Unemployment

Many long-term unemployed have discovered an ugly truth: You need a job to get one. Jobless workers across the country have recounted tales of being written off by a prospective employer if they have been out of work for six months or more. And some job ads have explicitly stated that a candidate must be currently employed. Now Maryland has joined a growing number of states considering legislation to prevent employers from discriminating against the unemployed. "It's about changing minds or changing attitudes, and then changing behaviors of the employers and the people who represent the employers," says Jackie Gray, a Baltimore resident who co-founded an advocacy group, Unemployed Rising, and supports the legislation.

Maryland's unemployment rate in January fell to the lowest level in three years, reflecting an improving economy that spurred the state's employers to add 5,000 jobs during the month, the U.S. Department of Labor announced Tuesday. The state's jobless rate dropped to 6.5 percent, nearly 2 percentage points lower than the 8.3 percent national average, preliminary figures for January indicate. It is the fifth straight month that Maryland added jobs and saw an improving jobless rate.

I run a small business - about 20 employees - in the Baltimore area. We are a manufacturing company in the construction industry. I have worked extremely hard and sacrificed my own pay to keep our people employed over the last five years. I have not had a layoff and had previously earned a low unemployment tax rate. It used to be 1 percent. In 2011 it was up to 4.463 percent and I got a letter this week saying it will be 11.99 percent for 2012. It is ridiculous that I am shouldering the costs of all others.

While it's ill-advised to read too much into any weekly or monthly report on the nation's jobs outlook, the latest unemployment numbers are heartening, not merely because weekly applications for unemployment benefits fell to a four-year low but because that news follows an unmistakably positive trend. An increase in the rate of economic expansion - estimated at nearly 3 percent in the final three months of last year - has given rise to the improvement. But that's not exactly cause for celebration, as the U.S. unemployment rate remains relatively high at 8.3 percent as of last month (and that's not counting those who have given up looking for work)

The Obama administration is touting the latest unemployment numbers released last week by the U.S. Department of Labor as proof its policies are working. But a closer look at the actual number of able-bodied people who are willing to work, but are not, reveals a different picture. As economist John R. Lott has written, not only is the drop in the unemployment rate from 8.5 percent to 8.3 percent still half a percentage point higher than when President Barack Obama took office three years ago, the number of unemployed is higher.

January's increase in hiring is good news, but it masks a bigger and more disturbing story -- the continuing downward mobility of the American middle class. Most of the new jobs being created are in the lower-wage sectors of the economy -- hospital orderlies and nursing aides, secretaries and temporary workers, retail and restaurant. Meanwhile, millions of Americans remain working only because they've agreed to cuts in wages and benefits. Others are settling for jobs that pay less than the jobs they've lost.

The latest news in Washington on the payroll tax cut is that there's not much news. To the surprise of no one, negotiators in Congress are exactly where they were last December when the tax break was extended two months - gridlocked. So once again, the clock is ticking. Congress has three weeks to decide whether to extend the tax holiday for some period of time (preferably the remainder of the year but at least enough time for businesses to adjust their withholding calculations)

Just north of the Johns Hopkins medical campus, in the Middle East section of East Baltimore — an area where hundreds of families were moved out and hundreds of homes were razed as part of a $1.8 billion urban renewal project — a new neighborhood is beginning to sprout. Under construction are $300 million worth of projects, including a state health laboratory, a 351-unit graduate student housing tower and a garage with a Walgreens drugstore, among other structures. Now plans are in the works for a mixed-income area with a state-of-the-art elementary school, a grocery store and restaurants, office buildings, and a park lined with loft-style apartments and a hotel.

The economy added 243,000 jobs in January, the Labor Department said this morning. It was the 4th-best best monthly job growth in almost six years. More important, it looks like part of a trend. There were a couple good job months in 2010, but they were surrounded before and afterward by months with job losses. Now the economy has clocked 16 consecutive months of job growth. The numbers are finally well into six figures. Unemployment fell another two-tenths of a percentage point last month to 8.3 percent.

Despite the fact that Mitt Romney ranks among the top 1 percent of richest Americans, the bottom line is that he is one of the 8.5 percent of unemployed Americans (as he had no earned income in 2010, according to his tax return). To his credit, he is actively seeking employment (President, U.S.), and taking extraordinary actions to become a wage earner. Throughout this time of hardship, he has not made a single plea for a government handout, only handouts (campaign contributions)