9-4-09
9-4-09
Merced Sun-Star
Dennis Cardoza: Our shared values...Rep. Dennis Cardoza represents the 18th congressional district.
http://www.mercedsunstar.com/115/v-print/story/1038432.html
I have been privileged to serve our area as a local, state and federal elected official.
During that entire time my access to you has never been denied. It is the reason I have been re-elected to office.
I was born and raised in the Valley. I understand the daily challenges we face as a region. Over the past few weeks the Sun-Star has published an editorial and several letters questioning my commitment to our area.
To that I proudly say: Look at the record!
I did move my family back East.
I have three teenagers. It was a good decision. It makes me a better father, husband and congressman when my family is together. Anyone who has raised teenagers understands the daily involvement in their lives that is required.
But this doesn't weaken, lessen or compromise my representation of our Valley in Washington, D.C.
The problems we face are enormous and, unfortunately, the wheels of government don't turn fast enough.
Like you, I am frustrated. You elected me because of our shared values. You know I spend more of my time contemplating issues and trying to engage in thoughtful discussions than making outrageous claims that grab big headlines.
We have serious issues and problems in our state and in our country. Sound bites and caustic partisanship aren't recipes for solutions. We need total focus on finding solutions. That is how I approach the job.
To be frank, I have spent my entire public career working to build consensus.
An example, this year we are celebrating UC Merced's largest admissions class. Thoughtful, deliberate and concerted action brought us the campus. It is that kind of approach that is needed now to meet our economic and health care challenges.
Talking to people at home is what informs my decisions.
It is those interests and concerns that guide my legislative actions. Over the August break, in nearly 30 meetings and civic events, I met with more than 2,300 Valley residents. Even prior to returning, I was able to speak with more than 9,000 through two live telephone town hall conferences.
We received hundreds of e-mails from individuals who had positive views on participating in that experience, and I will continue to use these forums to speak with many of you while I am in Washington.
What I can tell you from all of these discussions is that everyone in the Valley has an opinion on what needs to be changed in our health care system and the economy.
Let me reassure you that health care reform legislation is only at the beginning of the process in Congress and has a long way to go.
It is undeniable that our health care system needs to be reformed. We need to eliminate pre-existing conditions and bring down costs.
As I have stated many times over the past few months, the proposed legislation requires much more work.
Health care is an enormously personal issue. As I've said, our area and country are in a significant economic slump.
We are facing tremendous challenges, some of us individually more than others.
As the discussion over health care reform and the economy moves along this fall, I want you to know that I appreciate your views and opinions, and I will continue to push for attention and assistance for our ailing region.
Letter: Falling prey...DOUG FLEMING, Merced
http://www.mercedsunstar.com/180/v-print/story/1038441.html
Editor: What's with the Sun-Star and all this bunk about Rep. Dennis Cardoza and town hall meetings? Cardoza has been faithfully having meetings of all sorts with local folks since he was on the City Council.
It's appalling to see individuals carrying semiautomatic machine guns to presidential town hall gatherings and then to read hate-filled sound bites printed right here in our local paper as if they are thoughtful letters to the editor.
It has become more and more apparent that discussion on health care reform is no longer a civilized debate, but instead, a game of "gotcha" to give one lucky thug a chance at 12 seconds of fame on YouTube.
The Sun-Star falling prey to this claptrap of paranoid rhetoric betrays the last vestige of dignity remaining for a journalistic institution.
Modesto Bee
Jobless picture soon to worsen...Tamara Lush, The Associated Press
http://www.modbee.com/local/v-print/story/841575.html
More than 1.3 million Americans' unemployment insurance benefits will run out by the end of the year, placing extra strain on an economy that is just starting to recover from the worst downturn in a generation.
Of the nation's 14.5 million jobless, those whose benefits are drying up — in some cases after a record 18 months of government support — are the most unfortunate.
In California, the state Economic Development Department said as many as 170,000 of the unemployed it serves are at risk of losing their benefits.
That could be particularly bad news for the Northern San Joaquin Valley, which has seen unemployment spike to levels not scene in more than a decade.
