Based on many sources of information, a generation of lawyers face the toughest job market in decades. Since 2008, some 15,000 attorney and legal-staff jobs at large firms have vanished, according to a Northwestern Law study. Associates have been laid off, partners nudged out the door and recruitment programs have been scaled back or eliminated.

And with corporations scrutinizing their legal expenses as never before, more entry-level legal work is now outsourced to contract temporary employees, both in the United States and in countries like India. It’s common to hear lawyers fret about the sort of tectonic shift that crushed the domestic steel industry decades ago. Read the full story.


The Wall Street Journal reported that a survey found that nearly 25% of employed graduates said their work was temporary. And almost 22% said they were still looking for work even though they were employed, up from 16% in 2008.

Tam Doan says that he didn't have time to actually read the paperwork he was signing, and in some cases, he didn't even know what documents he was putting his pen to.

It only took him a second to sign each foreclosure document.

That's how good Tam Doan got at his job in Bank of America's pre-sale foreclosure department in Southern California. Read the full story.

The 200 jobs are listed based on the average top salary earned for the position. The list starts out with the job paying the highest amount (Surgeons) and ends with the position which pays the lowest amount (Dishwasher).

The list does not include celebrity and professional athlete jobs like actors, baseball players, singers, etc.

The Brandeis's Institute on Assets and Social Policy reviewed data from the years 1984 to 2007. The results while not surprising are disturbing if you are African American in America and thought that as a group, the wealth gap was closing.

Their report mentions that one quarter of African American families do not have any financial assets to protect themselves from financial ruin. The average white family now has accumulated $95,000 more in total wealth than the average African-American family.

The Brandeis institute's report also has reported why the wealth gap has grown 375% in the last 23 years.

*Public Policies - tax cuts on investment income, inheritances, redistribution of wealth and opportunities

*Tax Deductions - home mortgages, retirement accounts, and college savings - These tax deductions tend to benefit wealthier families.

*Discrimination - housing, credit, and labor markets - For example, African Americans and Hispanics were at least twice as likely to receive high cost home mortgages as whites with similar incomes. These reckless high cost loans unnecessarily impeded wealth building in minority communities and triggered the foreclosure crisis that is wiping out the largest source of wealth for minorities.

For individuals that are not interested in attending college, there are jobs that will be available in the future that will not require a 4 year college degree.

Below is a list of the occupations that are projected to hire the most employees between the years 2008 and 2018.

Due to the difficult economic times, some states have decided that they may need to delay sending out tax refund checks. These are very difficult times for many states and the recession has caused many states to consider making taxpayers wait up to five months for their refund.

It has been reported that New York, hit with a $9 billion deficit, may delay $500 million in refunds to keep the state from running out of cash according to Gov. David Paterson.

Officials in the following states say they have had to delay issuing refunds or consider doing so because the state might not have the cash on hand to cover the checks.

* Hawaii
* Alabama
* North Carolina
* Kansas
* Idaho
* New York

Things are not always what they seem to be.

Despite the federal government’s positive report on GDP recently, most economists believe that the current growth numbers are misleading. Many of these economists are also skeptical about significant growth in GDP in 2010.

With real growth at rates below previous recessions in 1975 and 1982, jobless rates in the double digits and limited access to credit, many economists believe that the US economy is still weak.

The government mentioned GDP growing a whopping 5.7% during the 4th quarter of 2009. This is not impressive when you look behind the numbers.

To put that 5.7% figure into perspective you need to know that on average GDP grows around 3% +/- 1.5%. That is, GDP usually ranges between 1.5% to 4.5% growth. So a figure of 5.7% is massive growth.

Most of the growth came from businesses investing massive amounts of money in expanding their inventories. This method of GDP growth is not likely to be duplicated quarter after quarter.

GDP is calculated as: Consumer spending + Investment by businesses (including in inventory) + Government spending + Exports, net...or C + I + G + E = GDP. Normally, the allocation of GDP between these four broad categories is listed below:

C = 65-70%
I = 10-15%
G = 20-30%
E = -5%

In the 4th quarter, the investment by business was 3.4% of that 5.7%, or approximately 60% of the GDP figure. Remember that investment by business is typically only 10 to 15% of GDP so this was an anomaly.

