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America’s jobless picture is alarmingly bleak
Wherever you look the scene is bleak. Leading economic indicators fell in April – unusual at such an early stage in the up-cycle. Jobless claims were up by 25,000 to 471,000. And up again above expectations in the first three weeks of May – raising the four-week moving average to a level consistent with 100,000, or more, net job losses. For the past several months, claims have been nowhere near the levels of 400,000 and less that in the past were consistent with sustained job creation. We are not enjoying the normal cycle of economic improvement. If we were, employment would already have reached a new high and made up all of the jobs lost, as it did during the previous postwar recessions. This time we remain short of the old peak of employment, by an astounding 8.4m jobs. One in six Americans is either unemployed or underemployed. This is not a normal cycle when compared with a typical recession, which sees no more than 2m to 3m jobs lost.
Research by David Rosenberg, chief economist at Gluskin Sheff, reveals jobless statistics behind the headline numbers that are downright scary. More than 6.5m people (more than 45 per cent of the jobless) have not worked for 27 weeks or more, compared with 3.2m this time last year.
http://www.ft.com/cms/s/0/32229d12-7195-11df-8eec-00144feabdc0.html
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Microsoft makes play to power campaign
New York (CNN) – Microsoft took a big step Friday into the political arena, by partnering with ElectionMall.com to create a one-stop shop for running campaigns online.
The new partnership centers on “Campaign Cloud,” which helps campaigns launch their websites, manage ad buys and social networks, organize get out the vote efforts, and ease communications and collaboration between staff, donors and volunteers.
Stan Freck, Microsoft’s director of Cloud Computing described Campaign Cloud to CNN as “a central dashboard for unifying the core elements of [a] campaign. This includes access to Microsoft technologies but you can also snap in products from other companies like Twitter, Facebook and Google.
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U.S.’s $13 Trillion Debt Poised to Overtake GDP
(Bloomberg) — President Barack Obama is poised to increase the U.S. debt to a level that exceeds the value of the nation’s annual economic output, a step toward what Bill Gross called a “debt super cycle.”
The CHART OF THE DAY tracks U.S. gross domestic product and the government’s total debt, which rose past $13 trillion for the first time this month. The amount owed will surpass GDP in 2012, based on forecasts by the International Monetary Fund. The lower panel shows U.S. annual GDP growth as tracked by the IMF, which projects the world’s largest economy to expand at a slower pace than the 3.2 percent average during the past five decades.
http://www.bloomberg.com/apps/news?pid=20601109&sid=aa0cI64Gx.4E&pos=15