Stanislaus County's unemployment rate was 16.3 percent in July, and other counties in the region didn't fare much better. California's unemployment rate climbed to 11.9 percent in July, the highest number in modern record-keeping.
The valley's economy has been rocked by a dramatic downturn in the housing market, which recently has shown some improvement. But job losses in construction, finance, real estate and related fields have spread to manufacturing, auto dealerships, restaurants and retailers. Gottschalks and Mer- vyn's are among those that have closed.
The government said Thursday that 570,000 laid-off workers filed new claims for unemployment benefits last week, and the number of people receiving benefits has risen to 6.23 million.
The Labor Department is expected to report today that the August jobless rate rose to 9.5 percent, up from 9.4 percent in July.
Many are scrambling to find work before they have to reach for the next layer of government aid — food stamps or even welfare.
"People are just barely getting by," said Sue Berkowitz, the director of the South Carolina Appleseed Legal Justice Center, an advocacy group that helps the poor with legal issues concerning rent and mortgage contracts. "When I go down to our food bank, I see a lot of people who never, ever thought that's where they would be."
Exhaustion rate high
In the past year, nearly 5.5 million people exhausted their 26 weeks of standard benefits without finding work. The government says the "exhaustion rate" is the highest on records dating from 1972.
Some 3.4 million people depend upon extended benefits approved by Congress lasting from 20 weeks to a year, the longest period of extensions ever added.
The length of these extensions vary by state, depending on the jobless rate. More than half of all states have unemployment rates that triggered 53 weeks of extended benefits.
The government does not track how many jobless Americans have exhausted their standard and extended benefits, but experts estimate the figure to be nearly 100,000 and rising.
According to the National Employment Law Project, more than 402,000 Americans will exhaust their unemployment benefits by the end of September. That figure will more than triple by the end of December unless Congress — or individual states — authorizes another extension.
Legislation has been introduced to provide 13 weeks more of unemployment benefits in states with high job- less rates; the bill, introduced by Rep. Jim McDermott, D-Wash., has 23 co-sponsors, including two Republicans.
Unemployment benefits play an important part in stabilizing the economy because recipients tend to spend their weekly checks, rather than save the money or pay down debt.
"It's definitely a valuable component of economic stimulus," said Alan Auerbach, a professor of economics at the University of California at Berkeley.
Trying to maintain a good attitude is key, said Mike Allen of Riverside County, who received about 13 weeks of unemployment benefits earlier in the year. He wasn't eligible for more because he owned his own business and didn't pay enough into the state's unemployment fund to qualify him for more assistance.
Allen, who is 41, moved his wife and 15-year-old daughter into his parents' home in early August. "They've got a small house," Allen said. "But it's a roof. We'll help out with food."
Feds: Calif. water crisis isn't Washington's fault...GARANCE BURKE, Associated Press Writer
http://www.modbee.com/state/v-print/story/841134.html
FRESNO, Calif. -- Top Obama administration officials took California Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger to task Thursday for blaming the state's water crisis on federal environmental restrictions.
The governor sent a letter to Washington on Wednesday demanding a response to "catastrophic impacts" he said were caused by federal environmental rules that have slashed water deliveries.
Interior Secretary Ken Salazar and Commerce Secretary Gary Locke countered that a three-year drought is responsible for most of the state's water shortages, not agency scientists.
A Schwarzenegger spokesman said the governor's office was reviewing the secretaries' written response.
Tight water supplies have caused cities throughout the state to ration supplies and farmers to abandon a quarter-million acres of croplands.
The state's failure to restore the Sacramento-San Joaquin Delta, the freshwater estuary that forms the heart of the state's outdated water delivery system, has only compounded the problem, the secretaries said.
"We are disappointed that your letter would attempt to lay the California water crisis at the feet of agency scientists," the letter read. "You can be assured that the federal government will be a full partner to help implement any comprehensive plan that the state enacts into law."
The officials also said they were open to independent scientific reviews of the restrictions, which were designed to protect fish native to the delta, the main conduit for shipping water from north to south.
Federal water managers also have expressed support for exploring environmental problems caused by wastewater discharges from cities, another source of threats to salmon and other fish that rely on the delta for their habitat.
