Unemployment, Economy | featured news

U.S. auto sales remained soft in July and all three Detroit automakers reported sales for the month that fell slightly short of analyst estimates, as high U.S. unemployment and weak consumer confidence kept would-be buyers on the sidelines.

Growth at or below 2% isn't enough to lower the unemployment rate. The U.S. economy grew at an annual rate of just 1.5 percent from April through June, as Americans cut back sharply on spending. The slowdown in growth adds to worries that the economy could be stalling three years after the recession ended.

The number of Americans filing new claims for jobless benefits fell last week to near a four-year low but an unusual pattern for summer factory shutdowns kept hopes in check that the weak labor market was improving.

As slow as the recovery in jobs has been, a few states are doing quite well. Seven have more jobs now than before the recession. Some - Texas, North Dakota and Alaska - are benefiting from an oil boom... The other states that have regained all their lost jobs are: New York, Oklahoma, Louisiana, and South Dakota. New York has seen broad-based gains in education and health care, financial services,and other professional services such as legal services and accounting.

President Barack Obama on Wednesday ordered a series of modest steps aimed at helping small businesses, his latest election-year effort to counter Republican attacks on his economic record and show voters he is trying to tackle high unemployment.

If high unemployment "was a killer, he'd already be dead," said Republican pollster and consultant Mike McKenna. "The survey data tells you he's not dead." There's a problem with applying historical precedents and conventional wisdom to Obama. He sometimes defies them.

"[B]usinesses have created 4.4 million new jobs over the past 28 months," the president said, "including 500,000 new manufacturing jobs. That’s a step in the right direction. That’s a step in the right direction. But we can’t be satisfied, because our goal was never to just keep on working to get back where we were back in 2007, and I want to get back to a time when middle-class families and those working to get to the middle class have some basic security. That’s our goal.”

Unemployment in the 17-country euro currency bloc hit another record in May as the crippling financial crisis pushed the continent toward the brink of recession, official figures showed Monday.

The number of people seeking U.S. unemployment benefits fell last week, but the level of applications remains too high to signal a pickup in hiring.

These are anxious days for American workers. Many are underemployed. Others find pay that is simply not keeping up with their expenses.