Unemployment

THE EXPERTS WHO calculate these things say the Great Recession has been over for two years now. But you would have a hard time persuading the 25 million Americans who are unemployed or underemployed or too discouraged to even look for work. Or the countless others who fear they may join their ranks. Last week's report from the Labor Department confirmed what many Americans knew without needing a cable TV pundit to tell them: The mild improvement in job creation that we saw early this year is fading fast: First-time claims for unemployment benefits have been above 400,000 for the past 11 weeks, making for an official unemployment rate of 9.1 percent.

At 7:25 a.m. on Feb. 20, Dan Perry arrived at work at his Malvern industrial-parts company, as he always did. Five minutes later, Perry's weeping supervisor told him that the company had eliminated his job of four years. By 7:35, Perry was back in the parking lot, holding a box containing a few items from his desk. In the gut-punch moments of nascent unemployment, Perry looked up at the sky and asked, "What just happened to me?" The married 49-year-old executive with two teenage children was filled with a cold dread.

Chester County has the lowest unemployment rate in Pennsylvania, even though unemployment is up. Unemployment rose from 2.5 percent in October 1989 to 3.5 percent in October 1990, according to state Department of Labor and Industry figures. Unemployment rose in the other Pennsylvania counties in the Philadelphia area as well. The greatest increases were in Philadelphia and Bucks Counties, according to the Labor and Industry Department. But all five counties are faring well in a softening economy, according to a department analyst.

Cutting bloated factory payrolls to comply with economic reform has cost three million Soviets their jobs since 1986, and the number could reach 16 million by 2005, Pravda said yesterday. In some southern Soviet republics wracked by ethnic violence, about 25 percent of the work force has been unemployed for the last three years, the Communist Party daily said. The Pravda article gave no overall jobless rate for the country, which has a work force of about 130 million. Moscow has never revealed overall unemployment figures, declaring for decades that full employment was a virtue of communism.

HARRISBURG - Since West Philadelphia resident David Pride lost his job selling cable service 18 months ago, he hasn't exactly been loafing. He has attended job fairs and enrolled at Philadelphia Community College school, where he received an associate's degree as a paralegal. And he's fighting City Hall to get blighted buildings removed from his neighborhood. "I'm not sitting at home collecting checks," said Pride, whose unemployment insurance just ran out last week. Ditto Larry McGee of Bucks County, who said he has sent out 150 resumes since being laid off from a plumbing supply company in May 2009.

We are young, urban and professional. We are literate, respectable, intelligent and charming. But foremost and above all, we know what it's like to be unemployed. Forced into dishonesty to survive, we have bounced checks to keep ourselves in Oxford shirts and Ann Taylor dresses. But we have no solid ground. Our parents continue to help. Our grandparents send an occasional check. Some of us have trust funds, but the majority do not. Our parents must wonder, "My child turned 18, then 21, got the right to vote and to drink, graduated from college, found work, then was out of work - and we're still providing the support.

Pennsylvania is among 28 states the Department of Labor says might not have enough money in unemployment compensation funds to last the year. The department said yesterday that the spreading recession and layoffs could bankrupt the compensation system in the Commonwealth and elsewhere. Officials at the Pennsylvania Department of Labor and Industry defended the fund's solvency. They say it should not be included among the troubled states. There is enough money, they say, to fund unemployment claims for the next 15 months.

Chester County's unemployment rate dropped slightly in June, another sign that the ailing economy is slowly recovering. June's job boom is especially encouraging because traditionally - even in more prosperous economies - unemployment usually rises in June, employment experts say. "It's kind of interesting. This doesn't usually happen," said Douglas Schmidt, director of the Chester County Job Center in Coatesville. That's because some seasonal workers, such as school cafeteria workers and bus drivers, collect unemployment benefits during the summer in June.

As Pennsylvania's unemployment-compensation appeals system staggers under a mounting backlog of cases, thousands of unemployed workers are going without benefits. In July 2000, the state had a backlog of 2,547 unemployment appeals, and nearly 80 percent of those were resolved within 30 days. At the end of December, there were 17,706 cases on backlog, and barely 7 percent were resolved in a month, according to the U.S. Department of Labor. "The intent of unemployment compensation is to pay compensation to employees who were let go through no fault of their own," said Denis Geoghegan, administrator of unemployment-compensation appeals at the Pennsylvania Department of Labor and Industry.