Dan Walters: Who would pay for massive California water project?...Dan Walters
http://www.modbee.com/opinion/walters/v-print/story/841370.html
Darrell Steinberg, the rookie leader of the state Senate, sees the final days of the 2009 legislative session as "a window of opportunity" to crack the decades-long political stalemate on water.
"Water is the best opportunity we have right now to show that we can do something big," Steinberg said.
A two-house conference committee is fleshing out a skeletal package of bills dealing with such pithy issues as governance of the Sacramento-San Joaquin Delta, conservation standards, and whether to build new reservoirs and a "conveyance" through or around the Delta.
But as they plunge into California's water crisis, legislators and Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger must also agree on how to generate tens of billions of dollars it would cost for new storage and conveyance facilities, and repairing the environmentally damaged Delta. As with health care, education, transportation or any other big-ticket issues, the bottom-line questions are who benefits and who pays.
Traditionally, state water systems, most notably Oroville Dam and the California Aqueduct, were financed with bonds secured by payments from those receiving water. Over the past couple of decades, however, voters have approved several general obligation, or GO, bonds, repaid from the state's general fund, for incremental water projects.
The governor has warned Democratic legislators that "I cannot sign a comprehensive water package if it fails to include a water infrastructure bond that expands our water storage capacity – both surface storage and groundwater – funds habitat restoration, water quality and conservation."
Those on the other side – environmentalists and their Democratic allies – tend to oppose the new facilities that Schwarzenegger wants and contend that conservation should be the primary water supply tool. But if new facilities are to be built, they say, water users should pay to curb water waste.
A report by the Public Policy Institute of California suggests that "beneficiary financing," as it's called, may be the only viable alternative because the federal government is running huge deficits and the deficit-plagued state budget is ill-positioned to service another big water bond.
The state has about $70 billion in outstanding GO bonds, including those that voters approved for highways and other public works in 2006 at Schwarzenegger's behest. And voters have approved another $9.95 billion in GO bonds for a bullet train that have yet to be sold. Meanwhile, Schwarzenegger's budget office has forecast state budget operating deficits of around $15 billion a year once temporary tax increases expire in a couple of years.
Given those numbers, some in the Capitol worry that borrowing $10 billion to $20 billion for water could freeze out bonds for schools and other public works, unless agricultural and municipal water consumers who benefited shoulder the repayment burden – as they once did.
Fresno Bee
Judge blocks drilling on Colo. refuge...P. SOLOMON BANDA, Associated Press Writer
http://www.fresnobee.com/641/v-print/story/1625731.html
DENVER A federal judge has indefinitely blocked oil and gas drilling on a wildlife refuge that sits next to the Great Sand Dunes National Park in south-central Colorado.
U.S. District Court Judge Walker Miller on Thursday granted a preliminary injunction, ruling that environmental groups presented adequate evidence that drilling would cause irreparable injury to Colorado's Baca National Wildlife Refuge.
Miller's decision blocks drilling while an environmental lawsuit moves through court.
Toronto-based Lexam Energy Exploration had acquired the mineral rights in 1997 before the former Baca Ranch was bought by the federal government for a wildlife refuge.
The refuge, about 200 miles southwest of Denver, is home to several colonies of Gunnison's prairie dogs, a candidate species for the endangered list. It's also used by migratory birds, burrowing owls, songbirds and elk.
Autry's fear-mongering...Walter A. Shubin, Kerman, Letter to the editor
http://www.fresnobee.com/277/v-print/story/1625747.html
Former Fresno Mayor Alan Autry is at it again, spreading more misinformation and fear-mongering in recent television advertisements. He needs to do some homework.
It seems that TV news and newspapers, some politicians, and even our governor have been hypnotized into believing all kinds of malarkey about the state water crisis.
The state water board has issued permits for eight times as much water as exists in a normal year, resulting in unreasonable expectations by junior water rights holders. This phantom water is the so-called “paper water” that actually is a mirage.
