posted on September 2, 2005 08:47:28 AM new
Katrina Leaves Thousands Out of Work
Updated 9:51 AM ET September 2, 2005
By JEANNINE AVERSA
WASHINGTON (AP) - Hundreds of thousands of people are finding themselves out of work and their livelihoods in limbo following the wrath of Hurricane Katrina.
Experts believe it will take months before people get back to work in hurricane-ravaged areas. Some workers may not have jobs to return to and others may opt to move away and find work elsewhere, economists and other experts said.
Workers in flooded-out New Orleans, which faces major and potentially lengthy cleanup challenges, are taking the biggest hit, analysts said.
"New Orleans is an economic disaster. This tragedy is so unprecedented people could be out of work for three, six, nine months or longer," said Rajeev Dhawan, director of the economic forecasting project at Georgia State University.
By Dhawan's estimates close to 1 million people have been thrust out of work in parts of Louisiana, Mississippi and Alabama because of Katrina.
Phil Hopkins, managing director of U.S. regional services for Global Insight, estimates that at least a half a million people are out of work because of the storm.
The situation probably will propel area unemployment rates now in the single digits to the double digits in coming months _ even when one accounts for employment gains from rebuilding efforts, Hopkins said.
The seasonally adjusted unemployment rate in the area of New Orleans, Metairie and Kenner was 4.9 percent in July, Hopkins said based on his calculations. The jobless rate there could easily climb to 25 percent, he estimated.
In another storm-slammed area of Gulfport and Biloxi, Mississippi, the seasonally adjusted unemployment rate in July was 5.7 percent, Hopkins said. That jobless rate could rise to around 20 percent or higher, he added.
"It's a pretty sizable impact. Commerce has come to a standstill in those counties that were hit," Hopkins said.
The unemployment rate for the United States as a whole was 5 percent in July.
The powerful and deadly Katrina _ likely to be the costliest natural disaster in U.S. history _ has knocked out oil refineries, shuttered businesses and crippled the flow of commerce through ravaged ports, roads and railways.
"Not only do people not have a place to live. They don't have a place to go to work. I think this will be felt long and hard," said Tom Gimbel, chief executive officer of The LaSalle Network, an employment firm. He thought that some employment implications of the storm could be longer lasting as some people and companies might opt to permanently move elsewhere.
Gimbel said that Chicago-area companies that have operations in New Orleans are moving mostly white-collar financial type of jobs temporarily to Chicago. He expected an increase in demand for temporary blue-collar workers for jobs in hurricane cleanup and rebuilding efforts.
Ben Bernanke, chairman of the White House Council of Economic Advisers, said a big part of the devastation is that entire communities are out of work.
"Clearly it's done a lot of harm to the Gulf Coast economy," Bernanke said on Thursday. "There has been a great deal of property damage and lives lost." But he repeated his belief that the overall impact on the economy should be "relatively modest."
Some economists believe the hurricane's fallout will slow overall economic growth in the months ahead as higher energy prices crimp consumers' and businesses' appetite to spend. Some believe growth in the final quarter of this year could come in at an anemic pace of around 2 percent.
Such a scenario could lead to businesses around the country becoming more cautious in their hiring, which could boost the nation's unemployment rate.
Against the backdrop of economic uncertainty, a few economists believe the Federal Reserve may decide to hold interest rates steady at its next meeting on Sept. 20. Others, however, continue to believe another quarter-point rate increase will come at that time.
The economic hit comes to states where pay lags the national average. Average annual pay in the United States last year was $39,348, according to the Department of Labor's Bureau of Labor Statistics. In Louisiana, it was $31,837 and in Mississippi, $28,531.
Those who are out of work and have questions about, among other things, collecting or filing for unemployment benefits can call a toll free number _ 1-866-4-USA-DOL _ to get help, said Pam Groover, a spokeswoman at the Labor Department.
Unemployment benefits typically run for 26 weeks. Congress has the power to extend them and has done so in the past during troubled economic times.
Northrop Grumman's Ship Systems, which builds and designs ships, is headquartered in Pascagoula, Miss. and has operations in New Orleans and Gulfport, Miss., is taking special steps to make sure workers in the hurricane-slammed areas will be paid, a spokesman said.
Copyright 2004 The Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed.
posted on September 2, 2005 09:25:40 AM new
Unemployment Drops to Lowest Rate in Four Years
By Randy Hall
CNSNews.com Staff Writer/Editor
September 02, 2005
(CNSNews.com) - In a week dominated by reports on Hurricane Katrina, the government had a bit of good news for workers entering the Labor Day weekend when it announced that the nation's unemployment declined to 4.9 percent in August, its lowest rate since the month before 9/11.
Companies across the nation added 169,000 jobs in August, driving unemployment down slightly from July's rate of 5 percent, according to a report on the nation's economy released Friday by the U.S. Labor Department.
In addition, payroll gains were revised upward for the previous two months. In July, employers added 242,000 jobs, an improvement from the government's initial estimate of 207,000 net job gains. And for June, 175,000 jobs were added, up from a previous estimate of a 166,000 jobs gain.
