467K Jobs Cut in June; Jobless Rate at 26-Year High
Employers cut a larger-than-expected 467,000 jobs in June, driving the unemployment rate up to a 26-year high of 9.5 percent, suggesting that the economy's road to recovery will be a bumpy one. (AP)
Washington Post Staff Writers
Thursday, July 2, 2009; 4:09 PM
Employers kept slashing jobs at a furious pace in June as the unemployment rate edged ever closer to double-digit levels, undermining signs of progress in the economy, and making clear that the job market remains in terrible shape.
This Story
467K Jobs Cut in June; Jobless Rate at 26-Year High
Stocks Fall Sharply as Jobless Claims Hit 26-Year High
The number of jobs on employers' payrolls fell by 467,000, the Labor Department said today. That is many more jobs than were shed in May and far worse than the 350,000 job losses that economists were forecasting.
Job losses peaked in January and had declined every month until June. The steep losses show that even as there are signs that total economic activity may level off or begin growing later this year, the nation's employers are still pulling back.
The unemployment rate, meanwhile, which is based on a separate survey of households, rose to 9.5 percent, from 9.4 percent. While it is now rising at a more measured pace than in the recent past, many economists still expect that the rate will surpass 10 percent by fall.
Separately, the Labor Department reported that 614,000 people applied for new unemployment insurance benefits last week. While down slightly from the previous week, that measure of weakness in the job market has remained stubbornly high, with more than 600,000 jobless claims every week since late January.
The stock market fell steeply on the news, with the Standard & Poor's 500-stock index down 2.8 percent to close at 897.30.
President Obama called the job figures released today "sobering" but said he is "absolutely confident" that the country will recover from the recession and prosper over the longer term. But he predicted that recovery will take a long time.
"As I've said from the moment that I walked into the door of this White House, it took years for us to get into this mess, and it will take us more than a few months to turn it around," Obama said.
Today's numbers are the latest evidence that the much hoped-for improvement in the labor market is hardly imminent, and that a bottoming out in the economy could be further away than many economists had hoped.
"This sprayed some Round-Up on the green shoots," said David Shulman, a senior economist at the UCLA Anderson Forecast. "The economy is in the process of bottoming, but that's different from saying it's recovering."
The nation now has 14.7 million people who are looking for a job but can't find one, up 7.2 million since the beginning of the recession in December 2007. A broader measure of unemployment, which also includes people who are working part-time but want a full-time job and who have given up looking for a job out of frustration, also rose, to 16.5 percent from 16.4 percent.
The higher-than-expected job losses came about in part because of an unexpected drop in the number of government jobs; 52,000 of them were shed in June.
But the job losses occurred almost across the board, with major job cuts in manufacturing (136,000 jobs) and professional and business services employers (116,000 jobs). The construction sector continued cutting jobs rapidly (79,000), but the rate of job losses in the industry has slowed.
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467K Jobs Cut in June; Jobless Rate at 26-Year High
Stocks Fall Sharply as Jobless Claims Hit 26-Year High
The only bright spot was in education and health care, which gained 34,000 jobs.
Wages, meanwhile, were little changed, with average weekly pay for non-managerial workers falling to $609.37, from $609.51. With many people losing their jobs, and those who remain at work making less money, American consumers will be hard-pressed to increase their spending later in the year, despite higher confidence and rising wealth through the stock market.
White House officials tried to put the job losses in the best light, noting repeatedly that the workforce is now shrinking at a slower pace than it was during the early months of the year.
The results were "disappointing" said Christina Romer, Chairman of the Council of Economic Advisors, in an interview on CNBC. She noted that employment is a lagging indicator on the economy and that the results were not as bad as the job losses earlier in the year.
"While the average loss . . . this quarter is less devastating than the 700,000 per month that we lost in the previous quarter, and while there are continuing signs that the recession is slowing, obviously this is little comfort to all those Americans who have lost their jobs," the president said.
Republicans, meanwhile, claimed the weak numbers as evidence that the administration's fiscal stimulus is ineffective.
Speaking to reporters in the Rose Garden after meeting with chief executives of several energy companies, Obama expressed confidence that new energy-related jobs will help lift the country's job market up.
