Washington, D.C., United States (AHN) – Employers added 243,000 jobs in January, an increase over the 203,000 jobs added in December, the U.S. Department of Labor reported on Friday.

Hiring was stronger than expected and many economists were surprised.

Private sector job growth was widespread with large employment gains in professional and business services, leisure and hospitality, and manufacturing. However, government employment did not change much during January.

At the same time, the jobless rate for January fell to 8.3 percent, marking the fifth consecutive month of declines and taking unemployment to its lowest rate since February 2009.

Manufacturing added 50,000 jobs in January.

Private sector businesses have consistently added jobs since March 2010, with manufacturing creating 14 percent of the jobs in the past 13 months.

However, government has lost jobs since the middle of 2010. Another 14,000 jobs were lost in January.

Despite the job creation, only 63.7 percent of working age Americans had a job in January. That included about 8.2 million people who were involuntarily working part time in January either because their employer cut their hours or because they were unable to find a full time job.

View full post on Economy Stories

DC, Washington, United States (AHN) – The U.S. Conference of Mayors wrapped up its winter meeting Friday in Washington, D.C., with Chicago Mayor Rahm Emanuel stepping into controversies on same sex marriage and education.

Emanuel joined about 80 other mayors from across the nation in endorsing laws to give legal recognition to same sex marriage, along with the tax breaks and other benefits spouses can share.

The mayors signed on to a statement that said, “Our cities derive great strength from their diversity and gay and lesbian families are a crucial part. Studies have shown what we know through our hands-on experience that cities that celebrate and cultivate diversity are the places where creativity and ideas thrive.”

Emanuel supported the Illinois Legislature’s effort last year to legalize civil unions for same-sex couples.

He said New York did “a good thing” last June when state lawmakers legalized gay marriage.

In separate comments Friday, Emanuel discussed his plan to turn Chicago’s community colleges into training institutions for the city’s employers.

Currently, Chicago’s City Colleges have a graduation rate of about 7 percent and job prospects for graduates that are “not as high,” Emanuel said.

His plan calls for each of the city’s seven community colleges to operate with specialties, such as health care, transportation, hospitality and manufacturing.

In addition, employers would be brought in to develop curricula that would train the students to become their employees.

“I want it to have economic value” to attend college, Emanuel said at the downtown Washington hotel where about 250 mayors were meeting.

Turning colleges into job training institutions is controversial among some academics, who say a well-rounded education requires liberal arts courses that include literature, history and the arts.

Nevertheless, job creation and recovery from the economic disaster of the Great Recession were dominant themes throughout the meeting this week.

The U.S. Conference of Mayors released a report that said the nation’s metropolitan areas will struggle for five more years to regain jobs lost during the recession that started in September 2008.

“The recovery is very uneven across U.S. regions, with the southeastern and southwestern metro [areas that] were the most affected by the housing bubble looking ahead to years of recovery,” the report says.

U.S. nonfarm payrolls will grow about 1.3 percent this year, which is unlikely to reduce the unemployment rate below 8 percent, according to a report by IHS Global Insight.

The report predicts the nation will regain nearly half the jobs lost during the Great Recession by the end of 2012.

The mayors used the economic report to try to prod Congress to approve legislation that would create more jobs.

Los Angeles Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa, president of the Conference of Mayors, said “Congress has jumped ship” in its obligation to stimulate the economy and employment.

However, Villaraigosa acknowledged cities will have a hard time squeezing money out of Congress at a time the federal government is trying to reduce its deficit by cutting spending.

View full post on Economy Stories

Washington, D.C., United States (AHN) – First time claims for unemployment compensation benefits during the week ending Dec. 31 dropped by 15,000 from the previous week to 372,000, according to the U.S. Department of Labor.

The less volatile 4-week moving average also fell, registering a decrease of 3,250 to 373,250 initial claims.

However, the advance seasonally adjusted insured unemployment rate also fell. It dropped by 0.1 percentage point to 2.8 percent for the week ending Dec. 24, the most recent week for which such data is available.

Analysts say the decrease in filing for jobless benefits is a move in the right direction.

The total number of people claiming benefits in all unemployment programs for the week ending Dec. 17 dropped by 8,311 from the previous week to 7,223,203.

The unemployment rate for December was 8.5 percent.

The largest increases in initial claims for the week ending Dec. 24 were:

• California (+16,490)
• Pennsylvania (+6,764)
• Michigan (+5,632)
• Kentucky (+5,263)
• Indiana (+5,084)

View full post on Economy Stories

New York, NY, United States (AHN) – It’s the economy that keeps Americans up at night, on edge and worried, revealed a new CNN/ORC International poll released Friday.

Some 70 percent said that things are not going well in the United States, with just three out of 10 saying things are okay, putting the state of the economy as the top worry and the most pressing issue heading into the new year.

More than half of those surveyed, or 57 percent, said the economy is the most important issue facing the country at present, and half named unemployment as the most important issue facing the economy. The deficit came in a very distant second with 16 percent.

