Unemployment

WASHINGTON -- The nation's unemployment rate fell in February to a new four-year low of 7.7% as employers added a stronger-than-expected 236,000 jobs over the month, thanks in good part to the rebounding housing market. The Labor Department said Friday that the new jobless rate, which declined from 7.9% in January, was the lowest since December 2008, when the unemployment figure was 7.3%. Although some of the rate drop was the result of workers leaving the labor force, the improvement reflected solid job gains across a broad swath of industries.

Don and Prudy Schultz set out walking from their Van Nuys home at 9 a.m. Tuesday, on their way to cast votes they hope will bring changes they've been waiting on for years. "I think this is the most dysfunctional city I've known in my adult life," said Don, who ran a real estate appraisal business with Prudy until their retirement 13 years ago. Over the years, the couple said, whether the issue was regulating noise from the Van Nuys Airport, fixing streets and sidewalks, or attacking the prostitution trade that sometimes spills off Sepulveda Boulevard and practically to their doorstep, they've had to fight to get any attention from elected officials.

Giant machines are tearing down the old bleachery, another reminder to Chuck Smith that this old mill town doesn't make much anymore. Just about everyone he knows was employed at one point making, folding or bleaching towels, until the mills started to close down in the 1990s and 2000s and family members lost their jobs. Like most of this town's residents, Smith can name all the old mills in a slow Georgia drawl. "There was the Thomaston mill that was here, and the Dundee mill, and the Highland mill, but they tore that one down just like they did this one," he said, watching a bulldozer push piles of metal around what used to be a factory for bleaching towels.

How high can it go? The Eurozone's jobless rate went up in January to a record 11.9%, from 11.8% in December, as the 17-member single-currency region continues to grapple with recession and the effects of stringent government cutbacks, according to figures reported Friday. By comparison, the U.S. unemployment rate was 7.9% in January, and its highest since the Great Depression was 10.8% during the 1982-83 recession. The Eurozone's population is about 317 million, similar to the U.S. (The U.S. jobless rate for February will be released March 8.)

WASHINGTON - Although the housing market is rebounding in many local markets, one important segment is not: First-time buyers are missing in action and represent a smaller proportion of overall sales activity than their historical norm. Whereas first-timers typically account for roughly 40% of sales, lately they've been involved in about 30% to 35%, depending on the source of the data. Lawrence Yun, chief economist for the National Assn. of Realtors, estimates that there were 2.2 million fewer first-time buyers in the United States between 2008 and 2012 - a deficit of about 450,000 a year.

WASHINGTON - New filings for unemployment claims fell last week, and the total number of workers receiving jobless benefits dropped to a 4½-year low - further signs of the gradual recovery in the labor market. The Labor Department said Thursday that first-time claims for jobless benefits fell to 341,000 in the week ended Feb. 9, from a revised 368,000 the prior week. The decline of 27,000 filings was much bigger than what many economists had forecast, but the data have bounced up and down this year.

WASHINGTON -- The U.S. economy added 157,000 new jobs in January and the unemployment rate ticked up to 7.9%, the Labor Department said Friday.   The job creation was below analyst expectations of 165,000 and down from a revised 195,000 in December. The unemployment rate ticked up from 7.8% in December. The pace of job creation is consistent with moderate growth and could ease concerns that the economy's unexpected contraction in the final three months of last year was a sign another recession could be near.

Unemployment rates fell in 290 metro areas throughout the country in December from a year earlier, with the biggest drop occurring in Las Vegas-Paradise, Nev., which was pummeled by the housing bust. That region's unadjusted jobless rate fell 3.3 percentage points since December 2011 to 10%, according to data from the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics. Among the 49 metro areas with a population of 1 million or more, the Inland Empire recorded the highest unemployment rate, at 10.9%.

Jobless Americans continue paying unnecessary fees to withdraw their unemployment benefits from prepaid debit cards, a report released Tuesday said. Five states, including California, violate federal law in requiring those collecting unemployment benefits to sign up for the state vendor's debit cards, according to the report by the National Consumer Law Center. In recent years, states have turned to prepaid debit cards to distribute unemployment benefits to reduce costs associated with printing and mailing paper checks.

During the bleakest days of the Great Depression, when Americans waited in bread lines and the nation's future looked grim, the unemployment rate peaked at about 25%. Spain has now topped that figure, one of the highest in the developed world, as unemployment in the European county reached 26.02% in the fourth quarter of 2012. There are 5.9 million people out of work in the country. Spain shed 363,000 jobs in the fourth quarter as the government implemented austerity measures to satisfy bond holders.