The California Latino Water Coalition is being duped by corporate agriculture on the west side of the Valley. Corporate ag wants to be at the front of the bucket line. Nature produces only so much water every year. You can’t fill lakes or irrigate with “paper water.” The water board needs to get its house in order. Who will pay for $50 billion in new storage? Mayor Autry needs to look out for all farmers — east side and Delta farmers — as well as the Big Boys on the west side. He must be getting ready to run for another political office.
Stockton Record
Town hall tomfoolery
Area reps should have met directly with their districts' constituents...Editorial
http://www.recordnet.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20090904/A_OPINION01/909040304/-1/A_OPINION
Frankly, robo-calls and telephone town-hall meetings don't do it.
But that's the approach the two congressmen representing San Joaquin County used during the summer recess to reach out to constituents.
Democrats Jerry McNerney of the 11th District and Dennis Cardoza of the 18th District each used the high-tech approach twice. Admittedly, more people participated than could have at a meeting in a high school gym. Cardoza estimated that more than 5,000 people took part in each of his meetings.
That's impressive and shows an inventive way of using technology. But there's nothing like meeting face to face with voters. Sure, both representatives met with a number of groups during the congressional adjournment. That's part of their job.
But also their job is to face the fire, actually see the anger and concern.
And this summer, Americans are fired up, especially about health care reform.
To be fair, there is no firm reform bill, only this idea and that idea. The White House has been vague about what the administration wants from Congress, an attempt not to make the same mistake the Clinton administration did on this issue in the early 1990s. Back then, Bill Clinton let his wife, now Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, take the lead. Congress felt left out because they were.
(They also didn't like the fact that the effort was being led by an unelected person acting like an official from the administration.)
The approach this time has been to let Congress run things with little over-arching guidance from the administration.
That probably made lawmakers feel better, until they discovered how bad voters can make them feel. This lack of White House leadership has helped fuel myths and rumors about the issue - not to mention creating fodder for talk-show hosts - even as those in Congress postured for the folks back home.
Then lawmakers went back home and in many cases, faced a voter firestorm, some of it purposefully organized to undermine the reform effort, much of it the result of real concerns about the issue.
Facing the voters can be dicey under the best circumstances. When there is an issue of such importance and such controversy, it can be downright unpleasant.
But Cardoza and McNerney owed their constituents a chance to be heard in person.
Arguing that they could reach thousands by telephone and only a couple of hundred at a meeting is just an excuse, and an empty excuse at that.
Voters of the 11th and 18th Districts deserve better.
San Francisco Chronicle
Santa Rosa to sue Sonoma County water agency...AP
http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/n/a/2009/09/04/state/n092059D75.DTL&type=printable
The city of Santa Rosa is preparing to sue Sonoma County's water supplier to force it to pursue plans to draw more water from the Russian River.
The city council voted unanimously Thursday to file a lawsuit against the Sonoma County Water Agency.
The city's Board of Public Utilities recommended the legal move after the water agency said last week it would not seek an expansion of its right to divert water from behind Warm Springs Dam into the Russian River.
Water officials say the agency abandoned its request to divert more water because of rising cost estimates to build the infrastructure and comply with environmental regulations.
Mayor Susan Gorin says the lawsuit is necessary to guarantee the city has water to meet future needs.
Herring season canceled...Demian Bulwa
http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2009/09/04/MN6519IBSO.DTL&type=printable
State wildlife regulators canceled the San Francisco Bay herring fishing season for the first time Thursday, hoping to rebuild a population that has plunged dangerously low.
The 4-0 vote by the state Fish and Game Commission follows a long decline in bay herring.
The drop is blamed on environmental factors, not on overfishing. But John Mello, a senior biologist with the state Department of Fish and Game, said the herring population has now "reached a point where any fishing mortality inhibits the rebuilding of the stock."
Fishers are primarily interested in herring roe, which is prized as a delicacy in Japan. Herring are also an important part of the food chain, supporting birds, larger fish and marine mammals.
Biologists say below-average rainfall for the past three years may have hurt the herring population, with calmer ocean conditions diminishing the upwelling of nutrients.
The Cosco Busan oil spill in November 2007 may have hurt the fish as well, although studies have not been completed.
