The actions on the eve of the Fed’s centenary year underscore Bernanke’s hallmark commitment to experimentation and forceful action, derived in part from his research showing too little monetary stimulus produced large economic costs for the U.S. in the 1930s and for Japan in the 1990s. He called the current state of the labor market, with unemployment at 7.7 percent, “an enormous waste of human and economic potential” and said the benefits of more bond buying outweigh the potential risks.

“Bernanke is pulling out all the stops to kick this economy back into a higher gear,” said Chris Rupkey, chief financial economist at Bank of Tokyo-Mitsubishi UFJ Ltd. in New York. “They are buying everything in sight — Treasuries, mortgage-backed securities — and will keep rates low until everyone who wants a job has one.”

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Update: Brian Milner has some interesting thoughts on this there.

The Federal Reserve refashioned its bond-buying programs on Wednesday, extending its far-reaching effort to revitalize the jobs market and boost the economic recovery into 2013.

In addition, the Fed shifted its communications strategy by specifying the levels of unemployment and inflation that might prompt it to begin raising short-term interest rates, which are now near zero.

The central bank’s policy committee, in its final meeting of the year, said Wednesday it would “initially” begin buying $45 billion of long-term Treasury bonds each month. The latest stimulus from the Fed will replace an expiring program known as “Operation Twist,” in which the Fed has been buying about $45 billion of long-term Treasury bonds each month and selling about the same amount of short-term Treasurys.

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Your medical plan is facing an unexpected expense, so you probably are, too. It’s a new, $63-per-head fee to cushion the cost of covering people with pre-existing conditions under President Barack Obama’s health care overhaul.

The charge, buried in a recent regulation, works out to tens of millions of dollars for the largest companies, employers say. Most of that is likely to be passed on to workers.

Employee benefits lawyer Chantel Sheaks calls it a “sleeper issue” with significant financial consequences, particularly for large employers.

Read it all from the front page of yesterday’s local paper.

This is not a good time to be starting out in life. Jobs are scarce, and those that exist often pay unexpectedly low wages. Beginning a family ”” always stressful and uncertain ”” is increasingly a stretch. The weak economy begets weak family formation. We instinctively know this; several new studies now deepen our understanding.

When the labor market operates smoothly, it creates an economic escalator. Just out of high school or college, young workers typically switch jobs frequently until they find something that fits their talent and temperament. Job changes often mean higher pay; people move to advance themselves. The more they succeed, the more confident they feel in marrying and having children.

The most startling evidence of the broken escalator is the collapse in marriages and births….

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America’s employers added jobs at a slow pace in November, easing fears that uncertainty about U.S. budget policies would stifle hiring, but fueling concerns about the robustness of the economic recovery.

The Labor Department’s latest snapshot of the job market said employers added 146,000 jobs last month. That is an improvement from the previous two months, but below the average job growth per month of about 150,000 over the past two years. Payroll growth in September and October also was revised down by about 50,000 jobs…..

…November’s figures also show that jobs are growing too slowly to significantly lower unemployment or boost the economy’s overall growth, which faces headwinds. To keep up with population growth, the economy needs to add about 120,000 new jobs every month just to keep the unemployment rate from rising.

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The ongoing debate over homework focuses mostly on kids’ mounting workloads , and some schools’ efforts to curtail them.

A growing number of parents are struggling with another homework trend that threatens to sink their juggle ”“ an increase in extremely complicated homework projects, from neighborhood field trips to do research, to expansive dioramas or multimedia presentations to report on what students have learned, according to parents I interviewed for last Wednesday’s “Work & Family” column on homework.

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Jay Litton: “One of the most interesting things about a job networking ministry is, you don’t need more than one person to volunteer. And by the way, you just need one person out of work. That’s it. I have a concern that when people stop by and see what we’re doing, it looks like this big huge production, big huge event. And it’s like, ”˜Well, if we can’t do that then we shouldn’t do anything.’ And that’s just so wrong. So we go out of our way to let every church know that there should be somebody there at that church that should be willing to have conversations with people that are in transition.”

