The nation’s unemployment rate in January fell to 8.3 percent, down from December’s 8.5 percent, and the economy added 243,000 jobs, according to the latest figures released this morning by the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS).

The nation’s unemployment rate continues it steady decline, dropping by 0.8 percentage points since August and to the lowest  point since February 2009. The number of jobless workers dropped to 12.8 million, down from December’s 13.1 million. But the number of long-term unemployed (those jobless for 27 weeks or more) was little changed at 5.5 million, about 42.9 percent of the unemployed.

The unemployment insurance program for the nation’s jobless workers expires Feb. 29.  A conference is now under way between the Senate and House over two very different one-year extensions of the UI program passed late last year and the Republican bill would slash federal benefits, impose harsh new restrictions and move to dismantle the essential lifeline of unemployment insurance.  Click here for details.

Economic Policy Institute (EPI) economist Heidi Shierholz says today’s figures show “a labor market where all the moving parts seemed to be moving in a solidly good direction.”

Strong payroll employment growth was matched by a falling unemployment rate, strong employment growth in the household survey and a growing share of the population with jobs…It’s important to keep this growth in context, however—the jobs deficit is so large that even at January’s growth rate, it would still take until 2019 to get back to full employment.  We need reports this strong and stronger for the next several years to get back to good health in the labor market.

Private-sector jobs grew by 257,000, and government employment was essentially unchanged, but over the past 12 months 276,000 public employee jobs have been lost.

In January, professional and business services add about 70,000 jobs. The leisure and hospitality industry added 44,000 jobs and health care jobs grew by 31,000.

Manufacturing saw an increase of 50,000 jobs, mostly in durable goods, and the construction industry added 21,000 jobs.  There were 10,000 new jobs in the mining industry in January.

The unemployment rates for adult men (7.7 percent) and African Americans (13.6 percent) declined in January. The unemployment rates for adult women (7.7 percent), teenagers (23.2 percent), whites (7.4 percent) and Hispanics (10.5 percent) were little changed.

This blog originally appeared in AFL-CIO Now blog on February 3, 2012. Reprinted with permission.

About the Author: Mike Hall is a former West Virginia newspaper reporter, staff writer for the United Mine Workers Journal and managing editor of the Seafarers Log. He came to the AFL- CIO in 1989 and has written for several federation publications, focusing on legislation and politics, especially grassroots mobilization and workplace safety. “When my collar was still blue, I carried union cards from the Oil, Chemical and Atomic Workers, American Flint Glass Workers and Teamsters for jobs in a chemical plant, a mining equipment manufacturing plant and a warehouse. I’ve also worked as roadie for a small-time country-rock band, sold my blood plasma and played an occasional game of poker to help pay the rent. You may have seen me at one of several hundred Grateful Dead shows. I was the one with longhair and the tie-dye. Still have the shirts, lost the hair.”

According to data from the Organization for Economic Development and Cooperation that was highlighted by the Center for Economic and Policy Research, nearly 25 percent of American workers are in low-wage jobs, defined as “earning less than two-thirds of the national median hourly wage.” This is higher than many other industrialized nations, including the U.K., Canada, and Australia. CEPR found that the developed world’s high number of low-wage jobs “may contribute to broader income and wealth inequality and constitute a threat to social cohesion.”

This post originally appeared in ThinkProgress on January 26, 2012. Reprinted with permission.

About the Author: Pat Garofalo is Economic Policy Editor for ThinkProgress.org at the Center for American Progress Action Fund. Pat’s work has also appeared in The Nation, U.S. News & World Report, The Guardian, the Washington Examiner, and In These Times. He has been a guest on MSNBC and Al-Jazeera television, as well as many radio shows. Pat graduated from Brandeis University, where he was the editor-in-chief of The Brandeis Hoot, Brandeis’ community newspaper, and worked for the International Center for Ethics, Justice, and Public Life.