Nevertheless, the increase of 169,000 for August was less than the 190,000 new jobs some economists had forecast, though analysts had predicted that unemployment would hold steady at 5 percent.
Leading in job growth were education and health services, which added 43,000 new positions in August. The leisure and hospitality industry grew by 34,000 jobs, and professional and business services increased by 29,000 jobs.
Construction companies boosted payrolls by 25,000, financial companies added 15,000 employees, and retailers grew by about 12,000 during the final month of summer.
However, manufacturers lost jobs for the third straight month. In August, factories eliminated 14,000 jobs, much of which was due to a decrease in production by auto makers.
Still, U.S. Secretary of Labor Elaine L. Chao hailed the report as a sign of an economy that has gained strength for the past 27 straight months.
"Net job growth has averaged about 194,000 per month, which has been above forecasts," Chao said. "It is also significant that the unemployment rate fell last month while the labor force participation rate rose, meaning a higher percentage of the population is working.
"Our country is facing the challenge of Hurricane Katrina from a position of economic strength," she added, noting that the figures don't reflect the impact of Katrina because the employment information was collected before the storm hit last Monday.
I gave my liberal neighbors son a book for his birthday. He went crazy trying to find where to put the batteries.
posted on September 2, 2005 09:43:43 AM newStill, U.S. Secretary of Labor Elaine L. Chao hailed the report as a sign of an economy that has gained strength for the past 27 straight months.
Well obviously you bear can't read either ......
And you can? Where did you learn your sentence composition skills, libs are us?
I gave my liberal neighbors son a book for his birthday. He went crazy trying to find where to put the batteries.
posted on September 2, 2005 03:50:53 PM new
While the number of jobs has increased, so have the numbers of people living in poverty.
WASHINGTON - Even with a robust economy that was adding jobs last year, the number of Americans who fell into poverty rose to 37 million — up 1.1 million from 2003 — according to
Census Bureau figures released Tuesday.
It marks the fourth straight increase in the government's annual poverty measure.
The Census Bureau also said household income remained flat, and that the number of people without health insurance edged up by about 800,000 to 45.8 million people.
"I was surprised," said Sheldon Danziger, co-director of the National Poverty Center at the University of Michigan. "I thought things would have turned around by now."
While disappointed, the Bush administration — which has not seen a decline in poverty numbers since the president took office — said it was not surprised by the new statistics.
Commerce Department spokeswoman E.R. Anderson said they mirror a trend in the '80s and '90s in which unemployment peaks were followed by peaks in poverty and then by a decline in the poverty numbers the next year.
"We hope this is it, that this is the last gasp of indicators for the recession," she said.
Democrats seized on the numbers as proof the nation is headed in the wrong direction.
"America should be showing true leadership on the great moral issues of our time — like poverty — instead of allowing these situations to get worse," said
John Edwards, the former North Carolina senator and Democratic vice presidential candidate. He has started a poverty center at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill.
Overall, the nation's poverty rate rose to 12.7 percent of the population last year. Of the 37 million living below the poverty level, close to a third were children.
The last decline in overall poverty was in 2000, during the Clinton administration, when 31.1 million people lived under the threshold. Since then, the number of people in poverty has increased steadily from 32.9 million in 2001, when the economy slipped into recession, to 35.8 million in 2003.
The poverty threshold differs by the size and makeup of a household. For instance, a family of four was considered living in poverty last year if annual income was $19,307 or less. For a family of two, it was $12,334.
The increase in poverty came despite strong economic growth, which helped create 2.2 million jobs last year — the best showing for the labor market since 1999. By contrast, there was only a tiny increase of 94,000 jobs in 2003 and job losses in both 2002 and 2001.
Asians were the only ethnic group to show a decline in poverty — from 11.8 percent in 2003 to 9.8 percent last year. The poverty rate for whites rose from 8.2 percent in 2003 to 8.6 percent last year. There was no noticeable change for blacks and Hispanics.
The median household income, meanwhile, stood at $44,389, unchanged from 2003. Among racial and ethnic groups, blacks had the lowest median income and Asians the highest. Median income refers to the point at which half of households earn more and half earn less.
Regionally, income declined only in the Midwest, down 2.8 percent to $44,657. The South was the poorest region and the Northeast and the West had the highest median incomes.
The number of people without health insurance coverage grew from 45 million to 45.8 million last year, but the number of people with health insurance grew by 2 million.
Charles Nelson, an assistant division chief at the Census Bureau, said the percentage of uninsured remained steady because of an "increase in government coverage, notably Medicaid and the state children's health insurance program that offset a decline in employment-based coverage."
The estimates on poverty, uninsured and income are based on supplements to the bureau's Current Population Survey, and are conducted over three months, beginning in February, at about 100,000 households nationwide.
posted on September 2, 2005 03:59:52 PM new
Oh for God sakes, people look in mirror if you want to see the reason why you are not doing better than you are.
No one will tell me what happend to personal responsibility?
