- Still unable to find a job, discouraged Americans leave labor force, Associated Press, April 7, 2013, Star-Ledger: “After a full year of fruitless job hunting, Natasha Baebler just gave up. She’d already abandoned hope of getting work in her field, counseling the disabled. But she couldn’t land anything else, either — not even a job interview at a telephone call center. Until she feels confident enough to send out resumes again, she’ll get by on food stamps and disability checks from Social Security and live with her parents in St. Louis. ‘I’m not proud of it,’ says Baebler, who is in her mid-30s and is blind. ‘The only way I’m able to sustain any semblance of self-preservation is to rely on government programs that I have no desire to be on.’ Baebler’s frustrating experience has become all too common nearly four years after the Great Recession ended: Many Americans are still so discouraged that they’ve given up on the job market…”
- Vanishing workforce weighs on growth, By Jim Tankersley, April 6, 2013, Washington Post: “Put out an all-points bulletin: Millions of Americans have gone missing from the workforce. Every month that those would-be workers are gone raises the odds that they might never come back, dimming the prospects for future economic growth. The vanishing trend is more than a decade old, but it accelerated during the Great Recession. Throughout 2012, economists held out hope that it had stopped. But then came Friday’s jobs report, and hopes were dashed. The Labor Department reported that the U.S. labor force — everyone who has a job or is looking for one — shrank by 500,000 people in March. That brought the civilian labor force participation rate to 63.3 percent in March, its lowest level since May 1979. And it left the workforce several million members smaller than the Congressional Budget Office estimates that it should be, given the nation’s demographics…”
Day: April 9, 2013
LA Times Report on the Tougher Workplace
The Tougher Workplace, report homepage, April 8, 2013, Los Angeles Times: “From the shop floor to the cubicle, the workplace is becoming more stressful…”