Even as the payroll tax extension bill looms, only 7 percent of Americans named taxes as the most important economic issue in the United States.

The CNN poll of 1.085 American adults was conducted by ORC International via phone between Dec. 16 and Dec. 18.

View full post on Economy Stories

Berlin, Germany (AHN) – German exports fell by a larger percentage than forecast for October because of lower demand from southern European markets affected by the economic crisis.

Exports fell by 3.6 percent in October compared to September. It was larger than the 1 percent drop expected and the largest decrease seen by Germany in six months. By contrast, exports only fell by 1 percent in September compared to August.

Germany is Europe’s largest economy and it has been the economic engine for the region during the ongoing economic crisis.

In addition, German imports fell by 1 percent, which was also more than expected.

Germany saw its trade surplus fall from $23 billion to $15.5 billion, which is about 5.5 percent of the nations’ gross domestic product. Moreover, the surplus in the current account fell to $13.8 billion from $21.4 billion a month earlier.

View full post on Economy Stories

New York, NY, United States (AHN) – Black Friday is supposed to be all about rushing to stores, fighting the crowds and waiting in long lines to get the best deals. But this year, it was online shopping that really paid off for retailers and customers.

Online sales jumped 39.3 percent on Thanksgiving Day, and 24.3 percent on Black Friday compared to the same days last year, reports Coremetrics, which tracks real-time data from 500 retailers in the apparel, department store, health and beauty, and home goods categories.

Coremetrics reported that sales were strong in all categories. Online home goods sales jumped 48.8 percent, apparel sales soared 47.2 percent, and the health and beauty categories enjoyed a 34.2 percent increase year-over-year.

The jump in online sales was helped by Internet-only specials and exclusives. Leading shoppers online were free shipping deals.

Many brick and mortar stores, such as Best Buy, also offered their in-store doorbuster deals online for the first time this year.

Department stores saw the biggest gains in online shopping, with online sales rising 59 percent compared to last year.

While more were shopping online, they were not necessarily spending more. The average value per order remained relatively unchanged from last year at $190.10, and the number of items per order fell from 7.4 percent to 6.4 percent.

Those holding out for better deals may find them on Cyber Monday. According to the National Retail Federation’s Shop.org eHoliday survey, eight out of 10 online retailers plan to offer promotions on Cyber Monday. Data tracking firm ComScore forecasts record sales of $1.2 billion.

View full post on Economy Stories

Colombo, Sri Lanka (IRIN) – Cottage industries such as poultry farming, home gardening and bee-keeping are becoming increasingly popular among returnees in Sri Lanka’s former northern conflict zone as alternatives to regular jobs, officials say.

“We have seen a lot of applications for loans for poultry and home gardens,” Prem Kumar, area manager for the Bank of Ceylon, one of Sri Lanka’s two largest state-owned banks, told IRIN in northern Vavuniya District.

“When jobs become harder to find, people find it easier to start something on their own, especially so when they see there are opportunities to succeed.”

With job creation low , unemployment at about 20 percent and under-employment around 30 percent, cottage industries now play a vital role in generating income in the former war zone, say government officials.

“They have now become an important part of income-generation efforts,” Piencia Charles, the country’s top government official for Vavuniya District, explained.

High on the list is poultry farming. “The reason is because there is a ready-made market in the villages. You really don’t have to worry too much about transport,” Kanagasabapathi Udayakumar, the general manager of the Vavuniya North Multi-purpose Cooperative Society (MPC), noted.

A kilogramme of chicken sells for around Rs350 (US$3) and the MPC itself made a profit of around Rs80,000 ($730) when it recently sold a flock of 200 birds.

“This time we have around 500, targeting Christmas,” Udayakumar said.

In the village of Allankulam in Mullaitivu District, Selvakumar Arundha hopes to make a similar profit from her 100 birds. She started the farm with an initial investment of $270 pooled by six women in early 2010. Now each one earns about $2.50 per day from the farm.

“Most of us used the money we earned from taking part in cash-for-work programmes,” she said.

Another group of women has formed a similar venture involving a small vegetable plot.

“Next time, we hope to try tobacco. It will give us a better profit,” Thangarasa Sivakolandy, one of the members, said.

The International Labour Organization (ILO) is supporting 30 single female-headed households in the Vavuniya North region to set up home paddy parboiling operations by January 2012.

Under the scheme, each woman will be given a grant of Rs75,000 ($680) to buy the large pots needed for the parboiling and build a small storage area.

According to ILO officials, the women will be linked to five small mills near their villages, also supported by the organization, which will buy the paddy. A kilogramme of paddy will make them a profit of around Rs5 and the mills will buy the paddy for at least two years. ILO plans to fund 10 such mills and 60 households.

The MPC’s Udayakumar sees another advantage in popularizing parboiling and milling within the region. “We won’t fall prey to the price mafia,” he said.

During the last paddy harvest, outside buyers drove down prices because of the lack of processing facilities in the region. “Farmers could not keep the harvest so they were buying at prices sometimes 40 percent below market rates.”

