Unemployment

The payday loan industry has found a new and lucrative source of business: the unemployed. Payday lenders, which typically provide workers with cash advances on their paychecks, are offering the same service to those covered by unemployment insurance. No job? No problem. A typical unemployed Californian receiving $300 a week in benefits can walk into one of hundreds of storefront operations statewide and walk out with $255 well before that government check arrives -- for a $45 fee. Annualized, that's an interest rate of 459%.

Re "Setbacks seen for autistic young adults," May 14 As the parent of a young man withAsperger's syndrome, the statistics on post-secondary employment for autistic students are not surprising. My son has a genius IQ and recently earned his bachelor's degree. He has submitted hundreds of resumes but can't land a menial job. Perhaps he is not assertive enough in an interview or has difficulty with eye contact, but this doesn't reflect his ability to troubleshoot a computer or his social networking skills.

The country's dire economic situation is hitting artists hard. According to new research released Wednesday by the National Endowment for the Arts, working artists are unemployed at a higher rate than other workers, and at a rate that is rising more rapidly than other professions. Presumably as a result, more artists are leaving their profession. The study, "Artists in a Year of Recession: Impact on Jobs in 2008," looks at artist employment patterns during two spikes in the current recession -- the fourth quarters of 2007 and 2008.

Mitt Romney blasted a labor report Friday that found that the economy added 115,000 jobs last month and unemployment dipped to 8.1%, saying that the nation should be creating nearly five times as many jobs per month and that unemployments claims were dropping because people were giving up on looking for work. “It's a terrible and very disappointing report this morning. Clearly the American people are wondering why this recovery isn't happening faster, why it's taking years and years for the recovery to occur and we seem to be slowing down, not speeding up,” Romney said on the Fox News program "Fox and Friends.

Unemployment in California and Los Angeles County will increase well into 2010, continuing to exceed the highest levels since at least the end of World War II, according to a local economist whose projections for the Southland economy are among the most negative to date. Continued sluggishness in key industries such as construction, retail, international trade and hospitality will keep the state from a full recovery until 2011, said the report, released by the Kyser Center for Economic Research at the Los Angeles County Economic Development Corp.

Want to fool merchants with a fake ID? Hack someone's text messages? Or how about tracking where your co-workers are, without their knowing it? There's an app for that. The explosion in smartphone and tablet applications that enable people to check the weather, follow their stocks and play Words With Friends has a dark side: apps that facilitate questionable if not outright illegal behavior. Apple's App Store, for example, offers Drivers License software that promises "unlimited access to realistic-looking licenses" for all 50 states.

Even though the labor market is improving, thousands of unemployed Californians are caught in a bind: Some employers only want to hire them if they already have a job. Some companies state that plainly in employment ads. Others are more discreet, screening out jobless workers during the initial application process. Discrimination? Perhaps. But so far it's legal. But it won't be if a bill introduced this week by Assemblyman Michael Allen (D-Santa Rosa) is approved by California lawmakers.

Beginning Oct. 1, anyone who receives unemployment for the first 26 weeks of a one-year claim will not be able to file for an extension. This is because of the fact that the federal government says that unemployment has fallen under 7% nationwide, even though California is well above that mark. For me, a first-time collector of this benefit after working eight years in the aerospace industry, and so far unable to find a job, I could possibly be put out onto the streets. Taxes go up, layoffs continue and the government says the economy is getting better.

Re "Setbacks seen for autistic young adults," May 14 As the parent of a young man withAsperger's syndrome, the statistics on post-secondary employment for autistic students are not surprising. My son has a genius IQ and recently earned his bachelor's degree. He has submitted hundreds of resumes but can't land a menial job. Perhaps he is not assertive enough in an interview or has difficulty with eye contact, but this doesn't reflect his ability to troubleshoot a computer or his social networking skills.

Washington is poised to stop providing extended unemployment benefits despite the huge number of laid-off workers, the paucity of job openings, the high rate of underemployment in every sector of the economy and stubbornly slow economic growth. That's because Republicans in the Senate insist that, unlike the hefty tax cuts they covet for the wealthy, the comparatively slender subsidies for the unemployed must not be financed with borrowed money. This penuriousness is not just hypocritical, it's bad economics.

Mitt Romney, who has long staked his presidential bid on his business experience, painted a rosy picture of his definition of a successful economy on Friday, arguing that the unemployment rate should be cheered only if it is below 4%, and arguing that half a million new jobs should be created every month in a true economic recovery. Those sorts of economic conditions have rarely existed in recent American history. But when Romney made his remarks in response to a new jobs report that unemployment had dipped to 8.1% and the economy added 115,000 jobs last month, they were just the latest chapter in the harsh critique that Romney has hammered throughout the campaign.