UC workers deliver no-confidence vote to Yudof...Nanette Asimov
http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2009/09/04/BAH119I6D4.DTL&type=printable
The top brass at the University of California say it's "nothing more than a publicity stunt" and a "tantrum" - and they might be right.
But when labor unions representing about 70,000 UC employees said Thursday that 96 percent of staff and faculty at all 10 campuses had signed a vote of no confidence in UC President Mark Yudof, the message was clear: Employees at the public university are angry.
"We do not have confidence in the current leadership," said Tanya Smith, an editor at UC Berkeley and a spokeswoman for the University Professional & Technical Employees, one of a half-dozen UC labor unions that organized the no-confidence vote. "The decisions they've made have been very detrimental to UC."
The vote of no confidence is just one sign that employees are unhappy. Faculty members from every campus except UCSF are also calling for a systemwide walkout on Sept. 24, when most of UC returns to school, to draw attention to California's disinvestment in public universities.
The cash-strapped state is cutting its contribution to UC by $813 million, and what's happening at the university is a microcosm of what's happening across the entire economy: At UC, prices are also rising while services are diminishing. Pay has been cut. Employee furloughs imposed. People are losing their jobs.
At UC, Yudof is seen by many employees as sitting firmly on a goldmine that could wipe the troubles away: a $19 billion budget, of which just $3 billion comes from the state.
Yudof has said he is unable to use non-state funds - which come mainly from research grants and medical fees - to fill the budget gap because the money is legally committed to purposes other than salaries and general academic needs.
But many employees remain skeptical. And when the governing Board of Regents approved raises for some campus administrators on the same day in July when they approved a furlough plan, their blood boiled.
"That money could be used to lower tuition and save jobs," said Katherine Renfro, who works at the law library at UC Berkeley's School of Law and represents the Coalition of University Employees. "It's upsetting."
On Thursday, the union leaders tried to deliver their no-confidence statement to Yudof at his office at 111 Franklin St. in Oakland but were barred from entering the building.
"Basically, these are antics. Nothing more than a publicity stunt," said Dwaine B. Duckett, a UC vice president, as the employees chanted "Lay off Yudof!" outside.
Duckett said that many employees had expressed support when Yudof was trying to formulate a fair furlough plan earlier this summer. He said their suggestions helped create a graduated plan with those earning the most money, including Yudof, taking a 10 percent pay cut, and those earning least a 4 percent cut.
"We think it's fair," he said. "You can throw a tantrum, or you can help solve the problem."
Indybay
Delta Advocates to Hold Protest Against Peripheral Canal at Steinberg's Office...Dan Bacher
http://www.indybay.org/newsitems/2009/09/04/18620819.php
Delta advocates will converge on Senate President pro Tem Darrell Steinberg's office today in Sacramento to protest his fast tracking of water bill legislation that serves as a road map to the peripheral canal.
Media Advisory for September 4, 2009
Contact: Barbara Daly 916-761-4726
Delta Advocates to Hold Protest Against Peripheral Canal at Steinberg's Office
A group of concerned people from Clarksburg, Walnut Grove, Sacramento and throughout northern California will be holding a peaceful protest at the office of Senate President pro Tem Darrell Steinberg at 1020 "N' Street in Sacramento on Friday, September 4 between 10:30 a.m. and 1:00 p.m. to protest the dangerous Delta water legislation that Steinberg is trying to ram through the State Capitol. Steinberg's office is located on the opposite side of the street from the south side of the State Capitol.
"We are alarmed at how the current package of five water bills is being pushed through the Legislature without consideration for the many concerns of Delta and northern California residents," said Barbara Daly, Delta farmland owner, of Save the Delta. "We are protesting the legislation's ceding of control of our water to only 7 political appointees on a governance committee that could approve the building of a peripheral canal."
Daly said the protest was scheduled for today due to her concern that Tuesday, September 8 - the date that Steinberg is trying to have the package finalized - may be too late to save Delta farms and collapsing fish populations. Delta advocates, including many who live in Steinberg's district, are urging Steinberg to delay action on the bills until the next legislative session so that the concerns of his constituents and other Delta residents are properly addressed.