Tyrone Griffin tried the program at Roswell, found a job, and kept the faith.

Read it all or check out the video.

….seasoned Washington hands say that once this rather gloomy back and forth has played out – and it might take another week or more – the work towards reaching a solution that both sides can sell to their parties and their lawmakers will begin in earnest.

A deal by Christmas, a week before the fiscal cliff deadline, remains uncertain but not out of the question. The so-called fiscal cliff is a combination of U.S. government spending cuts and tax increases due to be implemented under existing law in early 2013 that may cut the federal budget deficit but also tip the economy back into recession.

The pattern of little happening until very close to a holiday is well-established on Capitol Hill. The past three pre-Christmas seasons brought important eleventh-hour developments on health care in 2009, tax cut extensions in 2010 and the payroll tax holiday in 2011.

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I’m applying to law school. I’m sure there are many schools that could provide me with a decent education; I’m less confident that a degree from some institutions will get me a job. In fact, some schools, while charging outrageously high tuition, place fewer than half of their recent graduates in long-term, full-time legal positions. Is it moral for schools like these to keep enrolling students and collecting tuition dollars knowing that their product is a risky (or outright bad) investment?

Read it all from “The Ethicist”.

[Crystal] Thompson made $18 an hour as a senior account executive at Daniel Island giftware manufacturer Davis & Small until March, and the 36-year-old single mother hasn’t been able to find suitable replacement work since.

She said she would simply work two jobs if she didn’t have children, but since she has to support her girls, she figures she needs to be paid at least $14 an hour.

“There’s so many people who are unemployed that they’re all going for the same jobs,” she said.

Thompson already moved in with her mother to save money, even though “it’s not emotionally healthy for me and my children.” And if no one hires her this month, it’s about to get rougher.
Thompson is one of 29,000 South Carolinians who will lose their federal unemployment benefits at the end of the year.

After several extensions of the federal Emergency Unemployment Compensation program to help out-of-work Americans ride out the recession the past few years, it’s over. Congress passed the Middle Class Tax Relief and Job Creation Act of 2012 in February, which cut off the benefits by Jan. 3, 2013.

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The recession and weak recovery appears to be keeping many adult children from getting a home of their own, and that could have implications for the housing industry’s recovery.

A Census Bureau report released Wednesday found that between 2007 and 2011 there was a steady increase in the percentage of adults living in someone else’s house ”“ and that increase has mostly been driven by adult children moving in with mom and dad.

In 2011, Census Bureau researchers found that 17.9 percent of people 18 and older, or 41.2 million people, lived in a house in which they weren’t the head of the household or that person’s spouse or significant other. That’s up from 16 percent in 2007, before the nation went into recession.

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A steep decline in births among immigrant women hard hit by the recent recession is the driving force behind the record low U.S. birthrate, according to the Pew Research Center.

The annual number of births per 1,000 women ages 15 to 44 dropped 8% in the U.S. from 2007 to 2010 to 64 births per 1,000, according to a report released Thursday by the nonpartisan Pew center. The U.S. birthrate peaked during the baby boom, at 122.7 in 1957.

Immigrant women, both legal and illegal, still have a higher birthrate than the U.S. population as a whole. Yet the rate for foreign-born women dropped 14% between 2007 and 2010, to 87.8 births per 1,000 women ages 15 to 44, compared with a 6% decline for U.S.-born women, to 58.9 births. The birthrate plunged 19% for immigrants of Hispanic origin during that period; among Mexicans, the largest group among Hispanics, the rate plunged 23%.

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Congressional negotiators, trying to avert a fiscal crisis in January, are examining ideas that would allow effective tax rates to rise for the wealthy without technically raising the top tax rate of 35 percent. They hope the proposals will advance negotiations by allowing both parties to claim they stood their ground.