"It's men and women like these who will help lead us out of this recession and into a better future. My job -- and our job as a government -- is to do whatever we can to unleash the great generative powers of the American economy by encouraging their efforts," Obama said.
Obama met with John Berger of Standard Renewable Energy, Stephanie A. Burns of Dow Corning, Amit Chatterjee of Hara, Alex Laskey of Positive Energy, James L. Robo of the FPL Group, David Rosenberg of Hycrete, Michael R. Splinter of Applied Materials and Chuck Swoboda of Cree Lighting.
Obama used the opportunity to urge passage of the energy legislation that passed the House last week and is now working its way through the Senate.
"It's now up to the Senate to continue the work that was begun in the House to forge this more prosperous future," he said
7月１日、カリホルにア州議会の予算案は通らなかった。アーノルド・シュワルツネガー知事は、「緊急事態宣言」を発令した。2003年10月の同州知事であったＧＲＡＹ・ＤＡＶＩＳの、りコール（緊縮経済を議会に嫌われた）の後、圧勝して選ばれた。ところが、州財政劣化で自分も同じ「穴」に落ちたわけだ。今朝は、知事になったことを後悔しているだろう。英文ですが読んで下さい。
以前に載せた「オバマはカリホルニアを助けない」 http://bomanchu.blog81.fc2.com/blog-entry-92.html も読んで下さい。伊勢平次郎 メリーランドにて、
California: A Dream Decimated By Harold Meyerson
Wednesday, July 1, 2009
In Sacramento, they can hear the chimes at midnight. State legislators and Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger have been told by State Controller John Chiang that he will be compelled to pay the state's bills with IOUs starting tomorrow unless they come up with a way to close California's mammoth $24 billion deficit.
This Story
California: A Dream Decimated
How the Golden State Got Tarnished
A Crown of Thorns for Miss California?
California has company in this eleventh-hour agony. Indiana, Arizona, Mississippi and Pennsylvania also went into the final day of the fiscal year facing the prospect of shutdowns of public agencies or paying bills through IOUs unless they devised ways to close the yawning gap between their obligations and their recession-savaged revenue.
The list of states -- Democratic and Republican, old economy and new -- is sufficiently diverse to dispel any notion that the fiscal crisis of the states is disproportionately the problem of one party or one region. It is, rather, hard-wired into the American system of governance, wherein virtually all the states have required themselves to produce balanced budgets even during depressions -- which means they must slash services and lay off workers even though such actions actually deepen the downturn.
But California is a special case simply because it's so big. Closing California's budget gap entirely through cutbacks in programs, as Schwarzenegger and the Republicans in the legislature propose, will deepen not only the state's recession but also the nation's. Fully 1 in 4 of the nation's underwater mortgages, for instance, are on California homes, and the effects of the governor's proposed cuts -- which UCLA's Anderson School of Business estimates will cause 60,000 state employees to lose their jobs -- will be to create a new wave of foreclosures and toxic assets on the banks' books. California accounts for 12 percent of the nation's gross domestic product and a disproportionate share of the federal government's revenues (and for every dollar that Californians pay to the feds, they get just 80 cents back in services).
Right-wing ideologues see the crisis as an opportunity to shrink government regardless of the consequences. Schwarzenegger is proposing to end welfare, not just as we know it but altogether, and to throw 1 million children off the rolls of the state's healthy families program. But the consequences of closing the deficit simply through cutbacks will be felt by more than the poor. Already reeling from $15 billion in cutbacks that the state put through in February, many school districts, including that of Los Angeles, have canceled summer school this year. Scholarships that enable students of modest means to attend California's fabled university system have been slashed. Most of the state's parks may have to be closed as well.
The terrible irony in decimating the public sector to save the state is that the California that was the epicenter of the postwar American dream was fundamentally a creation of government. Fighting a Pacific war during World War II compelled the federal government to spend billions on California industry and infrastructure, and the state was the leading beneficiary of Pentagon dollars during the Cold War. As Kevin Starr, California's leading historian, points out in "Golden Dreams," his brilliant new history of the state in the 1950s and early '60s, fully 40 percent of all defense dollars for manufacturing and research in 1959 went to California, anchoring the state's booming economy in a well-paid workforce that was either unionized or professionalized, and seeding an electronics and high-tech sector that was to blossom in the following decades. Building on that prosperity to create more prosperity, Earl Warren, Goodwin Knight and Pat Brown -- two Republicans, one Democrat -- invested state dollars in schools, universities, freeways and aqueducts that were the best in the world. The Golden State was never more golden.
