I am writing today to announce the closure of the New Mexico Independent. After three and a half years of operation in New Mexico, the board of the American Independent News Network, has decided to shift publication of its news…
While environmental activists played their part yesterday during demonstrations at the capitol building, going so far as to dress up as solar panels and to sing the tune of “You Are My Sunshine,” their counterparts, the anti-cap-and-trade contingency who has…
Roughly one quarter of University of New Mexico students are unimpressed with the state’s flagship public school, according to a survey that questioned college students about their higher education experiences.
The New Mexico Department of Workforce Solutions says they are increasing their efforts to crack down on fraudulent unemployment benefit claims.
The Occupy Wall Street protests that started in New York and have now spread to cities including Chicago, Boston and San Francisco (and coming soon to Texas), with more adopting “We are the 99%” as their unifying slogan. In a…
News the New Mexico Tourism Department laid off seven New Mexico Magazine employees Tuesday highlights the state as one of the many in the nation with a relatively fertile employment picture despite a decline in government jobs. More …
A new study from the Brookings Institution concludes that extending unemployment benefits during times of high and long-lasting unemployment does little to prevent the unemployed from taking jobs and may actually boost the number of people employed.
Trip Jennings reports that Sen. John Arthur Smith, D-Deming, drafted a compromise bill on the state’s unemployment compensation fund, raising taxes on businesses by a lesser amount than Gov. Susana Martinez line-item vetoed earlier this year:
Laurie Chapman, who has pleaded guilty to 30 counts of federal bribery charges for taking over $237,000 from Santa Fe-based Omni Roofing as a facilities manager for the Corrections Department and was later fired from a post in the Indian Affairs Department in February, has been receiving unemployment benefits since March.
Republican presidential candidates hoping to make a little political hay wasted little time Friday in offering statements on a dismal jobs report from the U.S. Department of Labor
The Bureau of Labor Statistics released its August jobs report Friday morning, finding that a small increase in private-sector employment of 17,000 jobs was exactly offset by a loss of 17,000 public-sector jobs. Unemployment remains unchanged at 9.1 percent. More …
The Bureau of Labor Statistics released its jobs report for July Friday morning, finding that 117,000 new jobs were created and the unemployment rate dropped very slightly from 9.2 percent to 9.1 percent. However, more people left the labor force than jobs were created.
New Mexico lost 30,600 non-farm jobs from June 2006 to June 2011, placing it 22nd out of 50 states and the District of Columbia in job numbers, according to data released by the Bureau of Labor Statistics. However, there was overall job growth in three of the past five years. New Mexico had 804,700 jobs as of June 2011, losing 3.66 percent of jobs in the past five years.
This month’s job report from the Bureau of Labor Statistics is terrible news. Unemployment remains unchanged at 9.2 percent and 14.1 million people unemployed, and a mere 18,000 jobs were added this month. 39,000 government jobs were lost, and 14,000 of those were federal government jobs.
While a New Mexico Workforce Solutions Department report showed the state ranked last in job growth from April 2010 to April 2011, the Bureau of Labor Statistics measured the state’s unemployment rate dropping from 8.6 percent to 7.3 percent. Joey Peters of the Santa Fe Reporter explains why the state numbers might be wrong.
Six state legislators who have filed a lawsuit against Gov. Susana Martinez over her veto powers will have their case heard by the New Mexico Supreme Court Wednesday.
The Bureau of Labor Statistics jobs report released Friday morning shows that New Mexico had the largest decline in unemployment from April to May, registering at 6.9 percent, down from 7.6 percent.
The New Mexico Department of Workforce Solutions will provide six weeks less of unemployment benefits, up to 93 weeks, after June 12 because of the state’s declining unemployment rate.
Jobs—and how the government should do more to promote them—were the main focus of the One Nation Working Together rally in Washington, D.C. this weekend, which was sponsored by more than 500 progressive organizations. “We bailed out the banks and the insurance companies. Now it’s time to bail out the American people,” urged the Rev. Al Sharpton, who drew some of the loudest cheers of the afternoon. “I hope they look at the mall, because this is what America looks like,” he added. “Not one color or one gender.”
Howard Dean speaks in support of the One Nation Working Together Rally.
In response to last month’s Glenn Beck-hosted “Restoring Honor” summit, hundreds of thousands plan to descend on Washington for a rally by the Lincoln Memorial next weekend. On Saturday, liberal groups are hosting the “One Nation Working Together” event, making a case for activism for progressive legislation to a middle class that increasingly seems to be withdrawing support from Democratic candidates.
The groups attending include civil rights, gay rights, economic justice, peace and labor activists. The AFL-CIO, National Council of La Raza and dozens of others are busing in participants, and more than 200,000 are set to attend.
