Help The Middle ClassNews and Information For The Heart Of America
CAREER DIRECTION: Blue Collar Jobs in Demand for 2010 (AOL/Payscale)
Ready for a career change but dread getting another desk job? Then how about trying your hand at, well, working with your hands?
“There is a blue collar renaissance going on right now,” says Joe Lamacchia, author of Blue Collar and Proud of It: The All-in-One-Resource for Finding Freedom, Financial Success, and Security Outside of the [...]
PARTISAN BICKERING: Obama & GOP Face off Over Jobs (Fox News)
WASHINGTON – Republicans sparred with President Barack Obama over proposals to create jobs in dueling radio addresses Saturday, highlighting the difficulty of reaching bipartisan solutions in a political climate marked by partisan bickering.
Obama pushed Congress to use $30 billion that had been set aside to bail out Wall Street to start a new program that [...]
BACK TO THE TOWN HALLS: Obama Retools His Message For Ohio Town Hall Meeting (ABC News)
President Barack Obama tried to revive his battered agenda and rally despondent Democrats on Friday with a renewed emphasis on jobs. His visit to this struggling Rust Belt city capped a tough first-anniversary week for a presidency that suffered jolts at the hands of Massachusetts voters and the Supreme Court.
“I’m not going to win every [...]
THE STORY THE WHITE HOUSE DOESN’T WANT YOU TO READ: Road Projects Don’t Help Unemployment (Yahoo! Finance/AP)
Ten months into President Barack Obama’s first economic stimulus plan, a surge in spending on roads and bridges has had no effect on local unemployment and only barely helped the beleaguered construction industry, an Associated Press analysis has found.
Spend a lot or spend nothing at all, it didn't matter, the AP analysis showed: Local unemployment [...]
Even In A Recovery, Some Jobs Won’t Return (Wall Street Journal)
Even when the U.S. labor market finally starts adding more workers than it loses, many of the unemployed will find that the types of jobs they once had simply don’t exist anymore.
The downturn that started in December 2007 delivered a body blow to U.S. workers. In two years, the economy shed 7.2 million jobs, pushing [...]
White House And Union Leaders Compromise On Health Care Tax (New York Times)
WASHINGTON — The White House, Congressional leaders and labor unions said Thursday that they had reached agreement on a proposal to tax high-cost health insurance policies, resolving one of the major differences between the House and the Senate over far-reaching health legislation.
Their negotiations produced changes to a tax included in the bill passed by the [...]
Labor Leaders Upset With Health Care Bill Meet With Obama (The Washington Post)
President Obama sought on Monday evening to assuage organized labor’s misgivings about the health-care overhaul, even as several key union leaders warned that the bill’s final outlines could severely dampen their enthusiasm for the Democratic ticket in this year’s elections.
Obama invited 10 labor leaders to the White House to discuss the negotiations aimed at reconciling [...]
FRIDAY 1/8 HEADLINE: Umemployment Still At 10% – Employers Cut 85,000 Jobs In December (Wall Street Journal)
U.S. job losses were higher than expected in December of last year and the unemployment rate remained at a lofty 10%, a sign the labor market has still some way to recover.
Although the November 2009 data was revised to show the U.S. economy added jobs for the first time since the recession began two years [...]
Jobless Claims Rise in Latest Week (Wall Street Journal)
The number of recently laid-off workers filing new claims for jobless benefits continued to climb in the latest week as the number of workers collecting unemployment for more than a week rose.
Initial claims for jobless benefits rose 7,000 to a seasonally adjusted 480,000 in the week ended Dec. 12, the Labor Department said in its [...]
Obama’s Big Sellout: His Economic Team Is Packed With Wall Street Insiders (Rolling Stone)
Barack Obama ran for president as a man of the people, standing up to Wall Street as the global economy melted down in that fateful fall of 2008. He pushed a tax plan to soak the rich, ripped NAFTA for hurting the middle class and tore into John McCain for supporting a bankruptcy bill that [...]