Teen employment rate of 26 percent is lowest since World War II—and much worse for African Americans

Even as the economy slowly picks up, finding a job is harder than ever for teenagers, according to a national study released on Tuesday. That’s likely because the jobs that are being “created” in recent months are being snapped up by adults—often people over age 50 who were laid off from other positions or forced out of retirement during the economic crisis. Meanwhile, funding for youth jobs has suffered because of state and local budget crises, and significant “stimulus” funding for youth jobs and training under the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act has now expired.

The study, by researcher Andrew Sum at the Center for Labor Market Studies at Northeastern University in Boston,looks at teen employment over time through “jobless” numbers rather than “unemployment” numbers, since unemployment figures don’t include youth who are not actively looking for work. As with adults, since it has become harder and harder to get a job many youth have given up and hence dropped from the unemployment figures.

A press release for the report says:

The teen employment rate declined by 19 percentage points, or more than 40%, nationally from 1999-2000 to 2011, falling to 26, the lowest rate since World War II… The figures are bleakest for African-American teens in the city of Chicago, of whom 90 percent are jobless, including 93 of every 100 teens from families with incomes under $40,000; upper-middle-income whites were nearly four times as likely to hold a job, the data show.

Ironically, the growing dearth of employment opportunities for youth—particularly low-income and minority youth—has come just as families most need that extra income, and as the experience the jobs provide is more important than ever for youth to get a leg up in an increasingly competitive labor market. Jack Wuest, executive director of the Alternative Schools Network in Chicago, told me:

If you’re an employer and have a choice between a 56-year-old man or woman who’s worked a lot, you’re probably going to take the adult; you might not want a ‘surly teenager.’

Wuest added that even before the economic crisis, automation, downsizing, the increase in part-time and contract work and other factors in the larger labor market have either eliminated the jobs once filled by youth or funneled adults into them. As a kid, Wuest was one of an army of newsboys in Chicago’s far north side Rogers Park neighborhood, each delivering a separate paper on their specific routes. He told me:

Now one guy delivers all the newspapers – The Wall Street Journal, The New York Times, The Chicago Sun-Times – across the whole neighborhood…It’s another example of an adult taking a job that would’ve employed four or five kids back in the 1950s or 1960s.

Also in tighter economic times, companies are less willing and able to invest in future workers by hiring teens for the summer. This trend probably especially hurts in terms of professional jobs that offer more specific training and opportunity to advance than the fast food and other service-sector jobs that youth are most likely to get.

Congress has introduced legislation, namely the Pathways Back to Work Act sponsored by Senator Richard Blumenthal (D-Conn.) and U.S. Rep. George Miller (D-Calif.), that would provide significant funding for youth employment and job training. But passing the bill will be an uphill battle, given Republican opposition and the distractions of the election year.

A press release from the Alternative Schools Network and partners explains:

The proposed Pathways Back to Work Act would create a $5 billion fund that provides $2 billion for subsidized employment programs for unemployed, low-income adults, $1.5 billion for summer and year-round employment opportunities for low-income youth, and $1.5 billion for a competitive grant program for work-based training and education programs for both adults and youth.

At an event in Chicago Tuesday, teens described the frustrating process of applying for job after job with little luck, often being told they will get a call back, but that call never comes. One bright note was provided by Deshon Carr, an 18-year-old senior at Community Christian Alternative Academy in Chicago who started a landscaping and snow removal business that employs other teens, working full-time in the summer and on weekends and over holiday break during the school year.

Carr, who is also enrolled in a culinary arts program at the Washburne Culinary Institute at Kennedy King city college, is proud he is able to create jobs for other teens in his North Lawndale neighborhood on Chicago’s west side. In the course of looking for jobs himself several years ago, he would call landscaping and construction companies and seek out mentors, ultimately leading to his own business, called Top of the Line Landscaping Inc.

“If you can’t find a job, make a job,” he told me. “If you want something bad enough you won’t give up on it, you just have to keep striving. I want to be a leader in bringing jobs to my community.”

