I’ve posted this chart periodically over the last year. But it always help to have a little refresher when new jobs reports come out:

Nonfarm payroll employment was little changed (-36,000) in February, and the unemployment rate held at 9.7 percent, the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics reported today. Employment fell in construction and information, while [...]

What do you do when you’ve been trapped in your DC apartment for days on end because of the Snowpocalypse/Snowmageddon and can’t make it to your worthless Georgetown Law classes? You read 1,000,000 word articles from The Atlantic, apparently.
And that is exactly what Steve has done. He forwarded me this uplifting piece this morning. A [...]

I always find too many informative political and economic articles to share, so I’ll select a few and throw them all in to one post of important stuff you should read to get your week started:
1. Maybe we shouldn’t be blaming our leaders for not being able to lead:
A thought-provoking read from Slate.com: Down With [...]

I’m this close to packing it up and moving down under to New Zealand (or is ‘down under’ exclusive to Australia?) to earn a living:
WELLINGTON, New Zealand – A New Zealand teenager who says she auctioned her virginity online for $32,000 to raise tuition money did not break any laws but it might be risky [...]

We’re not there yet:
From supermarkets to department stores, sales fell 0.3 percent from November, a decline that economists attributed to a bleak jobs market and a reluctance by consumers to spend freely. Analysts, encouraged by signs that consumers were regaining confidence, had expected sales to rise 0.5 percent.
Consumer spending drives 70% of the US economy. [...]

A lot of my friends are either in law school or already attorneys. Naturally, I like none of them, because, well, they are lawyers. If you believe this Op Ed from the LA Times, we could all go with a few less attorneys in our lives. Unless, of course, you were a attorney headhunter in [...]

$146/month to be a live-in protester in a hole-in-the-wall restaurant in Beijing. I’ve been to Beijing. It’s a great, great city. This job is as appealing as they come these days:
Wanted: One live-in protester, $146 a month, no days off.
When the managers of a Beijing restaurant marked for demolition were too busy to fight it, [...]

Fox News, solving the unemployment crisis one crazy idea at a time:

That’s exactly what we want! Get the unemployment rate down by lowering minimum wage for workers, thus lowering the standard of living for more Americans — but hey, at least more people would have sh*tty jobs, right?

From Paul Krugman at the New York Times: The Jobs Imperative
If you’re looking for a job right now, your prospects are terrible. There are six times as many Americans seeking work as there are job openings, and the average duration of unemployment — the time the average job-seeker has spent looking for work — is [...]

As the NFL season is in full swing, I’ve neglected posts about some other things. Here’s an interesting read from Robert Shiller, a Yale economics professor, in the NY Times about the psychology behind economic cycles. Interesting stuff.
Beyond fiscal stimulus and government bailouts, the economic recovery that appears under way may be based on little [...]