Today, its governor seems determined to turn that gold to dross. On Monday, the Democrats in the legislature passed a budget that included cuts of $11 billion, levied a tax on oil companies and tobacco, and raised auto registration fees by $15 per car to keep the state parks from closing. Schwarzenegger reiterated his refusal to raise any taxes or fees and said he would veto the budget.
From a model for far-sighted investments in the future, California has become a state that uninvests in the present and has no vision at all for the future. Proposition 13, enacted by state voters in 1978, effectively blocked its cities and counties from funding their own endeavors, and the Republican minority in the legislature, abetted by Schwarzenegger, has made it all but impossible to invest in the kind of projects that Warren, Knight and Brown undertook. Today's California visionaries are calling for a constitutional convention to rewrite the plainly dysfunctional rules by which the state governs itself. It is not only Californians but also America that has a stake in their success. A California that decimates itself during recessions drags the rest of the nation down with it.
（解説）カリホルにアは、カナダ〜ブラジル〜インド〜ロシアの上を行く、世界第八位の経済なのだ。さらに、アメリカのＧＤＰの１２％を生み出す。この大州の住宅の支払い不能物件は、実に全米の25%にのぼる。シュワルツネガー知事の方針では、６万人の州政府公務員が失業するという。学校〜病院〜警察〜消防署、、すると、現在、支払い不能となっている住宅やビルの持ち主に破産する者が出る。ここから、「リセッション第二波」が起きると伊勢は憂慮している。世界経済は、まだまだ、収縮を続ける。ＣＯＮＴＲＡＣＴＩＯＮという。オバマ政権筋が流す「楽観」には眉唾である。クレジットカードのデフォルトの統計が、まだ、氷山の一角だからだ。みなさん、他人事ではない。支出を引き締めましょう。日米の政府は「使え使え」と奨励するが、カネが尽きたらどうするんだ？政府が送金してくれるんか？伊勢平次郎 メリーランドにて、、
べネゼラのチャべスが、日本企業の資産を押さえようとしている。伊藤忠商事や三菱石油や工事契約をした日系の工業会社への支払いが停止している。債務不履行だ。日本の企業はべネゼラから撤退を考えている。伊勢平次郎 メリーランドにて、、
Japan May End $1.5 Billion Venezuela Loan on Seizures By Steven Bodzin and Shigeru Sato
June 23 (Bloomberg) -- Japan may cancel a planned $1.5 billion loan for Venezuela’s El Palito and Puerto La Cruz oil refineries after the South American nation seized Japanese company assets, said a person familiar with the situation.
The Japan Bank for International Cooperation, or JBIC, is reviewing loans for the upgrades after Venezuela took over Japanese iron and chemicals assets and fell behind on payments to oil-service contractors, according to the person, who declined to be identified because the review isn’t public. The refineries have a combined 327,000 barrels-a-day of capacity.
Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez is risking as much as $33.5 billion in Japanese investment as he takes over plants owned by companies such as Tokyo-based Mitsubishi Corp. Petroleos de Venezuela SA, the state-owned oil company, is also behind on payments to contractors including Japan’s Toyo Engineering Corp., according to the person.
“If that money were to dry out they’d be in a serious pinch,” said Roger Tissot, a consultant with Gas Energy Latin America in Vernon, British Columbia. “It doesn’t matter if you’re from China, Japan, Saudi Arabia or Wall Street, you want your money back and a little bit of return.”
Insurance Coverage
Nippon Export and Investment Insurance, or Nexi, is also considering ending coverage for projects in Venezuela, the person said. The agency insures most Japanese holdings in Venezuela. The company has been holding internal meetings to determine its insurance coverage policy for Japanese investments in Venezuela, Kyoichi Suzuki, the head of the agency’s country risk analysis group, said by phone June 19.