Consumer spending which is usually 65 to 70% of GDP was only 25% in the 4th quarter of 2009. More precisely, it was 1.4% of the 5.7% of the GDP total.

Consumer spending is the oil that greases the economic wheel for the the US economy. This why Americans are goaded to spend, spend, and spend. When consumers stop spending because they are losing jobs, home values are falling, and equity cannot be pulled out of homes, consumers cut back on spending.

It is usually beneficial to look behind the numbers whenever the data is available. As Brothers Connected, that is what we plan to do for one another as we move forward together.

Mortgage rates and delinquency rates continue to rise in America. The number of homeowners "underwater" -- those owing more on their mortgage than the home is worth -- now stands at roughly 11 million, about a quarter of all mortgage holders, according to real estate research firm First American CoreLogic. This number is expected to rise.

There is a belief by many that analyze the housing industry for a living that negative equity is the single most important driver of defaults. Negative equity has made managing a mortgage a real financial hardship. It is also one of the culprits for why the Federal government mortgage modification program to fix the housing problems in the country has been unsuccessful.

Lowering principal appears to be one of the best ways to fix the housing crisis in America. The government has been reluctant due to moral hazard. This is when people enjoy the fruits of their actions without having to suffer any of the consequences so they do it more.

The Obama administration is probably scared of the political fallout if people believe that their neighbors have been bailed out while they are struggling financially. It then becomes an issue of unfairness. The truth is that after bailing out Wall Street which could end up costing trillions to the U.S. taxpayer, the moral hazard issue should no longer be used.

Recently featured in Jet magazine, the Seagram’s Pursuit of Excellence Institute is a rigorous, four-week training session funded by Seagram’s and administered by the Atlanta Workforce Development Agency, Chicago Urban League, the Corporation to Develop Communities of Tampa and the Columbia Urban League.

To address rising unemployment among African American men, which is at a record 34.5%, Seagram’s has announced plans to continue its successful and unprecedented job training and mentoring program, the Pursuit of Excellence Institute in four of the hardest hit cities in the nation: Atlanta, Chicago, Tampa and Columbia South Carolina.

If you are located in one of these cities and you are looking for work or you are exploring a career change, go to the website and read the Press Release.

Jet Magazine has reported that this is the third year of the program. This opportunity for Black men is typically for those in the age range of 25 to 32 years old.

To date, 60 men have completed the program. This year, the number is expected to jump to 100. The job placement rate upon completion of the program is nearly 95 percent, Jet Magazine reported.

The government will hire about 1.2 million temporary workers in the first half of the year to administer the once every 10 years population count.

The stimulus bill President Barack Obama signed last February and additional funding by Congress provided enough money to hire 1.4 million Americans in total for the census, almost three times as many as in 2000 when the census was last taken. About 160,000 were already employed last year to do preliminary work.

The Census Bureau anticipates hiring about 181,000 workers from January through March and about 971,000 in the following three months.

Although the pay can vary, many of the jobs offered are for those going door-to-door to collect data from households that do not fill out and return their short list of ten questions. Households that do not return the forms before April 1 will be getting a visit from Census workers after that time.

For more information about 2010 Census Jobs, visit the government website. You can even take a practice test at the website.

The 2010 Census will help communities receive more than $400 billion in federal government money each year for things like:
•Hospitals
•Job training centers
•Schools
•Senior centers
•Bridges, tunnels and other-public works projects
•Emergency services

The data collected by the census also helps determine the number of seats your state has in the United States Congress. The U.S. Congress is where all politicians from your area are suppose to represent you and everyone else in your community.

Between 2000 and 2008, the number of poor people living in America rose by 15.4 percent -- nearly twice the growth rate in the overall population in the same period.

The poverty rate in American suburbs increased 25 percent during that period -- and is growing significantly faster than the national average and urban rate. Due in large part to suburban population growth and the housing slump, the suburbs now contain the nation's biggest and fastest-growing poor population.