This blog originally appeared in Working in These Times on January 26, 2012. Reprinted with permission.

About the Author: Kari Lydersen, an In These Times contributing editor, is a Chicago-based journalist whose works has appeared in The New York Times, the Washington Post, the Chicago Reader and The Progressive, among other publications. Her most recent book isRevolt on Goose Island. In 2011, she was awarded a Studs Terkel Community Media Award for her work. She can be reached atkari.lydersen@gmail.com.

One of the big dynamics in the debate over SOPA and PIPA is who’s getting money from whom. The entertainment industry’s currently spending a great deal more on lobbying than the tech community is; MPAA Chairman Chris Dodd has threatened to turn off Hollywood campaign contributions to Democrats if SOPA or a form of it doesn’t pass; and both Democrats and Republicans are attempting to position themselves for the future. What a big, and usefully clear, New York Times story about Apple’s decision to move much of its work overseas makes clear, though, is while the tech industry may eventually have more to offer in terms of lobbying cash and campaign contributions, it may not have much to offer Democrats in terms of creating critically important American manufacturing jobs. In a conversation between Steve Jobs and President Obama before the former’s death, the Times reported that this exchange took place about the Apple jobs that have moved overseas:

Why can’t that work come home? Mr. Obama asked.

Mr. Jobs’s reply was unambiguous. “Those jobs aren’t coming back,” he said, according to another dinner guest.

The president’s question touched upon a central conviction at Apple. It isn’t just that workers are cheaper abroad. Rather, Apple’s executives believe the vast scale of overseas factories as well as the flexibility, diligence and industrial skills of foreign workers have so outpaced their American counterparts that “Made in the U.S.A.” is no longer a viable option for most Apple products.

It’s absolutely true that there would have to be radical changes in the American economy to retrain workers, to move huge parts of the supply chain back to the United States, and perhaps most difficult, to get American workers to expect a vastly different standard of living or to get Apple executives to accept slower development times and more expensive production costs. I’d argue that American workers have already made substantial compromises on the former proposition. But I don’t foresee a future where companies are going to move toward the latter out of the goodness of their own hearts. There’s no question that companies have a right to maximize profits, and that if they don’t care how they’re perceived or about creating a sense of moral obligation to buy their products, they have every right to produce their products wherever and under whatever conditions they can get away with. But if they’re going to take that approach, I sort of wish they’d be as blunt about it as possible, so we don’t risk mistaking shiny toys for some sort of greater good.

This blog originally appeared in ThinkProgress on January 23, 2012. Reprinted with permission.

About the Author: Alyssa Rosenberg is a culture reporter for ThinkProgress.org. She is a correspondent for TheAtlantic.com and The Loop 21. Alyssa grew up in Massachusetts and holds a B.A. in humanities from Yale University. Before joining ThinkProgress, she was editor of Washingtonian.com and a staff correspondent at Government Executive. Her work has appeared in Esquire.com, The Daily, The American Prospect, The New Republic, National Journal, and The Daily Beast.

The beginning of a new year is a time of reflection- what am I going to bring forward into the new year and what I am going to leave behind in the old year. Recently having celebrated a birthday and reaching the “I’m half-way done with law school” milestone, I have found myself reflecting more and more about where I stand as a young adult. While every human has that moment, or has the several moments, where they stop to think about where they are going and what they are doing with their lives, I feel like I spend most of my days pondering these questions. I know what you may be thinking- bring out the violins, another sob story (My comeback, however, is that this is no sob story, but a Saab story. Get it? A little homophone if you will). I largely attribute this feeling to the state of the economy , which at this point is an easy target and a catch-all reason to blame many of our sorrows upon.

However, my problem with the economy is not so much the scarcity of jobs- but the decreasing number of opportunities to follow your dreams, capitalize on your interests, or even develop a passion (I’ll elaborate more on this-just you wait). I recently read an expose in The Washington Post about the  top fourteen college majors with the highest unemployment rates. Lucky for me, my liberal arts degree and my yet-to-be-completed Juris Doctorate help me to occupy two of the fourteen categories for highest unemployment but I digress. Most of the majors in this list can be categorized as part of the social sciences and liberal arts. While the hard sciences like engineering and computer science did make the list, most of the majors with the highest unemployment rates were not of technical backgrounds.