Rafael Ramirez, Venezuela’s oil and energy minister and president of PDVSA, as the state oil company is known, didn’t immediately respond to a request for comment sent to his communications office.
Hirofumi Kawagoshi, the head of investor relations at Toyo Engineering, confirmed that Venezuela has been behind in payments for a 60-billion-yen ($631 million) contract to build a fertilizer plant. The accord was signed in 2007, Kawagoshi said.
Planned Japanese investments in Venezuela include $10 billion in liquefied natural gas projects, $8 billion in petrochemicals and $1.5 billion for the refineries, Chavez said while visiting Japanese Prime Minister Taro Aso in April.
‘Grave Concerns’
“We have grave concerns about Venezuela’s nationalization of the industries and need to continue internal discussions before determining our clear future policy,” Nexi’s Suzuki said.
Japanese companies may lose their appetite for investing in the South American country without Nexi coverage because they would be fully exposed to risks, said Hidetoshi Shioda, a senior energy analyst at Mizuho Securities Co. in Tokyo.
Mitsubishi has an agreement to finance upgrading the Puerto La Cruz refinery, according to a statement from Chavez’s office. A Mitsubishi spokesman, who can’t be named because of the company’s internal rules, declined to comment on the agreement or on future talks on the refinery project.
JBIC, through a spokesperson who wouldn’t be named because of bank policy, declined to comment on any review of the loan because negotiations are still ongoing. Venezuela’s Foreign Ministry didn’t immediately respond to a call and e-mailed questions from Bloomberg News seeking comment.
Exit From Venezuela
“Trading houses and other Japanese investors would get out of Venezuela if they don’t have the Japanese government’s strong financial backing,” said Yasuhiro Narita, an analyst specializing in trading houses at Nomura Securities Co. in Tokyo.
Mitsubishi, Mitsui & Co. and Itochu Corp. are among the partners designing two liquefied natural gas plants where Ramirez said Japanese investment may reach $10 billion.
Mitsui will look into the impact of Venezuela’s possible nationalization of industries and take appropriate action in consultation with its Japanese partners, said a spokesman, who declined to be named because of company policy. An Itochu spokesman, who also can’t be identified because of internal rules, declined to comment.
In 2007, JBIC led a group including Mitsui and Marubeni Corp. that loaned PDVSA $3.5 billion to be paid in cash, crude oil or petroleum products over 15 years, according to PDVSA’s annual report.
Venezuela has nationalized two industries with Japanese investment this year. Chavez took over the hot briquetted iron industry May 22, including Complejo Siderurgico de Guayana CA, or Comsigua, where shareholders include Kobe, Japan-based Kobe Steel Ltd. and Tokyo-based Marubeni.
The Latin American nation’s legislature passed a law June 16 to take over primary and intermediate chemicals plants, such as the Metor methanol plant where Mitsubishi Gas Chemical Co. and Mitsubishi, both of Tokyo, share a majority stake.
PDVSA is at least $5 billion behind on payments to contractors, with several complaining that they have received only token payments since August.
オバマへの支持率に変化が見えた。特に、オバマ政権の最優先である経済にである。アメリカ国民の５０%少々が、＄７８７０億ドルの景気刺激策に期待をしているだけとなった。ポスト・ＡＢＣ世論調査では、2008年の大統領選挙中に沸いた６５％もあった楽観は急速に萎んでいる。オバマの政治姿勢への評価は高い。だが、個々の問題への取り組みにおいて、不賛成の者が増えた。英文ですが、読んで下さい。伊勢平次郎 メリーランドにて、、
Poll: Americans Less Upbeat About Stimulus Bill's Impact
Washington Post
Monday, June 22, 2009; 5:00 PM
Expectations for President Obama's stimulus package have diminished, with barely half of Americans now confident the $787 billion measure will boost the economy, and the rapid rise in optimism that followed the 2008 election has abated, according to a new Washington Post-ABC News poll.
