Jobless Recovery: 43 States Have Fewer Jobs Now Than They Did Before Recession

By CHRISTOPHER S. RUGABER

Three years since the recession ended, 43 states have yet to regain the jobs they lost in the downturn. The figure is a reminder of how weak the nation’s job market remains.

The states that are the furthest behind in job growth are those that were hit hardest by the housing bust: Arizona, Florida and Nevada.

Overall, the U.S. economy has 3.5 percent fewer jobs than it did before the Great Recession, which began in December 2007. The national unemployment rate has been stuck at 8.2 percent.

As slow as the recovery in jobs has been, a few states are doing quite well. Seven have more jobs now than before the recession. Some – North Dakota, Texas and Alaska – are benefiting from an oil boom.

But most states have lagged behind.

“Except for these energy-producing states, everywhere there’s still this caution in terms of hiring,” Steve Cochrane, a regional economist at Moody’s Analytics, said.

Last month, unemployment rates rose in 27 U.S. states, the most in almost a year.

Unemployment rates fell in 11 states – the fewest since August – and were unchanged in 12, the Labor Department said Friday.

Nevada had the nation’s highest unemployment rate in June at 11.6 percent. The state also had 12.4 percent fewer jobs than before the recession, the biggest percentage of jobs lost of any state.

The state is still reeling more than four years after the housing market went bust.

Nevada had the highest rate of foreclosures in the nation in the first half of 2012, according to RealtyTrac. In the first three months of the year, 61 percent of homeowners were “underwater,” or owed more on their mortgages then their homes are worth, according CoreLogic, a real estate data firm. That’s also the highest share in the nation.

Arizona has also struggled to regain the jobs it lost, with 8.2 percent fewer in June than before the recession. That’s the second-biggest loss. It had the nation’s second-highest foreclosure rate in the first half of the year.

Florida had 7.8 percent fewer jobs in June than before the recession, the third-biggest decline. It had the second-highest proportion of underwater homes in the first quarter.

Nationwide, job growth slowed sharply this spring. Employers added just 75,000 a month from April through June, down from a healthy 226,000 pace in the first three months of the year.

Despite the weak job market, seven states have regained the jobs they lost during the recession.

North Dakota is by far the best. It had 15.7 percent more jobs in June than it did in December 2007. It also had the nation’s lowest unemployment rate at 2.9 percent.

The state’s oil production has soared in the past five years. Drillers have learned how to access previously unavailable oil reserves using a process known as hydraulic fracturing or “fracking.”

The number of oil wells in North Dakota has doubled in the past five years, and oil production has increased fivefold.

Alaska had 3.8 percent more jobs in June than before the recession began, the second-largest gain. It has also benefited from oil production. So has Texas, which had 2.4 percent more jobs in June than before the recession, or third best.

The other states that have regained all their lost jobs are: New York, Oklahoma, Louisiana, and South Dakota. New York has seen broad-based gains in education and health care, financial services, and other professional services such as legal services and accounting.

A few states are getting close to the positive column. West Virginia and Nebraska are just a few thousand jobs short. Virginia, Pennsylvania, Massachusetts and Maryland are down less than 2 percent.

Economists at IHS Global Insight, a consulting firm, estimate that 8 states won’t return to their pre-recession peak employment levels until 2016 or later.

There are some encouraging signs for many of the hardest-hit states, particularly those out West.

Cochrane said that industries such as information technology and aerospace have accelerated job growth recently in states such as California, Arizona and Utah. The region is also benefiting from trade with Asia, he added.

California added 38,300 jobs in June, its second straight month of big gains.

Florida is recovering, but not as quickly, Cochrane said. Travel and tourism is growing and adding jobs. But there aren’t many other healthy industries.

Jobless Recovery: 43 States Have Fewer Jobs Now Than They Did Before Recession

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10 Cities Where Homes Cost Less Than A Car: 24/7 Wall St.

By Rusty Weston

24/7 Wall St.: For many Americans, homeownership is the epitome of living the American dream. Yet, in towns with high tumbling home prices and double-digit vacancy rates, median-priced homes now cost the equivalent of new American cars — except, as investments go, they’re slightly more risky.

Call it the dark side of the American dream – but if you can only afford to buy just one, which would you choose? In hard-hit cities, why own a home when you can rent one without the risk of foreclosure if your job falls through? Or, for about the same money, you can sport new wheels, facing only the risk of repossession — a lesser credit report complication than a foreclosure. While a car is unlikely to increase in value, its depreciation is both more manageable and predictable than a home.

“Buying a home in most places is risky,” says Jed Kolko, chief economist and head of analytics at real estate site Trulia. These high risks in towns such as Detroit, Michigan or Youngstown, Ohio have helped depress housing prices. And until the labor market improves there’s no real chance of a strong recovery in housing. “Towns with a history of job losses probably won’t see big price gains, especially if they have high vacancy rates, because it means buyers have a lot of homes to choose from,” says Kolko.

This quandary is especially meaningful to residents of Motor City, who have experienced deepening levels of housing hell in recent years. Much has been written about Detroit’s high misery index, and the challenges of thriving in a city with high unemployment, high crime rates, and city services under severe budgetary constraints. And yet, for those willing to take a long view of the city, Detroit also offers amazing bargains to residents dedicated to living in that community.