THE U.S. economy is now in a recession. October and November 2001 saw the largest increase in unemployment in over 20 years. The numbers of workers who have run out of their unemployment benefits is up 42 percent this year over the same period in 2000. Congress and the President are currently debating proposals to stimulate the economy. President Bush and Republicans in Congress are pushing a massive tax cut for corporations, with little help for the unemployed. Unemployed workers and supporters are calling for a stimulus package to aid the jobless.

The fund that pays Pennsylvania's unemployment benefits is running in the red, and lawmakers are grappling with how to remedy that. Compounding matters is that the state owes the federal government $3.87 billion it has borrowed to pay jobless claims because of the recession. There seems to be little disagreement about how to pay back the money: Legislators are likely to pass a bill that will allow the state to float a bond. "This is akin to refinancing your house," said Pennsylvania Secretary of Labor Julia Hearthway.

Persistently high postrecession unemployment is ravaging the economic prospects of younger workers, delaying their skill development and eroding their work ethic.Some pundits have argued for more government spending on job training and infrastructure to speed the recovery of the economy and labor market. But blaming the recession alone is misguided. We must also address longer-term trends in education, labor, and capital, largely due to government policies. Social Security and Medicare, for example, are shifting wealth away from younger generations, discouraging saving and therefore education and skill acquisition.

The nation's employment engine remains stubbornly stuck in neutral, with the economy adding just 115,000 jobs in April while the unemployment rate declined slightly to 8.1 percent, the U.S. Labor Department reported Friday. "We are likely seeing continued uncertainty over the state of the economy," said Joel Naroff, chief economist with Naroff Economic Advisors in Bucks County. "As for the payroll numbers, they were downers. " Economists say employment must expand by 100,000 to 150,000 jobs a month to accommodate population growth.

Unemployment fell to 8.4 percent in March in the Philadelphia region that includes parts of Maryland, Delaware and New Jersey, the U.S. Labor Department reported Wednesday. That's down from 8.8 percent in February and 8.6 percent a year ago. The national unemployment rate in March was 8.2 percent. Gloucester, Burlington and Camden counties, which together form the Camden metropolitan division, had a 9.7 percent unemployment rate, while Philadelphia, Chester, Montgomery, Bucks and Delaware counties, averaged together, had an unemployment rate of 8.1 percent in March.

Ordinarily, Bart Ruff and his crew of volunteers at My Career Transitions, a support group for the unemployed, aim their sessions at job-search techniques, from networking to resumé writing. But at the group's next regular meeting, set for April 14, the focus will be on financial planning - just in time for the income tax filing deadline. "Everybody's not sure what to do with their money anyway," said Ruff, who started My Career Transitions, a group that consistently attracts a full house of 120 at Pennsylvania State University's Great Valley campus in Malvern.

Numbers produce an image of a city's place in time. For Philadelphia in 2012, the picture is of a city in transition on a number of fronts. There are familiar problems and one promising demographic trend. In the last year, unemployment in the city was down, but job creation slowed from the year before. Residential building permits were up, but home sales dropped a sixth straight time. Violent crime fell overall, while the homicide total increased for the second year in a row. One positive sign for the city's future, as reported in a new statistical analysis by Pew's Philadelphia Research Initiative, is that the number of young adults in Philadelphia has risen substantially in recent years.

When I last wrote about Gene Epstein, the indefatigable Bucks County millionaire was giving away his money to put strangers to work. Eighteen months, $250,000, and a reported 100,000 hires later, the crusading job creator is infecting Congress with his economic energy. Epstein drives a Bentley and winters in Vero Beach, Fla., but spends his days un-showered at his computer with a phone to his ear, relentlessly pitching Hire Just One : a plan to transfer unemployment funds to employers as payroll subsidies for expanding their staff.

The nation's payrolls expanded by 227,000 jobs in February, the third month in a row that job gains topped 200,000, the U.S. Labor Department reported Friday. Economists say the payrolls must expand by 100,000 to 150,000 a month simply to keep up with population growth, meaning the last three months represented steady inroads toward making up the 10.3 million jobs lost or not created since the start of the recession in 2007. The unemployment rate held at 8.3 percent as more people, encouraged by recent news, rejoined the labor force and began looking for work.