With this in mind, I registered to attend the Center of American Progress’s presentation “Keeping the American Economy Competitive in the 21st Century.” At the presentation, Secretary of Commerce John Bryson unveiled the COMPETES Act report on U.S. economic competitiveness and innovation. The presentation was timed perfectly with President Obama’s announcement that 200,000 jobs had been created in the past month. The report was prepared by the Department of Commerce in consultation with the National Economic Council and addressed topics such as tax policy; general business climate in the U.S., regional issues such as the role of state and local governments in higher education; barriers to set up new firms; trade policy; and science and technology education. Some of the key conclusions of the report outlined the need to invest more money in research and development initiatives, including investment in higher education focused on science, technology, engineering an mathematics (STEM) as well as mediums for increased innovation.

The panelists spoke of innovation as being a key element of our economic success- but elaborating on a sense of stalled innovation in the American economy. For example, Aneesh Chopra, U.S. Chief Technology Officer, spoke of America inventing wireless broadband, but that most broadband headquarters are no longer in the U.S. There is no doubt that innovation and invention are the key cornerstone to economic success. Even Steve Jobs once said “innovation distinguishes between a leader and a follower” and I believe him wholeheartedly- as I type away this blog post on my MacBook Pro, while holding my iPhone, and jamming out on my iTunes (loyal consumer is what you may call me). The report emphasized that by positioning American efforts on innovation, there will increased investment in STEM education, resulting in a greater demand for individuals in jobs within these fields. In order for America to move forward and continue to stay competitive in the global economy, it will need to be able to explore, invent, and create cutting edge technologies.

The presentation was excellent- I really enjoyed listening to the panelists and listening to their responses to questions I never would have thought to have posited myself. I did get to ask a question in the break-out session, where event attendees could ask questions to some of the researchers involved with the report. The question I posed was largely based on the Washington Post article I recently read. If our current economy is lagging because of high unemployment rates, but the highest unemployment rates come from fields not within the hard science background, why choose to invest our federal dollars in a sector that is not ailing? Can we stay competitive and keep our economy afloat by relying solely on innovation and R&D in technology? The response I received was that this report didn’t address that issue, but focused on the topics presented that day. I guess it wasn’t a bad answer- it was the truth, but it left me pondering and I hate to say this, but also a little disheartened. I had the Washington Post and the Department of Commerce telling me I probably would have been better off pursuing a different field of study. This is where I can clarify my statement about the economy- I genuinely enjoyed being a liberal arts major and I have always wanted to become a lawyer. To hear that things are moving in a direction that I am clearly moving the opposite of kind of stings. While things, I know, won’t come easy and perseverance and dedication always are rewarded- for now,  I’ll just blame the economy.

About this Author: Maria Saab is a law student intern at Workplace Fairness. Her Bachelor of Arts in International Studies combined with her career experiences working on Capitol Hill and with Barack Obama’s presidential campaign in 2008 encouraged her to pursue law school. As a hopeful lawyer, she plans on specializing in regulatory law and hopes to one day concentrate her work efforts towards policy development.

If union density is declining in the United States (and it is), it’s because unions can’t compete in the global economy, right? That’s the story we’re often told, anyway, but a new Center for Economic and Policy Research report says that actually, politics plays a major role (PDF). The CEPR study compares 21 countries with rich economies and facing similar levels of globalization and technological progress, and finds different outcomes for unions depending on the countries’ differing political environments.

The study looks at both union membership and union coverage, which is the number of people who are covered by collective bargaining agreements regardless of whether they are union members. (In the United States, the two numbers are fairly close; in many countries, though, significantly more workers are covered by collective bargaining agreements than belong to unions.) The result is that:

Countries strongly identified during the postwar period with social democratic parties—Sweden, Denmark, Norway, and Finland—have generally seen small increases in union coverage and only small decreases in union membership since 1980.