One possible change would tax the entire salary earned by those making more than a certain level ”” $400,000 or so ”” at the top rate of 35 percent rather than allowing them to pay lower rates before they reach the target, as is the standard formula. That plan would allow Republicans to say they did not back down in their opposition to raising marginal tax rates and Democrats to say they prevailed by increasing effective tax rates on the rich. At the same time, it would provide an initial effort to reduce the deficit, which the negotiators call a down payment, as Congressional tax-writing committees hash out a broad overhaul of the tax code.

That idea could be combined with the reinstatement of tax code provisions that once prevented the rich from taking personal exemptions or itemizing deductions. Those rules were eliminated by the tax cut of 2001. Reinstating them would tack an additional one to two percentage points onto the effective tax rates of high-income households without raising the 35 percent rate, but which households would be affected has not been decided. In all, tax experts say, families in the top tax bracket would find their effective tax rate jump to 41 percent, even though the top statutory rate would remain 35 percent.

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[When Charles] Proudfit… [became a Christian] he was eager to “apply my new faith to every area of my life, including my work.” But when he looked to his church for guidance, he was stymied.

“The local church doesn’t deal much with everyday realities for the working people in the pews,” he laments. So, “more out of exasperation than inspiration,” Proudfit founded the Cincinnati-based marketplace ministry At Work on Purpose (AWOP).

That AWOP formed independently of the church is common, says Princeton University scholar David W. Miller. Author of God at Work: The History and Promise of the Faith at Work Movement, Miller notes that most marketplace ministries “have formed outside the authority, involvement, or impetus of the church.” What is uncommon is AWOP’s holistic approach to integrating faith and work among its 5,000-plus members in the Cincinnati metro area. It’s moving past a narrow focus on workplace evangelism to include ethics, social responsibility, and citywide engagement””a model that more marketplace ministries are embracing across the nation.

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For the first time in its nearly 100-year history, Orlando Health is reducing its workforce by up to 400 positions starting immediately, hospital officials announced this morning.

The elimination of 300 to 400 jobs will occur in two phases, and represents a 2- to 3-percent decrease in the system’s 16,000 employees, said Orlando Health spokeswoman Kena Lewis. The reductions affect all departments and all eight of its hospitals, including Orlando Regional Medical Center and Arnold Palmer Hospital for Children.

The first wave of employees affected by the “labor expense reduction” portion of the initiative received their notices Friday, said Lewis. The next wave of downsizing will happen after the first of the year.

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Police and protesters clashed in Spain on Wednesday as millions of workers went on strike across Europe to protest spending cuts they say have made the economic crisis worse.

Hundreds of flights were cancelled, car factories and ports were at a standstill and trains barely ran in Spain and Portugal where unions held their first ever coordinated general strike.

Riot police arrested at least two protesters in Madrid and hit others with batons, witnesses said, and in Rome students pelted police with rocks in a protest over money-saving plans for the school system.

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Tim Keller, pastor of New York’s Redeemer Presbyterian Church and New York Times bestselling author of The Reason for God, has taught and counseled students, young professionals, and senior leaders on the subject of work and calling for more than twenty years. Now he puts his insights into a book for readers everywhere, giving biblical perspectives on such pressing questions as:

Ӣ What is the purpose of work?
ӬӬӢ How can I find meaning and serve customers in a cutthroat, bottom-line-oriented workplace?ӬӬ
Ӣ How can I use my skills in a vocation that has meaning and purpose?
ӬӬӢ Can I stay true to my values and still advance in my field?
ӬӬӢ How do I make the difficult choices that must be made in the course of a successful career?ӬӬ

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…historically, voters have given a second term to incumbent presidents who preside over even modest economic growth during an election year.

That pattern appears to have held for Obama. If the economy is not exactly roaring ahead, it improved steadily over the course of the year.

“It was never going to be a landslide,” said John Sides, a political science professor at George Washington University. “But it was always his race to lose.”

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Talking about the struggles faced by the working poor has become a social taboo. We would prefer to pretend that the problem wasn’t there ”“ but sadly it is.