Bee-keeping potential

“With over 50,000 hectares of jungle in the Vavuniya North Division, there may be potential to develop a bee-keeping and honey-producing industry,” the ILO said in a recent project update.

One person could manage 10 hives easily, which would provide an income of about Rs72,000 ($650) during the two annual harvesting seasons, Kiruja Sivasubaramanium, an ILO official working on the project, explained.

Meanwhile, Udayakumar said that once the roads connecting remote villages such as Nedunkerni became more easily accessible, the importance of cottage industries would increase even more, at least in the short term.

“Now, because of transport difficulties, it is very hard to take fresh produce like vegetables to the south. Once the road is better everyone will want to grow vegetables, which fetch higher prices than paddy,” he said.

A few months earlier, eggplant became a particularly popular commercial vegetable in Nedunkerni and Olumadu but soon almost everyone stopped growing them.

“Because buyers from outside were making a killing, buying at Rs10 per kilo here and selling at between Rs30 to 40 [elsewhere],” Udayakumar said.

According to the UN , more than 380,000 war-displaced have returned to Sri Lanka’s former conflict zone, making the re-establishment of local livelihoods a key component to recovery efforts.

ap/ds/mw

– Provided by Integrated Regional Information Networks.

View full post on Economy Stories

New York, NY, United States (AHN) – U.S. stocks slipped into the red Friday morning after uncertainties lingered following Thursday’s European deal to tackle the eurozone debt crisis.

Shortly after 10 a.m., the Dow Jones Industrial Average was down 3 points, the Standard & Poor’s 500 Index was off 5 points and the NASDAQ fell 11 points.

All eyes are still focused on Europe and the financial crisis that the eurozone faces. Analysts are questioning if the $610 billion rescue fund leaders agreed on Thursday will be enough.

On the U.S. economic front, U.S. personal spending rose 0.6 percent in September in line with estimates, while personal income rose a scant 0.1 percent, short of estimates of 0.3 percent.

Merck reported third quarter profits of 94 cents a share and revenues of $12 billion, topping estimates. Chevron’s quarterly profits topped Wall Street estimates but sales fell well short of forecasts. Whirlpool announced plans to cut roughly 10 percent of its workforce, or 5,000 jobs, after reporting its sales growth was growing much slower than anticipated.

Commodities were also lower. Light sweet crude fell $1.93 to $92.16 a barrel, and gold gave back $8.90, last trading at $1,739 a troy ounce.

Stocks surged 339 points on Thursday after the eurozone agreement. U.S. markets are on track for their best October performance on record.

View full post on Economy Stories

New York, NY, United States (AHN) – From 2000 to 2010, the median income in the United States fell 7 percent after adjusting for inflation, the U.S. Census Bureau reported.

The decline marks the worst 10-year performance on record, dating back to 1967. And what’s worse is that according to economists in the latest Wall Street Journal forecasting survey, income will not catch up before 2021.

Census Bureau data also revealed that a college degree doesn’t hold the clout and earnings power it once had. Only advanced degree holders managed to eck out record earnings increases over the past decade.

High unemployment and sluggish economic growth are both having an impact on American wages. Improvement looks a way off.

According to forecasts, the jobless rate, currently at 9.1 percent is only expected to decline to 8.2 percent by the end of 2013, a decline of less than one percentage point over more than two years.

View full post on Economy Stories

Washington, DC, United States (AHN) – The U.S. economy is “tipping into a new recession,” the esteemed Economic Cycle Research Institute says.

Moreover, there is absolutely nothing that policy makers can do to stop it.

In a statement on its website, ECRI stated that it warned its clients last week about the looming double-dip recession. The only thing ECRI says it is not certain of is whether the recession is just around the corner or if it has already started.

The ECRI also made a case for why people should heed its forecast.

“ECRI’s recession call isn’t based on just one or two leading indexes, but on dozens of specialized leading indexes, including the U.S. Long Leading Index, which was the first to turn down – before the Arab Spring and Japanese earthquake – to be followed by downturns in the Weekly Leading Index and other shorter-leading indexes. In fact, the most reliable forward-looking indicators are now collectively behaving as they did on the cusp of full-blown recessions, not ‘soft landings,’” the organization said.

In addition, the institute said the Economist, a leading financial publication, had noted the ECRI was the only entity that had correctly called three recessions without any false calls in between.

The ECRI explained what a new recession means for the nation.

“It’s important to understand that recession doesn’t mean a bad economy – we’ve had that for years now. It means an economy that keeps worsening, because it’s locked into a vicious cycle,” ECRI said in a statement. “It means that the jobless rate, already above 9 percent, will go much higher, and the federal budget deficit, already above a trillion dollars, will soar.”

“Here’s what ECRI’s recession call really says: if you think this is a bad economy, you haven’t seen anything yet. And that has profound implications for both Main Street and Wall Street,” the institute added.

View full post on Economy Stories