Over the same period, countries typically described as “liberal market economies”—the United States, the United Kingdom, Australia, New Zealand, Ireland, Canada, and Japan—have generally seen sharp drops in union coverage and membership.

Countries in the broad Christian democratic tradition, sometimes referred to as “coordinated market economies” or “continental market economies”—Germany, Austria, Italy, the Netherlands, Belgium, France, and Switzerland—typically have had outcomes somewhere in between the social democratic and liberal market economies, with small drops in union coverage and moderate declines in union membership.

That declining union membership and coverage in the U.S. is in part a result of political forces shouldn’t come as a surprise to anyone who has watched Wisconsin Gov. Scott Walker and Ohio Gov. John Kasich’s assaults on public employees or read about Sen. Lindsey Graham’s threats to the National Labor Relations Board before it filed a complaint against Boeing. But since anti-union politicians and corporations always tell you that their assaults on workers’ rights are because unions can’t work in an era of globalization, this study offers a simple rejoinder.

This blog originally appeared in Daily Kos Labor on November 22, 2011. Reprinted with permission.

About the Author: Laura Clawson is labor editor at Daily Kos. She has a PhD in sociology from Princeton University and has taught at Dartmouth College. From 2008 to 2011, she was senior writer at Working America, the community affiliate of the AFL-CIO.

The reason members of the Super Committee didn’t reach an agreement is that Republican members insisted on damaging cuts to Social Security, Medicare, and Medicare – AND they wouldn’t budge from their refusal to roll back tax cuts for the richest 1% of Americans.

If the so-called “Super Committee” had made a bi-partisan deal based on the announced negotiating positions of the Republicans and Democrats on that panel, the result would have been higher unemployment, serious damage to the social safety net — and worsening deficits.

Super Committee Democrats, concerned about being seen as blocking a deal, clearly offered Social Security and Medicare benefit cuts in return for a pitifully small increase in taxes and large and damaging spending cuts in the middle of a struggling economy.

The deal on the table – whose failure is much lamented by beltway pundits – would have seriously harmed the economy, without significantly reducing deficits. In fact, it might have made it worse.
Luckily, the progressive base – and the Democratic Caucus in the House and Senate – convinced those negotiators that a bad deal is worse than no deal.

Democrats should have been guided by the message of the September 6th press conference at which Super Committee appointee Rep. Chris Van Hollen, standing with former Speaker Nancy Pelosi, declared “Job growth will contribute to deficit reduction,” according to the Washington Post coverage:

Van Hollen, who made the remarks at a news conference with House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.), Minority Whip Steny Hoyer (D-Md.) and other members of the Democratic leadership, argued that the most recent Congressional Budget Office report states that for every 1/10 of one percentage point increase in the U.S. gross domestic product, the deficit is reduced by $310 billion.

“Now, they project over the next 10 years that average GDP, average growth of the economy will be about 2.9 percent,” he said. “What those numbers tell you is that if you got that growth rate up by half of one percent, you would actually reduce the deficit by $1.5 trillion, which is the target laid out in the legislation before us.”

Clearly, this is what all progressives believe: the weak economy should not be allowed to fall backward into another recession – which could happen if we cut spending too fast or too deeply. And action to get the economy growing robustly would be the most effective thing we could do to bring down the Federal deficit.

Progressives will therefore push for public investment to create jobs and create consumer demand, which is the missing factor preventing American business from investing in expanded production and growing employment. All of the elements of President Obama’s American Jobs Act should now be taken up by everyone in Congress who professes to be concerned about the deficit. As progressives, we will work with our allies and partners in the American Dream movement to push for extended unemployment benefits and other stimulus spending programs that both Democrats and Republicans have supported in the past.

