A House vote Thursday is expected to send President Barack Obama a long-sought measure to resume unemployment payments to millions of people whose benefits have lapsed. Obama is set to sign the bill as soon as Congress can ship it to him. The Senate broke through months of stalemate in passing the measure Wednesday by […]
For years, most people who worked for state or local governments accepted a fact of life: Their pay wasn’t great. The job security was. Now that’s gone, too. States and municipalities are facing gaping budget gaps. Many have responded by slashing services, raising taxes and, for the first time in decades, making deep job cuts. […]
A wave of census layoffs cut the nation’s payrolls in June for the first time in six months, while private employers added a modest number of jobs. The unemployment rate fell to 9.5 percent, its lowest level in almost a year. Employers cut 125,000 jobs last month, the most since October, the Labor Department said […]
If Chuck Lacasse had gotten his pink slip four days earlier, Uncle Sam would have covered most of his family’s health insurance while he looked for a new job. But Congress allowed emergency health care assistance for unemployed workers to expire May 31, and seems unwilling to renew it despite pleas from President Barack Obama. […]
The economy trudges ahead yet debt dogs many Americans, stressing them out even as they firm up their own financial foundations. There are new jobs produced but old worries persisting for people despite belt-tightening and boosted savings, according to an Associated Press-GfK poll. About 46 percent of those surveyed say they’re suffering from debt-related stress, […]
The pillars of Americans’ financial security — jobs and home values — will stay shaky well into 2011, according to an Associated Press survey of leading economists. The findings of the new AP Economy Survey, released Monday, point to an economic recovery that will move slowly and fitfully this year and next. As a result, […]
Republicans in the Senate aren’t winning any friends among the ever-increasing ranks of the unemployed. First Republican Jim Bunning of Kentucky pulls off a single-handed shutdown of federal transportation programs, idling 2,000 federal employees without pay, and — in the process — stalling extension of unemployment benefits for 400,000 Americans whose benefits are running out. […]