“Despite having such evidence of what we can accomplish together, we have seen voter participation rates plummet — from Shelby County, Tennessee to Alameda County, California,” said Ben Jealous, the head of the NAACP. “Simultaneously, far-right extremists have found their way back into the nation’s political discourse and helped re-energize a retrograde agenda that includes attacks on every pillar of our civil rights protections from the Voting Rights Act to the Civil Rights Act to the 14th Amendment itself. Now is the time to get everyone off the sidelines and back on to the battlefield.”
And one of the groups storming that battlefield will be a new, targeted umbrella organization for the 99ers, the American 99ers Union. Just a few weeks old, the union represent 17 groups that in turn represent workers who have exhausted the maximum weeks of unemployment benefits. Its stated goal is supporting fading legislation to help the long-term unemployed, given the high unemployment rate and congressional intransigence and to raise awareness.
Nationally, long-term unemployment remains one of the most prevalent and pressing results of the recession. There are about 6.6 million workers who have been out of a job for more than six months and approximately one million who have exhausted their jobless benefits. Long-term joblessness results in everything from worse health outcomes to increased use of safety-net programs such as disability insurance — and studies show the longer a worker is unemployed, the harder it is for her to find a job.
Gregg Rosen, host of the BlogTalk radio show Unemployment Roundtable, and Michael White of the Unemployed Workers Action Group started the umbrella group. It represents about 40,000 workers, most of whom connect via the Internet. “99ers and 99er groups are banding together,” explains LaDona King, one of the most prominent 99er activists on the Web and a member of the new union. “And they are coming in one by one for strength and for consistency. The idea is that we have a consistent message, not a bunch of stories of woe and terror. And the message is that Americans need legislation to stay afloat. Workers are really hurting.”
The union is intently focused on pressuring legislators to move forward on two bills to give additional weeks of benefits to jobless workers. One bill, by Reps. Shelley Berkley (D-Nev.) and Jim McDermott (D-Wash.), grants 20 more weeks of benefits to workers in states where the unemployment rate is above 10 percent.
“Right now, there are more long-term jobless Americans than we’ve ever had on record, and we can’t just let them all fall off a cliff,” McDermott said, introducing the legislation. “I don’t believe how we can cut and run from helping unemployed workers when there are five of them competing for every available job. You only have to hear from a few unemployed workers to know how hard they are looking for work and to feel their sheer sense of desperation. Are we really prepared to just stand by and watch them sink into abject poverty?”
The second bill — fuller legislation that is therefore the subject of more 99er activism — is Sen. Debbie Stabenow’s (D-Mich.) Americans Want to Work Act. That legislation the maximum number of weeks to 119 in states with unemployment rates above 7.5 percent, meaning 34 states and the District of Columbia would currently qualify. It also extends a tax credit to companies that hire workers who have been unemployed for more than two months.
The union held its first major push for the bills last week, having members fax in a letter to Congressional offices, urging action on the bill. Sites informed jobless workers how to use free websites to send two faxes a day, some Congressional offices reported hundreds coming in. Additionally, the 99ers union is working to bring workers to the One Nation Working Together rally.
Thus far, there are no clear signs of movement on either piece of legislation, though Stabenow’s office has indicated it will try to get the Senate Finance Committee to move forward on her bill. (It needs committee approval before a floor debate.) Congressional aides say it is highly unlikely for a vote on either bill before the November election — after which, Congress will need to take up an extension of current benefits, meaning Tier V legislation might fall by the wayside.
But the activists remain galvanized by their new coordination. “We’re fired up and we’re not giving up,” King says. Thousands of jobless workers are using the new 99er group to find free or reduce rides to the rally, a chance to press again for the cause, she says.
“If Obama said the word ‘99er’ once, if he recognized this problem, I would put all my energy into campaigning for a Democratic win this November,” she notes.
New Mexico had one of the worst job loss rates in the nation for June, according to a new report by the New Mexico Voices for Children‘s Fiscal Policy Project.
“It used to be that New Mexico was not as deeply affected as the rest of the nation during a recession, but that’s not the case this time,” Fiscal Policy Project director Gerry Bradley said. “The run-up to this recession — the housing boom and high energy prices — had a significant impact on the state’s economy. Employment was up, revenue was up, and so was spending. But we ended up paying for the good times when those two economic drivers crashed.”
The state’s 8.2 percent unemployment rate continues to trail the national average of 9.5 percent, thanks to infusions of federal money — but New Mexico’s economy won’t improve until the national economy improves, the report says.
More …
New Mexico’s unemployment rate remained at 8.2 percent in June and July, above last year’s average, but still below the national rate of 9.5 percent, the New Mexico Department of Workforce Solutions announced today. Still, the situation in New Mexico…
The White House is touting it as “recovery summer”: The economy is adding jobs, the unemployment rate is falling, housing is stabilizing and the $787 billion stimulus is working. But it certainly doesn’t feel that way to America’s young workers, who suffer the worst rates of joblessness of any demographic group. And with July in full swing, their jobs situation is about to get worse.