In this post-Super Committee period, you can be sure that the Campaign for America’s Future will be fighting for policies that will spur growth and create enough jobs to bring down our chronically high unemployment. We will fight to get Congress to let the Bush tax cuts for the 1% expire. We will fight for reductions in the military budget. And we will remind all Americans that job creation (and long term health reform to control health costs) are the most effective things we can do to reduce the deficit.

This post originally appeared in Campaign for America’s Future on November 21, 2011. Reprinted with permission.

About the Author: Roger Hickey is Co-Director of the Campaign for America’s Future. He was also one of the founders of Health Care for America Now!, a coalition of over 1,000 national and local organizations united to achieve quality affordable health care for all. He was also one of the leaders of the successful campaign to stop the privatization of Social Security, called Americans United to Protect Social Security. Hickey was a founder and Communications Director of the Economic Policy Institute, a Washington think tank that looks at economics from the point of view of working Americans. He was also a founder of the Public Media Center in San Francisco. A graduate of the University of Virginia, Hickey began his career in the 1960s as an organizer for the Virginia Civil Rights Committee.

A lot of jobs that once were, aren’t coming back. Ever. To look for what isn’t there is a waste of time and an insult to your dignity.

If you haven’t noticed, the world has changed — radically. The traditional yellow brick road to success and financial security has imploded. The path to a high-paying job used to involve getting the highest academic degree you could obtain, along with specific technical job skills, to start climbing the ladder. Today, most of the ladders are decimated. If those jobs still exist, the needed knowledge and skills of those jobs have changed . . . and change again every day.

These are the greatest times of opportunity we have seen in human history — but only if you know how to seize them. To succeed you need to change with the way the world is working now. If you are unemployed, underemployed, or want to take control of your financial future, here are seven strategies to thrive in the new world.

1. Adapt to the new reality.

Over the last decade we have witnessed the death rattle of an era gone by. The corporate structure and monolithic systems of the industrial age have begun to crumble. We are returning to the way we started — as entrepreneurs. When America was founded, the majority of people had their own business, farm, market or trade. People used their skillsets and hobbies to make a living as entrepreneurs. Then the industrial age flipped the ratio and most people became employed by new systems of repetitive labor and mass production.  Technology recently wired all of us directly to each other, destroying heavily controlled and highly valued distribution channels, giving every entrepreneur immediate and direct access to a global marketplace of opportunity, right from their fingertips . . . or laptop. This means competition doesn’t just come from the business down the street, but also from every basement or second bedroom of every home in every city or suburb in every country of the world. You better become a continual learner and constantly improve your special skills.

2. Stop looking for a job and start looking for an opportunity.

Take the skills you have as an employee and turn those into a contract services business. You have an expertise, knowledge and experience in something that’s unique to you. Your skillset might be so unique you don’t even recognize it as personal expertise. What is your experience, knowledge or unique gifts? Ask a good friend, colleague or former employer to tell you. Once you discover your specialization, hire your expertise out, offer it to multiple businesses and entrepreneurs who need what you can deliver. More companies are hiring consultants and contractors for specific projects, specialized skills and services. Bartering services on the Internet are booming — sites like SwapASkil.com, UExchange.com, TradeAway.com and SwapThing.com.

3. What do you have?

What goods do you have that others might want? What goods do you have easy access to that most do not? What goods can you make that people would want? Answer one or more of those questions and take it to market through eBay or an automated Amazon.com store. You also can write about your area of skill or expertise. You can create a how-to information book and sell it through ClickBank, create a podcast or video blog series and distribute it through iTunes or other distributions channels. Follow through on a great idea. There are probably thousands of people who want to know what you know or how to do what you do. Plus, it has never been cheaper to build, outfit and market your business than it is today. Vendors are flexible and partnerships are open.

4. Who do you know?

If you want to calculate your potential for increased wealth, don’t look at your current bank balance, cars or property inventory. Look at the inventory of your high caliber relationships. With the Industrial Age over, we are now in the Relationship Age. Unequivocally, the relationships you build will be your No. 1 asset in these expanding and fast-changing times. Your ability to network is the skill you want to hone, practice and master. Your ability to get to, connect with and establish relationships with important and purposeful people will be your gateway to any goal, destination or aspiration you have.

