Unemployment Rate

President Barack Obama expects the Republicans to give into his tax-hike demands ("Progress elusive in fiscal talks," Dec. 14). "I'm pretty confident that Republicans would not hold middle-class taxes hostage in trying to protect tax cuts for high-income individuals," he told Barbara Walters in a recent interview. However, now it seems Mr. Obama's busy party schedule can't accommodate the fiscal cliff talks. Since returning from a trip to Southeast Asia on Nov. 12, Mr. Obama has managed to play three rounds of golf but has met only once face to face with House Speaker John A. Boehner, the man with whom he is trying to strike a deal on taxes and spending to prevent another recession.

Starting in June 2005, I had literally hundreds of conversations with men and women — mostly men, and mostly from Baltimore — about their struggles to land jobs after prison. Most employers wanted nothing to do with these guys, especially the ones who had committed violent crimes. But most of those I interviewed had not been convicted of killing anyone; they had not beaten anyone or engaged in armed robbery. Most were in their 30s and 40s and had gone away for selling or using illegal narcotics.

Any business that gets a city contract or major financial help from City Hall could be required to hire 51 percent of new workers from within the city limits or face a criminal sanction. Those are the terms of a new bill proposed by City Council President Bernard C. "Jack" Young, who believes such legislation is needed to reduce what he calls Baltimore's "stubbornly high unemployment rate. " Young introduced the "local hiring mandate" legislation Monday night to the City Council.

It was arguably Ronald Reagan's favorite joke. In one version, two kids -- one an optimist, the other a pessimist -- rush downstairs on Christmas morning. The pessimistic kid gets a new bike and weeps that he'll probably break it soon. The optimistic kid is presented with an enormous pile of manure and squeals with delight: "There's got to be a pony in here somewhere!" In fact, the joke took on a life of its own in the Reagan White House. Whenever bad news came in, someone would remark, "There's got to be a pony in there somewhere.

Maryland employers added 9,800 jobs in September, a gain that came almost entirely from the private sector, the U.S. Department of Labor estimated Friday. The state's unemployment rate dropped to 6.9 percent from 7.1 percent in August, the agency said. The large increase in jobs — coming as most of the country saw growth — is the second gain in a row after five months of losses in the state, according to the Labor Department's preliminary estimates. Chesapeake Compost Works in Baltimore, which opened this month with its first two employees, didn't contribute to the improving unemployment picture in September.

Immediately after the Bureau of Labor Statistics reported that the nation's unemployment rate dropped to 7.8 percent in September, conservatives started attacking the agency for producing figures that sounded a little too convenient for the Obama administration. The most prominent doubter was former GE chairman Jack Welch, who tweeted shortly after the announcement, "Unbelievable jobs numbers..these Chicago guys will do anything..can't debate so change numbers. " But he was hardly alone.

Letter after letter is published in your paper supporting the president, despite the fact that they are all just regurgitated talking points of the Democrat Party. The latest is the new 7.8 percent unemployment rate. Nothing could be further from the truth. You see, in order for the unemployment rate to drop, the economy must be growing. The most common measurement is Gross Domestic Product, or GDP. The current GDP is 1.3 percent down from the last published GDP of 1.7 percent. The economy is shrinking, not growing.

The White House is breathing a bit easier. The president's awful debate performance was bad enough. If it had been followed by a bad jobs report, the president's chances for re-election might have plummeted. But the report showed September's unemployment rate dropping to 7.8 percent -- the first time it's been under 8 percent in 43 months. Look more closely, though, and the employment picture is murkier. According to the separate payroll survey, just 114,000 new jobs were added in September.

A five-month stretch of job losses in Maryland ended in August with a small gain, too meager to keep the state's unemployment rate from ticking up to 7.1 percent, the U.S. Department of Labor said Friday. And some economists said even the apparent job increase in August looks suspect. The labor agency, which measured losses in most major industries and both federal and state employment that month, estimated a 1,400-job gain overall as a result of a 6,700-job increase in local government.

The poverty rate in Baltimore held steady last year with about 1 in 4 counted as impoverished by the U.S. Census Bureau - a situation that economists say reflects the fits and starts of the nation's economic recovery. After a jump of more than 4 percent in the city's poverty rate between 2009 and 2010, the rate held steady in 2011, according to data released Thursday. That stagnation reflects the national trend. In the past two years, 15 percent of the U.S. population was living in poverty, up from 12.5 percent in 2007, the year the Great Recession began, according to census estimates.