The Brookings Institution published a report showing that from Las Vegas to Boise to Houston, suburban poverty has been growing steadily.

"The enduring social and fiscal challenges for cities that stem from high poverty are increasingly shared by their suburbs," the report concludes. It's a problem some may assume is confined to the ragged fringes of so-called "inner ring" suburbs that directly border cities, places where the housing stock is older and from which many wealthier residents long ago departed. But this isn't the case. "Overall...first suburbs did not bear the brunt of increasing suburban poverty in the early 2000s," notes the Brookings report, which found that economic distress has spread to "second-tier suburbs and 'exurbs'" as well.

The result is a historic milestone that has gone strangely ignored: For the first time ever, more poor Americans live in the suburbs than in all our cities combined. - Read Report

The world has moved into the second decade of the 21st century. When it comes to jobs growth in the United States, there were zero jobs created from Jan. 1, 2000 through Dec. 31, 2009. This means that more jobs were lost than created during this period. Some people are calling the first decade of the new Millennium, "The Lost Decade".

"This was the first business cycle where a working-age household ended up worse at the end of it than the beginning, and this in spite of substantial growth in productivity, which should have been able to improve everyone's well-being," said Lawrence Mishel, president of the Economic Policy Institute, a liberal think tank. Read Story

What changed in the early 1970s to reverse the great postwar income convergence? Charles Hugh Smith writes a great article explaining how a number of factors come into play, some more important than others. Three factors stand out: globalization, the emergence of a financial economy, and changes in government policy. He goes into each one of the three factors in very clear detail. - Read The Story

While the wealthy in America have increased their wealth over the years, the middle class have experienced stagnant wages along with big increases in expenses. It is easy to find people who are on both sides of this argument, but many indicators appear to point to the fact that the middle class is barely managing instead of thriving.

According to Charles Hugh Smith, here is how Elizabeth Warren, chair of the Congressional Oversight Panel that is monitoring the TARP bailout funds given to banks, jumped into the debate on the topic. In an interview with The Washington Post, she said: "I believe that the middle class is under terrific assault."An astute political player, she added: "And I don't want to play this as a capitalism issue." Actually, capitalism has quite a bit to do with the squeezing of the middle class -- but so do other factors, including government policy and deep structural changes in the global economy.

Here is more of Warren's statement on the subject, which provides a good sense of where middle class families stand today.

When we compare middle class families today with their parents a generation ago, we have basically flat earnings -- a fully employed male today earns on average about $800 less, adjusted for inflation, than a fully employed male earned a generation ago. The only way that families could increase their household income was to put a second earner into the workforce, and, of course that's now flattened out because there aren't any more people to put into the workforce. So you've got, effectively, flat income in this time period, with rising core expenses: housing; health insurance; child care; transportation, now that it takes two cars to get everywhere, two jobs to support; and taxes . . . families are spending a lot more on what you describe as the basic expenses.

The folks on Wall Street know how to make money even after showing the world that they can also lose money. Thanks to the Federal Reserve, Federal Government, and the U.S. Taxpayer, Wall Street has been able to socialize losses and privatize profits.

Wall Strret and Big banks have received the bulk of the bailout money. A short while ago, people were wondering if the end to Wall Street as we know was near. Firms like Goldman Sachs are now preparing to pay bonuses of approximately 23 billion at the end of the year. Other firms are showing profits that are bigger than ever.

Charles Hugh Smith reports that The 1970s saw the first beginnings of a loosening of financial regulations and the growth of credit and financial "innovations," such as securitization and derivatives. Capital increasingly fled real production for finance, which became the key profit-center of corporate America. GM didn't make money manufacturing autos; they made money selling loans to buy their cars. General Electric made more with its GECC finance arm than it did selling light bulbs and generators.

As a result, where finance and banking once generated a mere six percent of total U.S. corporate profits, by the height of the housing bubble in 2006 it was churning out 45 percent of all corporate profits. Indeed, U.S. "financial services and innovations" were the most heralded exports of the nation.