5. What problem can you solve?

The economic downturn has created a ton of new problems that need solving. Problems are food and oxygen for entrepreneurialism. Those who create solutions to our new problems will become the beneficiaries of these times. Remember, 90 percent of entrepreneurs started out at the bottom, broke or with little capital or savings. Today they are among the world’s wealthiest.

6. Return to self-reliance and self-responsibility.

You make your choices; then your choices make you. Everything in your life exists because you made a choice about something. Choices are at the root of your results. Don’t choose at all and you’ve made the choice to be the passive receiver of whatever comes your way. Most people think they take responsibility for their lives, but many people operate in the world of blaming, finger pointing and expecting someone else — or the government — to solve their problems. You can’t count on anyone else for your success but you.

7. Take control of your future!

Separate from everyone else by developing the mindset, habits, actions and persistence it’s going to take for personal accountability and control of your future. Your soft skills can give you the leading edge. With the mind-blowing velocity of change and throng of competition, the skills needed for success today are less about academic, industrial, or technical training and more about soft skills — emotional intelligence, adaptability,  resiliency, relationship-building, accountability, productivity and leadership skills.

There are no secrets, shortcuts or quick fixes to success. It takes hard work, personal responsibility and positive choices. You already know all the information you need to succeed. You just need a new plan of action. Now is the time.

© 2011 Darren Hardy, author of The Compound Effect: Jumpstart Your Income, Your Life, Your Success

About the Author: Darren Hardy, author of The Compound Effect: Jumpstart Your Income, Your Life, Your Success, has been a leader in the personal development industry for sixteen years, having led two personal development-based television networks, producing and launching more than a thousand television shows, live events, products, and programs with many of the world’s top experts.

As an entrepreneur, Darren was earning a six-figure income by age eighteen, more than a million dollars a year by age twenty-four, and owned a company producing $50 million a year in revenue by age twenty-seven. He has mentored thousands of entrepreneurs, advised many large corporations, and serves on the board of several companies and nonprofit organizations.

Now, as publisher and editorial director of SUCCESS magazine, Darren interviews leading experts on human performance and achievement, as well as many of today’s top CEOs, revolutionary entrepreneurs, superstar athletes, entertainers, and Olympic champions, to uncover and share the secrets behind their extraordinary success.

Darren is a popular keynote speaker and appears regularly on national radio and television shows for CNBC, MSNBC, CBS, ABC, and FOX. Darren lives in San Diego, California.

For more information please visit http://www.thecompoundeffect.com, and follow the author on Facebook and Twitter.

The U.S. economy added just 80,000 jobs in October and the nation’s unemployment rate dipped slightly to 9 percent, down from September’s 9.1 percent, according to the latest figures released this morning by the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS). The nation’s economy needs 130,00-150,000 new jobs each month just to keep up with the influx of new workers.

The report comes a day after Senate Republicans blocked a bill that would have put hundreds of thousands of Americans back to work rebuilding the nation’s crumbling highways, bridges and roads and just a few weeks after they killed legislation that would have put  400,000 teachers and first responders back to work  or allowed them to stayon the job.

Jobs for state and local public employees contunue to fall with 24,000 losing their jobs last month.

Some 14 million workers remain unemployed, but a total of some 26 million Americans are unemployed, underemployed or have stopped looking for work. The number of long-term jobless (more than 27 weeks) was 5.9 million or 42.4 percent of the total jobless.

Yesterday, legislation was introduced to reauthorize federal unemployment insurance programs for 2012. Nearly two million out-of-work Americans will be cut off from federal unemployment insurance in January alone, unless Congress renews the programs before they expire on December 31, according to a recent report from the National Employment Law Project (NELP).  More than six million U.S. workers could face premature cut-off over the course of 2012.

