AFL-CIO has two great positions open—Website Editor/Manager and Blog Editor—and are looking for extraordinary individuals to fill them. These two positions are critical to making the totally revamped AFL-CIO website and blog as dynamic and effective as possible — and as helpful as possible to our affiliates and all working people. People who are interested [...]

Several states will begin dropping long-term, unemployment-insurance recipients from their rolls next month. Beginning April 7, 2012, jobless residents living in Kansas, Kentucky, Massachusetts, Missouri, Ohio, Oregon, South Carolina, Tennessee and Wisconsin will begin to lose their benefits. The federal Extended Benefits program, which grants claimants in states with high unemployment rates an additional 13 [...]

Dear UCubed Leader: Last Friday’s unemployment report reassured those with jobs that the worst was over. Not so for the jobless. For them, the worst is yet to come. The days ahead will be spent wondering what’s wrong with me? Their nights will be interrupted by a dreadful thought: Will I ever work again? The [...]

By Eli Saslow The Washington Post Published Friday, March 9, 2012 The president’s senior advisers walked into the Roosevelt Room at 8:29 a.m., refreshing the screens on their BlackBerrys in a race to see the monthly employment numbers first. Their daily planning meeting in the White House always felt a bit futile on this one [...]

WASHINGTON — February’s unemployment rating would have seen significant change had our nation’s leaders put in place a 21st century Works Progress Administration (WPA), says UCubed. “Franklin Delano Roosevelt’s WPA put 8.5 million people to work during the Great Depression,” said UCubed Executive Director Rick Sloan. “The WPA changed lives. It changed our country. A [...]

The official BLS unemployment figures for February, 2012: 1.  Rely on the Current Population Survey of households – often referred to as the “Birth/Death Model” – which is just that, a survey, even though much more accurate payroll data is available.  The Birth/Death Model fairly consistently overestimates actual job creation. 2.  Exclude changes in employment [...]

Dear UCubed Leaders: Facebook’s report on UCubed just landed with a thud. Last week we reached 858,000 fans. And our friends of fans numbered 21,056,095! So what’s next? We will keep pushing the idea of a Works Progress Administration 2.0 as a solution to our jobs crisis. Our WPA 2.0 ad campaign added 25,000 Facebook [...]

The University of Washington has joined with the City Council of Seattle in holding a two-day event called the Unemployed Nation Hearings. The goal is to highlight the consequences of massive, enduring unemployment via semi-official hearings featuring testimony from men and women struggling with unemployment.  The Unemployed Nation Hearings are scheduled for March 30-31, 2012. [...]

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By Leo Hindery, Jr. and Rick Sloan The Huffington Post February 14, 2012 In one of the most uninformed — and counter-productive — op-eds we’ve read in the last five years, President Barack Obama’s first chairwoman of the Council of Economic Advisors, Christina D. Romer, just spent 1,200 words arguing that we should do nothing [...]