Delta advocates characterize the water deal as “backdoor attack” on 130 years of California water law and legal precedent and the Public Trust Doctrine. Not one of the 14 members of the Conference Committee selected this week by Steinberg and Assembly Speaker Karen Bass represent the heart of the Delta or are committed to protecting the West Coast's largest estuary.
The protest takes place as Central Valley salmon, green sturgeon, delta smelt, Sacramento splittail, striped bass, American shad and other Delta fish populations have declined to record low population levels, due to increased water exports out of the Delta in recent years. Peripheral canal opponents believe that a canal will only exacerbate the fish population collapse and threaten Delta farms by increasing water exports from the Delta.
Los Angeles Times
Wal-Mart and healthcare
Obama's healthcare agenda turns out to be a deal that usually red-state Wal-Mart has decided to buy into...Nelson Lichtenstein. Nelson Lichtenstein, a professor of history at UC Santa Barbara, is the author of "The Retail Revolution: How Wal-Mart Created a Brave New World of Business."
http://www.latimes.com/news/opinion/la-oe-lichten4-2009sep04,0,4049696,print.story
Is Wal-Mart turning blue -- blue enough to pull President Obama's healthcare chestnuts out of the fire?
If the nation's largest employer is signing on to the president's agenda, his efforts to pass healthcare reform will have won an important ally. The company employs 1.4 million "associates," has stores in more than 400 congressional districts and maintains a powerful lobbying operation in Washington.
For years, Wal-Mart has been a poster child for low wages, skimpy health insurance and conservative red-state values. Just a year ago, Wal-Mart managers organized meetings in hundreds of store to warn employees that if the Democrats won the White House, the company would face a disruptive unionization campaign.
But now, Wal-Mart supports a key, controversial plank in the health insurance reform plan: an employer mandate that would require big firms to "pay or play" -- either offer their workers an insurance plan or require a company to pay as much as $750 a year per employee to the government for coverage.
This "pay or play" plan puts Wal-Mart on the side of the unions and liberals and has evoked a virtual declaration of war from the National Retail Federation, whose officers reported themselves "astonished" at what they considered Wal-Mart's "catastrophic" endorsement of a government mandate that most retailers -- once including Wal-Mart -- have long considered anathema.
So why Wal-Mart's big switch?
Critics have pounded Wal-Mart for years for its violation of the country's labor laws, for its low wages and for its failure to offer a health insurance plan that more than half of its employees would actually purchase. During the presidential campaign, Obama told a cheering union audience that "the battle to engage Wal-Mart and force them to examine their own corporate values and ... policies ... is absolutely vital."
Criticism of this sort has had a real effect on the company's fortunes. One of its own surveys found that almost 10% of those polled refused to shop there for essentially political reasons, and the company has been stymied in its effort to put a new generation of "supercenters" in coastal California, in Chicago and in liberal cities such as Boston, Washington and New York. Two years ago, Wal-Mart slashed the number of store openings in the U.S. by a third. Its stock price has been flat for almost a decade.
And then the new administration came to power, with Obama appointing Hilda Solis, a genuine labor liberal, to be secretary of Labor. Solis would soon declare that "there's a new sheriff in town" when it came to stepped-up enforcement of the nation's labor laws. Wal-Mart knew it would be a prime target, so in late December 2008 it announced that it was resolving 63 lawsuits in 42 states to settle accusations that it forced employees to skip lunch breaks, work off the clock and sidestep overtime laws. The cost: somewhere between $352 million and $640 million.
The company has made the same kind of calculation when it comes to health insurance, not only to forestall bad press but because an employer mandate actually saves the company money when compared with the more conservative, small-government scheme being put together by the Senate Finance Committee. Without a fixed employer mandate, individual firms would be expected to shoulder part of the cost of the federal subsidy that each of their low-income employees would need to afford the coverage they would be required to buy. Because Wal-Mart, which still has most of its stores in the South and Midwest, has a lot of workers who come from poor families, the company would have to pay hundreds of millions of dollars to offset those government payments.
The Senate Finance Committee plan is a Rube Goldberg contraption, sure to generate endless conflict and dispute over both the size of the employee subsidy and the company payment. Indeed, it makes it likely that many firms will discriminate against potential employees who happen to have a lot of kids or come from poor neighborhoods.