Click here for the full BLS report.

This blog post originally appeared in AFL-CIO Now Blog on November 4, 2011. Reprinted with permission.

About the Author: Mike Hall is a former West Virginia newspaper reporter, staff writer for the United Mine Workers Journal and managing editor of the Seafarers Log. He came to the AFL-CIO in 1989 and has written for several federation publications, focusing on legislation and politics, especially grassroots mobilization and workplace safety. He carried union cards from the Oil, Chemical and Atomic Workers, American Flint Glass Workers and Teamsters for jobs in a chemical plant, a mining equipment manufacturing plant and a warehouse. He’s also worked as roadie for a small-time country-rock band, sold blood plasma, and played an occasional game of poker to help pay the rent. You may have seen him at one of several hundred Grateful Dead shows. He was the one with longhair and the tie-dye. Still has the shirts, lost the hair.

I have been unemployed since 2008, despite my constant efforts to find a job. This Tuesday, the D.C Council finally passed a bill that will make it easier for DC residents like me to get hired. Even before this bill was passed, city contractors were supposed to employ D.C. residents for at least 51% of their new hiring on city contracts. However, according to a report by the D.C. Employment Justice Center and other local organizations, the old “First Source” law was weak and not well enforced and not enough was done to connect the unemployed with jobs on city contracts. The new law, which passed its first vote yesterday, will address this problem by making city contractors more accountable for hitting the hiring targets. It will also create a workforce intermediary to connect workers with jobs, following in the footsteps of San Francisco’s City Build program and Boston’s Neighborhood Jobs Trust to create career pathways for unemployed D.C. residents.

One of the most important parts of the bill for me personally is the help it gives to employers who hire people who have been unemployed for a long time or who face special obstacles in finding a job. People like me.

You see, I have a criminal record. At first, I did not understand why I could not get work. When I finally got to see a copy of my decades old criminal record, I finally understood why no one would hire me. Looking at the record, I thought to myself, “I wouldn’t hire me.”

As a kid, I was attracted to the fast life. I was fascinated by the young guys driving Cadillacs, going to dances with alligator shoes, getting girls and so as an adolescent, I went wild. I didn’t have to go that route. I had good parents. I had a job. I wouldn’t tell my friends I had a job, but I would go out at night and then go to work the next morning. My lifestyle caught up with me when I was arrested in 1973. I was innocent of the particular crime charged, but at the time I was involved in drugs and petty crime. I served three and a half years in prison and six and a half on parole.

My life really changed while I was incarcerated. I got my GED, took college classes and eventually got married. I have been a law-abiding citizen now for more than 20 years, but my conviction is a red flag to any potential employer. They write me off before I have a chance to get my foot in the door. The truth is I spent three and half years in prison, but I am really serving a life sentence.

All throughout our country, there are millions of people who have paid their debt to society and who want to work, but very few employers are willing to hire us. At the age of 60, I have been through a diverse range of jobs and have a long list of qualifications that reflect this: commercial driver, telecommunications work, foreman and fleet manager at a tire company, and construction worker for the Department of Transportation. Yet I have been out of work for three years. I have applied for over 43 jobs and have been turned down for all of them. Right now, my only income comes from Social Security. It feels degrading to me because I am used to supporting myself. Beyond that, even with Social Security, I cannot even meet my basic needs.

I refuse to give up though. I am in the process of finishing my Associates Degree at Catholic University to become a certified addiction counselor. I want to help people avoid taking the route in life that I have. It is my lifelong dream to help educate and counsel ex-offenders so that they too can be solid citizens.

This First Source bill is a significant way to improve the lives of people who, like me, wish to be productive and responsible members of society, yet have their hopes constantly squashed by the lack of good jobs and by discriminatory hiring practices. This law gives me hope.

About the Author: Calvin Moore is a member of Workers Advocating for Greater Equality (“WAGE”), a project of the D.C. Employment Justice Center (www.dcejc.org).