Distressing. That’s our verdict after studying this morning’s unemployment data for June. Paul Solman’s U7 measure of unemployment rose to 16.91 percent, up 0.18 percent from May.
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Don’t just say that black unemployment is four times that of whites. Say that black businesses only get 2 percent of the $1 trillion of black buying power, and then say that black businesses are the greatest private employer of black people.
Then you might be able to say, wow, if there were more support of black businesses, if maybe a little more of that $1 trillion got to those businesses, unemployment wouldn’t be so high.
Unemployment is down in key swing states, but the question is whether voters will be satisfied that the economy is trending in the right direction under Obama — or whether Romney can persuade them that the recovery could have been stronger and faster if different policies had been adopted.
(Photo by Brendan Smialowski/AFP/Getty Images)
Hoping to Change Odds, Las Vegas Gambles on Once-Failing School
As you can see from this NASA video, Las Vegas had been the fastest growing city in the country. Casinos drove employment, employment drove housing. Vegas, with an economy based around construction and entertainment, was one place in America where you could go with little education and still make a decent living.
But when the recession hit and the housing market burst, Las Vegas became the capital of American foreclosures — which showed people how vulnerable they were without an education.
In a state with one of the worst high school graduation rates in the country, schools quickly turned to new approaches to fix the problem. The principal at Chaparral High School, where only 33 percent of its students were graduating on time, implemented a program to track dropouts one-by-one.
“The whole point of our effort wasn’t to do anything other than say you are loved, you are wanted, please come back,” Chaparral High School Principal David Wilson told Suarez.
When will employment recover? Use this calculator to find out.
Unemployment Rate Dips to 8.2% as 120,000 New Jobs Are Added in March
But add up all the qualifications and asterisks to Friday’s data, and the official unemployment rate didn’t really drop and is still stratospheric for a recovery.
‘The unemployment rate continued to trend downward Friday, reaching 8.3 percent, the lowest rate in three years.
Our own more inclusive statistic that adds the underemployed and those who want a job but have been out of work so long the government no longer counts them is down to 16.9 percent for January.
That’s the lowest we’ve seen since we started tracking the figure in January 2010.’