Washington Post-ABC News Poll Data
The tempered public outlook has not significantly affected Obama's overall standing, which at 65 percent approval in the new survey outpaces the ratings of former Presidents George W. Bush and Bill Clinton at similar points in their presidencies. But new questions about the stimulus package's effectiveness underscore the stakes for the Obama administration in the months ahead, as it pushes for big reforms in health care and energy on top of the singular issue of the nation's flagging economy.
Obama maintains leverage on these issues in part because of the continuing weakness of his opposition. The survey found the favorability ratings of congressional Republicans at their lowest point in polls dating back more than a decade. Obama also has significant advantages over Republican lawmakers in terms of public trust on dealing with the economy, health care, the deficit and the threat of terrorism, all despite broad-based GOP criticism of his early actions on these fronts.
With unemployment projected to continue rising and fears that the big run-up in stock prices since February may have been a temporary trend, fixing the economy remains the most critical issue of Obama's presidency -- and retaining public confidence in his policies is an important element of his recovery strategy.
Overall, 52 percent now say the stimulus package has or will succeed in restoring the economy, down from 59 percent two months ago. The falloff in confidence in the stimulus package has been sharpest in the hard-hit Midwest, where fewer than half now see the government spending as succeeding. In April, six in 10 Midwesterners said the big, federal program had already worked or eventually would do so.
The shift in public assessments has clear political ramifications: At the 100-day mark of Obama's presidency, 63 percent of people in states that were decided by fewer than 10 points in November said the stimulus had or would boost the economy. Today, in the telephone poll of 1,001 Americans conducted Thursday through Sunday, that number has plummeted to 50 percent in those closely-contested states, with 47 percent saying it won't help the national economy.
The falloff since April cuts across partisan lines. Confidence in the package's effectiveness has dropped from 81 percent to 73 percent among Democrats and from 32 percent to 26 percent among Republicans. Independents dropped from 56 percent to 50 percent. What was once a clearly positive assessment of the program among independents (56 to 39 percent) is now an almost evenly split (50 to 47percent).
Public confidence in the direction of the country remains well above its pre-election lows, but in the new survey, that indicator stopped rising for the first time since the election. In April, the percentage of Americans saying things were moving in a positive direction hit 50 percent for the first time in more than six years, and up from single digits before the November election. In the new survey, 47 percent said they believe the country is moving in the right direction and 50 percent said it is pretty seriously off on the wrong track.
Obama's approval rating is slightly lower than it was in April, and his disapproval figure has risen by five percentage points. In general, public approval of Obama's handling of major issues is lower than his overall approval rating. Still, majorities of Americans said they approved of Obama's handling of the economy, health care and global warming.
Two weak points on the domestic front remain: Obama still gets tepid marks on his handling of the situation with the big U.S. automakers and as many people disapprove as approve of his Obama's handling of the federal budget deficit. On the deficit, intensity runs against the president, with 35 percent "strongly" disapproving, compared with 22 percent who say they are solidly behind what he's doing on that topic.
More broadly, concerns about the deficit remain widespread, with almost nine in 10 Americans saying they are "very" or "somewhat" concerned about the size of the deficit.
One factor that continues to work for Obama, however, is that most Americans continue to see him as a new type of Democrat, one "who will be careful with the public's money," rather than an old-style, "tax-and-spend Democrat." By this point in 1993, Clinton had already lost the new-style label, which he had maintained over the first months of his presidency.
Obama has used the power and financial resources of the federal government repeatedly as he has dealt with the country's problems this year, to the consternation of his Republican critics. The poll found little change in underlying public attitudes toward government since the inauguration, with just over half saying they prefer a smaller government with fewer services to a larger government with more services. Independents, however, now split 61 to 35 percent in favor of a smaller government; they were more narrowly divided on this question a year ago (52 to 44 percent), before the financial crisis hit.
As in previous polls, Obama's ratings on foreign policy are generally higher than on domestic issues. Six in 10 said they approve of his handling of international affairs and 57 percent said they approve of his handling of the threat of terrorism. More said Obama's policies are making the United States safer from terrorism than think they've weakened the country, but as in April, a plurality said they've not made much of a difference.
But on specific questions of torture policy and the closing of the detention center at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, there is still broad public pushback to his announced policies. Under half, 45 percent, said they approve of shuttering the detention center, and when asked if they'd accept those terrorism suspects in their home states, support dropped further still, to 37 percent.