It is a very grim reality that needs addressing urgently by all of us.

We will not make this country stronger by impoverishing others. Whether that is by offering unpaid internships and work experience to young people ”“ or by freezing Minimum Wage levels for the poorest ”“ the end result is that our society, our communities and our nation become sicker and less cohesive as a result….

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Finance chiefs of the world’s 20 leading economies are ringing alarm bells over the U.S. fiscal cliff and Europe’s debt woes at a meeting in Mexico this weekend as they look to push back deficit reduction targets to help boost growth.

Unless a fractious U.S. Congress can reach a deal, about $600 billion in government spending cuts and higher taxes are set to kick in on January 1, threatening to push the American economy back into recession and hit world growth.

“The Americans themselves acknowledge that this is a problem,” a G20 official said on condition of anonymity. “The U.S. administration says it doesn’t want to fall off the fiscal cliff, but right now it can’t tell us how exactly it will address it because that issue is on ice ahead of the election.”

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U.S. nonfarm payrolls increased by a seasonally adjusted 171,000 jobs last month, the Labor Department said Friday. The politically important unemployment rate, obtained by a separate survey of U.S. households, rose one-tenth of a percentage point to 7.9%.

Economists surveyed by Dow Jones Newswires had forecast a gain of 125,000 in payrolls and a 7.9% jobless rate.

Friday’s report offers the last broad snapshot of the economy before the Nov. 6 election. The campaign was overshadowed much of this week by Sandy, though severe disruption and damage caused by the storm isn’t reflected in the October employment figures because they are based on surveys conducted earlier in the month.

Read it all. Blog readers know I prefer U-6, which I consider the most representative rate–it went down from 14.7 to 14.6 month over month. You can find a list of all measures, U-1 through U-6, there and a longer term U-6 chart there–KSH.

Update: Dylan Matthews has 6 charts on the employment report here; note especially the one on wages.

To those who were surprised that the European Union received the Nobel Peace Prize, I say: “Think twice.” This was not only a deserved award for Europe’s contribution to bringing peace and stabilizing democracies in the recent past. The Nobel Committee was also sending a clear warning to contemporary leaders. I could almost hear them saying: “On this difficult odyssey, don’t abandon ship. In today’s world, the EU is too valuable to squander.”

It was an indirect but powerful rebuttal to the dangerous nationalist and populist rhetoric some politicians have adopted when describing the recent financial crisis.

This message couldn’t have come at a better time.

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Since the Fresh & Easy grocery chain was founded five years ago, it has opened 150 stores in California and positioned itself as a hip, socially responsible company.

A cross between Whole Foods and Trader Joe’s, the company brags that its house brands have no artificial colors or trans fats, that two-thirds of its produce is grown locally and that its main distribution center is powered by a $13 million solar installation.

But in one crucial respect, Fresh & Easy is just like the vast majority of large American retailers: most employees work part-time, with its stores changing many of their workers’ schedules week to week.

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The middle class has been caught in an economic vise, trying to pay 2012 prices with paychecks that haven’t grown since the good times went bust ”” or even earlier.

Across the nation, family income was down 8 percent last year from what it was in 2000. And in South Carolina, the median income last year was just over $40,000.

That’s the lowest wages have been in the Palmetto State since 1985, according inflation-adjusted figures from the U.S. census.

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Writing is hard. All by itself with no bells and whistles, when it’s just your thoughts pulsing through your mind, filtered through your heart, and fighting to get out of your fingers as articulately as possible ”“ it’s hard.

But we, we are living in the age of bells and whistles. In a day and time when being published, being read, is easier than ever ”“ the task itself has become harder.

The responsibilities of writing have been weighed down with drudgery. Writers aren’t simply creatives anymore. We are publicists, agents, assistants, marketers, back-scratchers, promoters, tech gurus, networkers, platform-builders .

