unemployment

 
From 1950 to 2003, Pennsylvania lost more than 50% of its manufacturing jobs. That’s more than 1 million jobs—more than any other state in the country. The service and medical industries have replaced some of these jobs, but we still feel the impact. And we continue to lose more.
 
By Rachael Spotts and Mitch Troutman
 
EDITORS NOTE: Originally published at PA From Below. Read the beginning of the article after the more link or the full article at their site.

With new jobs numbers coming in it is clear things aren't getting better for most in America. While the economy is starting to gain more jobs than lose jobs, with a gain of 231,000 jobs in April, people are going longer without work than any other time in history.

What if we drew a map that shows metro areas across the US with job gains and losses since the height of the economy in 2004? TIP Strategies did just that, creating a striking animation of the ballooning job losses marked by the crash of the financial markets in November 2008.

 
In a report released today, the Fiscal Policy Institute examines the effect of the current economic downturn on New York State, finding that job loss and wage declines are hitting New Yorkers hard - with some groups experiencing staggering levels of unemployment. Joblessness in New York State has increased by almost 400,000 since early 2008. How does this extreme growth in unemployment relate to Pennslyvania?

This map by Mark Price at the Keystone Research Center shows the deepening crisis of unemployment in Pennsylvania over the past few months. When we consider that official statistics on unemployment do not include those who become discouraged by the state of the job market and no longer look for work we can suspect these numbers are much worse.

May 8, 2009 - The Bureau of Labor Statistics released its monthly unemployment figures today.  The recent data show that the national unemployment rate continued to rise in April, reaching 8.9%.  This is the highest unemployment rate since 1983, and is a .4% increase from the unemployment rate of 8.5% in March of this year.