by wildcherry on Friday, February 5th, 2010 | News, World | No Comments

In north-east China, an unnamed Chinese girl gave birth by Caesarean section to a healthy baby boy. She was 9 years old. She was brought to a hospital in Changchun when she was eight and a half months pregnant, and gave birth there, a Chinese newspaper reported.

According to reports, local police haven’t determined who the father is, but are investigating — in this province sex with a minor under the age of 14 comes with an automatic rape conviction and jail sentence.

This new mother is among the world’s youngest mothers, but not the youngest. The youngest reported mother in the world is Lina Medina of Peru, who was pregnant at five years, eight months old, and gave birth to a normal boy at age six, five months. According to a Time magazine article, Lina’s boy grew up perfectly healthy. When the boy was in high school, the doctor who performed Lina’s Caesarean reported: “Lina’s boy is normal and intelligent. He wants to take up electronics.”

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by wildcherry on Thursday, November 19th, 2009 | Business, News | No Comments

According to the government’s broadest measure of unemployment, some 17.5 percent are either without a job entirely or underemployed. The so-called U-6 number is at the highest rate since becoming an official labor statistic in 1994.

The number dwarfs the statistic most people pay attention to-the U-3 rate-which most recently showed unemployment at 10.2 percent for March, the highest it has been since June 1983.

The difference is that what is traditionally referred to as the “unemployment rate” only measures those out of work who are still looking for jobs. Discouraged workers who have quit trying to find a job, as well as those working part-time but looking for full-time work or who are otherwise underemployed, count in the U-6 rate.

With such a large portion of Americans experiencing employment struggles, economists worry that an extended period of slow or flat growth lies ahead.

“To me there’s no easy solution here,” says Michael Pento, chief economist at Delta Global Advisors. “Unless you create another bubble in which the economy can create jobs, then you’re not going to have growth. That’s the sad truth.”

Pento warns that forecasts of a double-dip (”W”) or a straight up (”V”) recovery both could be too optimistic given the jobs situation.

Instead, he believes the economy could flatline (or “L”) for an extended period as small businesses struggle to grow and consequently rehire the workers that have been furloughed as the U-3 unemployment rate has doubled since March 2008.

As that trend has happened, the U-6 rate has expanded at an even more dramatic pace. Economists cite several reasons for the phenomenon.

For one, more workers are becoming discouraged as real estate-the focal point for the expansion in the earlier part of the decade-has collapsed and taken millions of directly related and ancillary jobs with it.

Many workers believe those jobs aren’t coming back, and have thus quit looking and added themselves to the broader unemployment count.

“In the earlier part of this decade, 40 percent of all new jobs created were in real estate. Attorneys, mortgage brokers, agents, construction-they were all circled around housing,” Pento says. “We’ve had a jobless recovery in the last two recessions. This is going to be the third jobless recovery in a row.”

Another factor that may be leading people onto the rolls of those no longer looking for jobs is the government’s accommodative extensions of jobless benefits.

“Workers are unemployed for a much longer span than we’ve seen historically,” says David Resler, chief economist at Nomura Securities International in New York. “Part of that may be affected by the longer availability of benefits. It reduces the incentives for an urgent job search.”

Source:Yahoo

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by wildcherry on Friday, November 6th, 2009 | Business, News | No Comments

The latest unemployment numbers shows nearly 16 million people can’t find jobs even though the worst recession since the Great Depression has apparently ended.

NEW YORK (Reuters) - The household unemployment rate rose to 10.2 percent, highest in 26-1/2 years, as employers shed 190,000 in nonfarm payrolls in October, the Labor Department said on Friday.

KEY POINTS: * The Labor Department said the unemployment rate was the highest since April 1983. * Analysts polled by Reuters had expected payrolls to drop by 175,000 and the jobless rate to edge up to 9.9 percent from 9.8 percent in September.

* The labor market is being watched for signs whether the economic recovery that started in the third quarter can be sustained without government support. The economy grew at a 3.5 percent annualized rate in the July-September period, probably ending the most painful U.S. recession in 70 years.

* Payrolls have declined for 22 consecutive months now, throwing 7.3 million people out of work since December 2007, when the recession started.

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by wildcherry on Friday, October 2nd, 2009 | Business, News | No Comments

The Labor Department said the unemployment rate was the highest since June 1983 and payrolls had now dropped for 21 consecutive months.

The report shows that the worst recession since the 1930s is still inflicting widespread pain and underscores one of the biggest threats to the nascent economic recovery: that consumers, worried about job losses and stagnant wages, will restrain spending. Consumer spending accounts for about 70 percent of the nation’s economy.

Most analysts expect the economy to continue to improve, but at a slow, uneven pace. Government stimulus efforts, such as the Cash for Clunkers auto rebates, likely boosted the economy in the July-September quarter, but economists worry that growth will slow once the impact of such programs fades.

The Labor Department said Friday that the economy lost a net total of 263,000 jobs last month, from a downwardly revised 201,000 in August. That’s worse than Wall Street economists’ expectations of 180,000 job losses, according to a survey by Thomson Reuters.

The unemployment rate rose from 9.7 percent in August, matching expectations.

If laid-off workers who have settled for part-time work or have given up looking for new jobs are included, the unemployment rate rose to 17 percent, the highest on records dating from 1994.

All told, 15.1 million Americans are now out of work, the department said. And more than 7.2 million jobs have been eliminated since the recession began in December 2007.

Tags: current unemployment rate, economy, Jobless Recovery, Jobs, layoffs, Recession, Unemployment, Unemployment Benefits, Unemployment Rate, us unemployment rate