45 percent makes sense when one tries to understand why big banks and the top Wall Street firms are considered too big to fail.

According to Mike Whitney, working people are not being crushed by accident, but according to plan. It is the way the system is supposed to work. Federal Reserve Chairman Bernanke knows that sustained demand requires higher wages and a vital middle class.

A careful reading of the FRBSF’s Economic Letter shows why the economy will not bounce back. It is mathematically impossible. We’ve reached peak credit; consumers have to deleverage and patch their balance sheets. Household wealth has slipped $14 trillion since the crisis began. Home equity has dropped to 41% (a new low) and joblessness is on the rise. By 2011, Duetsche Bank AG predicts that 48 percent of all homeowners with a mortgage will be underwater. As the equity position of homeowners deteriorates, banks will further tighten credit and foreclosures will mushroom.

Going forward, it seems probable that many U.S. households will reduce their debt. If accomplished through increased saving, the deleveraging process could result in a substantial and prolonged slowdown in consumer spending relative to pre-recession growth rates.” (”U.S. Household Deleveraging and Future Consumption Growth, by Reuven Glick and Kevin J. Lansing, FRBSF Economic Letter”)

The executive board of the IMF does not share Wall Street’s rosy view of the future, which is why it issued a memo that stated:
“Directors observed that the crisis will have important implications for the role of the United States in the global economy. The U.S. consumer is unlikely to play the role of global “buyer of last resort”— other regions will need to play an increased role in supporting global growth.”

Here’s an excerpt from a recent Don Monkerud article that sums it all up:
“During eight years of the Bush Administration, the 400 richest Americans, who now own more than the bottom 150 million Americans, increased their net worth by $700 billion. In 2005, the top one percent claimed 22 percent of the national income, while the top ten percent took half of the total income, the largest share since 1928
Over 40 percent of GNP comes from Fortune 500 companies. According to the World Institute for Development Economics Research, the 500 largest conglomerates in the U.S. “control over two-thirds of the business resources, employ two-thirds of the industrial workers, account for 60 percent of the sales, and collect over 70 percent of the profits.”
… In 1955, IRS records indicated the 400 richest people in the country were worth an average $12.6 million, adjusted for inflation. In 2006, the 400 richest increased their average to $263 million, representing an epochal shift of wealth upward in the U.S.” “Wealth Inequality destroys US Ideals”

Subprime mortgages became very one of the main reasons that America has experienced a real estate crisis. Subprime lending (near-prime, non-prime, or second-chance lending) in finance means making loans that are in the riskiest category of consumer loans. These loans can dramatically increase in how much a borrower has to pay monthly to a lender. These increases can easily become difficult for a borrower to handle and the borrower could place himself at risk of losing their home (if it is a subprime mortgage loan).

The Wall Street Journal reported in 2006 that 61% of all borrowers receiving subprime mortgages had credit scores high enough to qualify for prime conventional loans. During the current real estate crisis, too many people of color (African Americans and Latinos) received these very expensive subprime loans when they qualified for lower cost conventional mortgage and auto loans. This group of Americans also lead the rest of Americans in losing their home through foreclosure.

Subprime borrowers show data on their credit reports associated with higher default rates, including limited debt experience, excessive debt, a history of missed payments, failures to pay debts, and recorded bankruptcies. How does a person know when they qualify for a lower cost prime loan when the loan officer makes more money selling subprime loans to clients and the officer is all about the money. Too many of these loan officers were more concerned with the money they made and did not care about finding the best, lowest cost loan for their clients.

This is one of those areas where government regulation is needed. However, if the government in charge decides to look the other way or simply give the regulators limited authority and funding to regulate, many people can be bamboozled into accepting higher cost subprime loans. This is exactly what happened which helped create one of the greatest real estate and financial meltdowns in the history of America.

Prime loans go to borrowers with a credit score above 620 (credit scores are between 350 and 850 in the US). Since brothers typically do not own the banks and lending companies making loans, there should be a way for brothers connected to at a minimum share information about how the loan business works. This could assist many brothers and their families when receiving loans that are the best for them giving their credit history and financial situation.