Unemployment, Economic Crisis | featured news

Fueling the demonstrators’ anger is the perceived failure by politicians to alleviate the hardships imposed on a struggling population by a jobless rate of 21 percent.

The simple truth is that Obama and the Democratic Congress were dealt a lousy economic hand, and they've played it about as well as anyone could. Along with their predecessors and the holdovers at the Federal Reserve, they prevented a collapse of the global financial system and a 1930s-like depression. But given the magnitude of the financial crisis and the global imbalances that gave rise to it, a prolonged period of slow growth and high unemployment was almost inevitable.

Americans' outlook on the economy went into relapse in February. Rising job worries sent a key barometer of confidence to its lowest point in 10 months.

The social safety net was built for short-term gaps between jobs, but work may be scarce for years, even as the American economy shows signs of a rebound.

President Barack Obama will lay out policy proposals to combat double-digit unemployment in a speech on Tuesday tackling an economic problem that has become a political drain on his young administration.

The government says the number of newly-laid off workers seeking unemployment insurance fell last week, fresh evidence that layoffs are easing.

Japan sees its unemployment reach a six-year high, at 5.4%, with job availability at a new low, in a further sign of the slowdown.

We are now looking at unemployment numbers that undermine any confidence that we might be nearing the bottom of the recession. The appropriate metaphor is not the green shoots of new growth. A better image is to look at the true total of jobless people as a prudent navigator looks at an iceberg. These 9 signs suggest that the U.S. recession is even worse than previously thought.

President Obama on Saturday dismissed the idea the nation might need a second stimulus to jolt the economy out of recession and ...

WASHINGTON — Despite persistently high unemployment, Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner said Friday the Obama administration's economic stimulus plan is on the "expected path."

"There's been substantial improvements in arresting what was the worst recession globally we've seen in generations," Geithner told lawmakers Friday.