The country remains sharply divided on torture, with nearly half saying there are cases in which torture should be considered, a sharp contrast to the president's blanket condemnation of the practice.
On Iran, Obama has been criticized by some Republicans for the way he has responded to the recent demonstrations there, with his critics saying he has not been vocal enough in promoting democracy and in siding with the demonstrators. In the new survey, 52 percent said they approved of how he has handled the situation. There has been no noticeable change on this question since the last poll in April, before the controversy over the Iranian elections erupted.
The state of the Republican Party remains grim. Just 22 percent of those surveyed identified themselves as Republicans, near April's decades-long low point. Only 36 percent said they have a favorable impression of the GOP, with 56 percent saying they have an unfavorable impression. (Fifty-three percent said they have a favorable view of the Democratic Party.)
Obama has greater than 20-point leads over congressional Republicans in public trust on dealing with health care, the deficit, terrorism and the economy. The margin on the economy has slipped since April, but still remains a hefty 55 percent to 31 percent over GOP lawmakers.
House Speaker Nancy Pelosi's ratings stand at 38 percent positive, 45 percent negative. The last time the Post-ABC poll asked about Pelosi was in April 2007. At that time, 53 percent said they approved of the way she was handling her job and 35 percent disapproved.
The poll has a margin of sampling error of plus or minus three percentage points.
住んでいる自宅と土地を差し押さえられるほど、アメリカ人にとって辛いものはない。「差し押さえ物件」と看板を前庭に立てられる。失業率が１３州で１０％以上に達した。住宅を差し押さえられる原因の最大のものだ。ハーバード大学の「住宅問題調査報告」が発表された。アメリカの住宅市場後退と銀行の貸し渋りは収まりそうもない。英文ですが、読んでください。知識人には知っておくべきことだから。伊勢平次郎 メリーランドにて、、
Housing Eludes Recovery as Job Losses, Foreclosures Climb By Brian Louis
June 22 (Bloomberg) -- Unemployment and consumer debt are putting home ownership beyond the reach of would-be buyers even as U.S. home prices reset to 2003 levels, according to a report today by Harvard University’s Joint Center for Housing Studies.
“Clear signs of a recovery have yet to emerge, and job losses and the steady stream of foreclosures are keeping many markets under pressure,” researchers for the Cambridge, Massachusetts-based center wrote. “Sales of both new and existing homes continued to struggle to find a bottom.”
Tight residential real estate markets and low mortgage rates fueled a five-year property boom as the number of U.S. households paying more than half their incomes for housing jumped from 13.8 million in 2001 to 17.9 million in 2007, the researchers said.
The federal government is now trying to stabilize the market by offering incentives for lenders to modify the terms of delinquent mortgages and the Federal Reserve has pledged to buy as much as $1.25 trillion in mortgage-backed securities to free up funding for new home loans.
When recovery comes, immigrants and children born to the post-World War II baby-boom generation will lead it, the Harvard researchers said.
So-called “echo boomers will help keep demand strong for the next 10 years and beyond” as they turn 25-44 years old, according to the report.
“Even under the low immigration assumptions, minorities will fuel 73 percent of household growth in 2010-20, with Hispanics leading the way at 36 percent,” researchers found.
Unemployment
Minority households have been hit harder by the recession and the housing slump than whites, according to the report.
The unemployment rate for black residents in April was 15 percent compared with 8 percent for whites, the report said. In low-income minority neighborhoods, the median foreclosure rate was 8.4 percent compared with 6.3 percent in low-income white neighborhoods from January 2007 through June 2008.
Even as falling prices have made homes more affordable, roadblocks to buying remain, including the difficulty of getting a mortgage as lenders require bigger down payments and higher incomes to qualify for a mortgage, the report said.
“The home buying market will continue to struggle until the foreclosure crisis comes to an end,” the report said. “Although new federal efforts may prevent millions of families from losing their homes, mounting job losses will likely keep foreclosures at elevated levels.”
＊日本の住宅事情（市場という意味ではない）を伊勢は知らない。あまり、差し押さえ物件という話しを聞かない。