So Wal-Mart has put aside founder Sam Walton's disdain for any new government regulation and the ideologically motivated hostility of the rest of the retail industry. An employer mandate is a cheaper, simpler and more universal way to cover those workers who cannot now afford health insurance.
Here is an instance where we can hope that Wal-Mart throws around a bit of its legendary political and economic influence, especially with all those Blue Dog Democrats who hail from the red-state districts where its stores are clustered so thickly.
CNN Money
Job losses ebb, but unemployment up
Unemployment jumps to a 26-year high of 9.7%, even as employers cut the smallest number of jobs since August 2008...Chris Isidore
http://money.cnn.com/2009/09/04/news/economy/jobs_august/
index.htm?postversion=2009090412
NEW YORK (CNNMoney.com) -- Employers trimmed fewer jobs in August than they did the prior month, but the unemployment rate jumped to a 26-year high, the government reported Friday.
There was a net loss of 216,000 jobs in the month, according to the Labor Department. That was the fewest jobs lost since August 2008 and lower than a revised loss of 276,000 jobs in July. Economists surveyed by Briefing.com predicted a loss of 230,000 jobs in August.
But even with the lower level of losses in August, 6.9 million jobs have been cut from payrolls since the start of 2008.
The unemployment rate, which in July fell for the first time in 15 months, turned higher again, jumping to 9.7% from 9.4% in July. This is the highest the unemployment rate has been since June 1983. Economists forecast that the jobless rate hit 9.5% in August.
The unemployment rate is based on a survey of households while the payroll estimate comes from a survey of employers. That can explain why unemployment rose even though there were fewer job cuts.
But the July drop in unemployment was due more to people without jobs no longer looking for work than it was due to hiring. Relatively few people got discouraged and left the labor force in August.
"When you're losing 200,000 jobs a month, the unemployment rate can't help to go up unless you have a lot of people just giving up," said Tig Gilliam, CEO of Adecco Group North America, a unit of the world's largest employment staffing firm.
Summer jobs tough to find
Bernard Baumohl, chief global economist for the Economic Outlook Group, said part of the reason for the high unemployment rate is the difficulty teenagers had finding summer jobs this year. The unemployment rate among teenagers was 25.5%, a record high.
"I'm less concerned with the unemployment rate increase because the summer tends to play a lot of havoc with these numbers," Baumohl said.
Gilliam said he's encouraged because job losses among temporary workers fell to 6,500 from 7,900 the month before. Losses in that segment of the job market, seen as a barometer of employers' hiring plans, had been averaging about 46,000 a month from the start of 2008 through June of this year.
"We expect to see the temporary workers number go positive in September or the next few months. That will set us up for overall job gains in early 2010," he said.
Gilliam said he sees far more clients filling openings and making hiring plans for a few months from now. But he predicts only modest job gains ahead.
Friday's report also showed that there were 9.1 million workers limited to part-time jobs because they couldn't find full-time positions, up 278,000 from the month before.
That number of so-called underemployed workers had been falling over the past two months, leading to hopes that employers who had been cutting their staff's hours were at least bringing people back on full time.
Many economists think that adding hours for employees is an important precursor to actual hiring. So the increase in involuntary part-time workers may be viewed as disappointing.
Still, Baumohl said the importance of the decline in job losses should not be underestimated. He said the only way to turn around the labor market is for those losses to slow down first.
"We do have to look at the momentum, and the momentum was positive," he said. "The labor market is in the process of turning around, but it is going to be agonizingly slow. Most Americans won't detect it anytime soon."
Job losses continue to be widespread
Despite automakers ramping up production to meet demand for fuel-efficient vehicles sparked by the Cash for Clunkers program, auto plants and auto parts makers lost nearly 15,000 jobs in August.
There was a 5,000 job increase at auto dealers though, ending a string of 21 months of job losses in that industry. Manufacturers outside the auto sector lost an additional 50,000 jobs, however.
The construction sector shed another 65,000 jobs as well. That loss came despite signs that building starts and home sales have been improving in recent months and increased spending on public works projects tied to the government's economic stimulus package.