA is at an all-time high, with the number of opposite-sex couples living together rising 13% in a year’s time, from 6.7 million in 2009 to 7.5 million this year. And, it’s likely because of the recession, according to a U.S. Census study out Thursday. It found a direct connection between living together and the cohabiting partners’ employment status…”