- Job growth steady, but unemployment rises to 7.9%, By Catherine Rampell, February 1, 2013, New York Times: “Political gridlock over fiscal policy didn’t push the economy off a cliff. But it certainly isn’t helping anything, either. Despite the chaos and uncertainty hovering over tax rates and government budget cuts at the turn of the year, job growth accelerated at the end of 2012 and was even faster than originally estimated, the Labor Department said on Friday. Job growth also continued at a steady if modest pace in January, with employers adding 157,000 payroll positions, though the unemployment rate ticked up to 7.9 percent…”
- Why unemployment stretches are getting shorter, By Tami Luhby, February 4, 2013, CNNMoney: “The average time Americans spent unemployed dropped a record 2.8 weeks in January…but hold the applause. The reason is likely because many people ran out of unemployment benefits so they stopped looking for work, experts said. ‘People are getting frustrated and are giving up,’ said Adam Hersh, economist with the Center for American Progress. The average duration of unemployment was 35.3 weeks in January, down from 38.1 weeks in December and 40.2 weeks a year earlier, according to the latest monthly jobs report from the Bureau of Labor Statistics…”
Poverty-related issues in the news, from the Institute for Research on Poverty