Nearly 30% of jobless Americans have been out of work for at least a year, according to the Pew Fiscal Analysis Initiative report on the first quarter. The report found that of the 13.3 million unemployed workers in the country, 3.9 million had been jobless for all or most of 2011. That's more people than live in Oregon. That 29.5% long-term unemployment rate is slightly off the peak reached in the third quarter of last year, when 31.8% of jobless Americans were out of work for a year.

On the afternoon of April 29, 1992, after hearing that the officers who beat Rodney King had been acquitted, I headed with a friend down to First A.M.E. Church in South-Central Los Angeles to attend a rally. We never made it. As we closed in on Western Avenue and West Adams Boulevard, our car was stopped by scores of people, mostly black men, milling about in the streets; the air was thick with a gathering anger. Minutes later that anger morphed into action - thrown bottles, a hurled trash can. It was clear that things were getting out of hand, and so we turned around.

Two decades after the L.A. riots brought pledges of help to rebuild South Los Angeles, the area is worse off in many ways than it was in 1992. Median income, when adjusted for inflation, is lower. Many middle-class blacks have fled in search of safer neighborhoods and better schools. And the unemployment rate, which was bad at the time of the riots, has reached even more dire levels. In two areas of South Los Angeles - Florence Graham and Westmont - unemployment is almost 24%. Back in 1992, it was 21% in Florence Graham and 17% in Westmont.

SACRAMENTO -- Close to 100,000 jobless Californians will lose as many as 20 weeks of federal unemployment insurance benefits in three weeks, state officials warned. The extra benefits of as much as $450 a week are part of a federal extension to the regular state program known in bureaucratic parlance as FED-ED. The federal government instituted FED-ED in March 2009 to help the long-term unemployed in California during the worst recession in 50 years. But that assistance, the fifth such extension of benefits, is set to expire on after May 12 because of improvements in the Golden State's economy and a drop in the unemployment rate to 11% in March.

WASHINGTON - The Federal Reserve upgraded its outlook for the economy, predicting the unemployment rate would fall to as low as 7.8% in the fourth quarter - a drop that could have a significant effect on the presidential election. Just three months ago, most Fed policymakers expected the nation's jobless figure to be 8.2%, its current rate, or higher in the last three months of the year. The improved outlook, issued Wednesday at the end of a two-day Fed meeting, reflects a sharper-than-expected drop in unemployment in recent months and projections for slightly faster economic growth this year, including some improvement in the downtrodden housing market.

Claims for unemployment-insurance benefits remain at a distressingly high level and could forecast trouble for the labor market's recovery, analysts said Thursday after the government released new data. The number of initial claims for regular state unemployment insurance benefits rose 2,000 to 484,000 in the week that ended Aug. 7, reaching the highest level since February, the Labor Department reported Thursday. Economists polled by MarketWatch had expected a level of 463,000 for first-time claims.

Unemployment in eight counties in California has topped 20%, according to figures released by the state Wednesday. Joblessness in California has hit a peak -- 12.5% in January -- the highest rates have been since the government began tracking unemployment numbers in 1976. Here are the eight counties in the state where unemployment is more than 20%. (Numbers are not seasonally adjusted. Colusa : 27.4% Imperial : 27.3% Merced: 21.7% Plumas : 22.3% San Benito: 21.1% Sutter: 21% Trinity: 25.8% Yuba: 20.4%

WASHINGTON - Matt Pizzo has a law degree, can-do attitude, proven leadership skills, and expertise in communications and satellite technology from his four years in the Air Force. Yet the 29-year-old has been told that he's overqualified, too old, too "non-traditional," and that he's fallen behind his civilian contemporaries. "It was disheartening, to say the least," he said of his latest job rejection. "But it's typical, I'm afraid. " For unemployed veterans of the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq, rejection is a special ordeal.

California's labor market continued its slow improvement in March as employers added jobs for the eighth straight month. Payrolls grew by 18,200 jobs last month, according to figures released Friday by the California Employment Development Department. That's on top of a revised gain of 38,600 jobs in February. The unemployment rate increased to 11% in March, up slightly from February's 10.9% rate. Improved employment prospects have encouraged more idled California workers to start job hunting again, driving the unemployment rate higher, said Dennis Meyers, principal economist for the state's Department of Finance.