Despite its problems, even in Detroit, it’s not unusual for multiple buyers to vie for an appealing home in a nice neighborhood. The city has one of the highest rental vacancy rates in America and boasts a four-month supply of homes on the market, according to a recent report in the Detroit Free Press. A buyer’s market is typically six or more months’ supply.

Many residents of depressed cities in Michigan, Florida, Indiana and Ohio have been slammed by job losses and tumbling housing prices, too, and recovery is coming slowly if at all. Yet, on the positive side, these towns also offer a low cost of living by American standards that make for attractive buy-side opportunities for those willing to take a long view of homeownership.

24/7 Wall St. asked Trulia, a leading provider of real estate listings and market data, to identify and rank cities by the median prices of homes sold last year. Trulia limited the list to markets with an adequate supply of non-foreclosure, single-family homes, which ruled out markets that may have unusual spikes in median sales prices. To provide further context of how economic data can impact local housing market conditions we also gathered median-income data as well as Q1 2012 vacancy rates from the U.S. Census Bureau, unemployment numbers from the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics, and June 2012 foreclosure figures from RealtyTrac.

With home prices at 30-year lows and mortgages available at record low rates, some residents in troubled cities will be tempted to take the plunge and buy a home. Yet, amid this fledgling recovery there’s still the allure of plunking down a small deposit and buying a car that can take you to a city that offers a healthier housing market and stronger long-term job prospects.

10 Cities Where Homes Cost Less Than A Car: 24/7 Wall St.

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Justin Bieber Struggling To Get A Mortgage On 9,000 Square Foot Pad

Never say never.

Justin Bieber has been hit by the housing crisis too, guys. The 18-year old singing sensation — and purveyor of advice on how to be a good boyfriend — can’t get the mortgage he wants on a 9,000 square foot property near Hollywood, TMZ reports. That’s because the appraisal value of the property was more than $1 million less than the $7 million plus asking price.

It seems even Bieber’s windswept locks probably won’t be enough to save him from this pervasive problem. Home-builders and real estate agents say they’re seeing more contracts fall apart, largely due to appraisals that come in below negotiated value, according to the Wall Street Journal. In order to keep deals like Bieber’s from falling apart, buyers either have to put more money down or sellers have to agree to cut their asking price.

Real estate appraisers have been roundly criticized for fueling the housing bubble by inflating property values during the lead up to the crash. For their part, 90 percent of real estate appraisers said that during the housing boom they were pressured, usually by mortgage brokers, to inflate property values in order to keep deals from falling through, according to Slate. The problem was so bad that it became one of the targets of financial reform legislation, which includes provisions requiring more state enforcement standards on appraisals.

Now, as potential buyers struggle to qualify for loans in the aftermath of the housing bust, critics are deriding home appraisers for being too stingy, according to the WSJ. “Robo-appraising,” or computerized real estate appraisals, are often underestimating home values making it difficult for homeowners to refinance their mortgages.

If the Biebs ultimately conquers his appraisal problem (we will start counting down until the episode of MTV’s Cribs) he better keep current on his mortgage payments or he could end up in foreclosure like some of his celebrity colleagues. Just a few examples: Football star Terrell Owens is currently facing foreclosure on two of his homes and actor Nicolas Cage saw his foreclosed home sell for half the price he paid for it, according to Zillow.

Justin Bieber Struggling To Get A Mortgage On 9,000 Square Foot Pad

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Richest 1 Percent Account For Nearly All Of U.S. Recovery’s Gains: Report

By Alexander Eichler

Technically, the economy has been in recovery for two years. But it turns out the rich have been doing most of the recovering.

In 2010 — the first full year since the end of the Great Recession — virtually all of the income growth in America took place among the country’s very wealthiest people, says an economist at the University of California, Berkeley. The top 1 percent of earners took in a full 93 percent of all the income gains that year, leaving the other 7 percent of gains to be sprinkled among the vast majority of society.

Those numbers come courtesy of Emmanuel Saez, the Berkeley economist who co-created a resource known as the World Top Incomes Database. Saez and his colleagues crunched the data on income growth from 2010, the most recent year available, and found that it was shockingly lopsided.

While much of the country is simply treading water, with a growing number of people either edging toward poverty or already there, the richest of the rich seem to be coping nicely.

Saez’s findings suggest that even though the recession dealt a blow to the 1 percent, it did little to push the U.S. off the path it’s been on for decades — that of a vast and growing disparity between the richest and poorest citizens.

Income for most workers has barely risen in the last 30 years, but the top 1 percent of earners have seen their income almost triple in the same amount of time. Economists and other experts say that could be the result of any number of factors, including the decline of labor unions, the explosion in capital gains during the middle part of the aughts, and tax policies put in place in recent years that favor the wealthy.

In his State of the Union address this past January, President Obama called economic fairness “the defining issue of our time,” perhaps mindful of the growing number of voters who say they can’t even afford basic necessities like food.

The wealth gap has been cited as a major concern for the nationwide Occupy movement, and research has suggested that income inequality might be associated with the kind of underwhelming economic growth the country has experienced for the past two years.

“Obama Calls For Economic Fairness Watch Video”

http://embed.5min.com/517254363/

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