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For the first time since the Great Recession hit, American households are taking on more debt than they are shedding, an epochal shift that might augur a more resilient recovery.

For two of the last three quarters, American households’ total outstanding borrowing on things like credit cards, mortgages and auto loans has increased after falling for 14 consecutive quarters before then. Some economists even see an end to the long, hard process of deleveraging ”” as they refer to the cutting of debt relative to income or the nation’s economic output. That process, they say, has been a central reason for the extraordinary sluggishness of the recovery.

“We’re at an inflection point,” said Kevin Logan, the chief United States economist for HSBC. “Debt is less of a burden” for households, he said.

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At 4.06pm, less than 30 minutes before Synod rose for the year, the first count of this year’s meeting was held on a proposed amendment during a debate on church planting (the establishment of new congregations across Melbourne and Geelong). This time, the amendment was carried.

Synod called on the Diocesan Council to review how the living requirements of clergy in the Melbourne Diocese were met, including the setting of stipends, recompense for travel costs, housing, superannuation, benefits, stipend continuance insurance and retrenchment.

A senior clergyman, the Revd Dr David Powys of St John’s Cranbourne, said in his mover’s speech that the fundamental way in which clergy remuneration and provisions were conceived had not changed very much in 30 years but “very many other things” about ordained ministry had changed very substantially. These included the dwindling proportion of clergy who were vicars, a reduction in ministry households where the stipend was the main source of income, the decline in clergy living in vicarages and church-owned accommodation, the increasing number of clergy in part-time appointments and the fact that women now made up a significant proportion of clergy ranks.

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Taxes and government spending. Health care. Immigration. Financial regulation.

They are the issues that have dominated the political debate in recent years and have played a prominent role in this presidential campaign. But in many ways they have obscured what is arguably the nation’s biggest challenge: breaking out of a decade of income stagnation that has afflicted the middle class and the poor and exacerbated inequality.

Many of the bedrock assumptions of American culture ”” about work, progress, fairness and optimism ”” are being shaken as successive generations worry about the prospect of declining living standards. No question, perhaps, is more central to the country’s global standing than whether the economy will perform better on that score in the future than it has in the recent past.

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For 33 years, Sánchez Gordillo has been mayor of Marinaleda, pop. 2,700, another farming settlement about 100 miles west of Jódar. Like Jódar, Marinaleda is mostly inhabited by jornaleros. Over the decades, Sánchez Gordillo has transformed the poor village into an islet of social justice and relative prosperity, with almost full employment through communal farming, low taxes, a salary of €1,200 ($1,572), food and housing considered as rights, and “direct democracy” exercised through frequent general assemblies. Sánchez Gordillo and his townsmen launched their movement to build what he calls “a communist utopia” after the death of general and dictator Francisco Franco in 1975, occupying land owned by a member of the royal family and distributing it for communal ownership as well as taking over local airports.

His efforts in Marinaleda long ago earned him a regional following, but Sánchez Gordillo and his lieutenant, the 57-year-old Diego Cañamero, the SAT union’s national spokesman, have gained renown in recent months with a series of controversial protests against the austerity measures embraced by Prime Minister Mariano Rajoy and the Spanish government. On Aug. 7, the two led union members on raids on Carrefour (CA) and Mercadona supermarkets, leaving the stores with shopping carts full of “expropriated” food they gave away to the hungry poor.

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Struggling with shrinking attendance, some churches are shortening their traditional Sunday service, promising to get a generation with limited attention spans out the door in as little as 30 minutes.

These abbreviated ceremonies are aimed at luring back the enormous numbers of young people who avoid Sundays at church. With distractions such as the Internet and a weak connection to the faith of their childhoods, many are steering clear, to the dismay of religious leaders who desperately want them back.

“We are increasingly aware of the time pressures on families, and they have been telling us that the traditional service is too long,” said the Rev. Chip Stokes of St. Paul’s Episcopal Church in Delray Beach, Fla. “We recognize that things are changing, and we have to be more adaptive without losing our core.”

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