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The unemployment picture is not reflected in the 6.7% unemployment for November statistic of the Labor Department asthings are actually much worse. Counting parttime workers looking for fulltime work and those who are no longer looking because thay failed to find work the rate in more like 12.5%, the alternate measure for unemployment given by the Labor Department.

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Steven Rattner points to the decline in U.S. median household income as a result of globalization. At $7 an hour GM's Mexican auto workers are just as efficient as workers in the U.S. The result is a shift in jobs to Mexico and the two tier wage system in the U.S. auto industry, now formalized in new UAW contracts with Ford, GM and Chrysler. The UAW agrees to hire entry workers at $14 and hour. A new VW Chattanooga plant pays $14.50 an hour. Rattner points to the need to create new jobs with high intellectual content in service industries such as education, digital media, entertainment, and financial services. This requires a greater committment to education.

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The federal German minimum wage passed into law of 8.50 euros or about $11.60, is closer to what it should be in the U.S. than the $10.10 in the Democrat proposal, says this editorial in the NYT. The new minimum wage goes into effect in Germany in 2014. It is meant to counteract the trend of a growing number of workers who are not covered by wage agreements between labor and business in Germany. An increasing number of women are doing low wage jobs in Germany, and the number of workers in part time jobs with lower wages has increased as German labor union exercized restraint on wages in the last decade.

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The NYT editorial says the Obama foreclosure plan was flawed from the start. It lacked teeth to make banks take up foreclosure reduction. It isn't enough to reduce payments as people who have lost jobs cannot afford to make payments. With unemployment rising another 2.4 million homes will go into foreclosure according to some estimates. The slow roll out of foreclosure plans by banks has aggravated the situation, and at this time those who lost jobs are the homeowners not getting help from the government. This is a serious error on the part of the Obama administration. See the links to Martin Feldstein, who early on in 2008 suggested a comprehensive solution to the foreclosure crisis.

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Problems in graduate education, too many people taking on lstudent loans that are burdensome, over $100,000, to do research under faculty who are working on more and micrto detail fields that have less and less relevance, so that few jobs exist when they graduate. And faculty jobs are available in small numbers as tenured professors have to retire before their are new openings. Which is why in the situation where faculty work in small cloistered fields doing thier own thing, even important subjects as the role of religion in international relations happen to have been left out. It all suggests that we have asystem of graudate education out of synch with whats required.

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Daniel Howes commentary in the Detroit News goes right to the crux of the matter, one of the Detroit Big 3 may not survive. Cerberus would like to get its hands off Chrysler at any cost even if it means a merger with GM, which would in the current circumstances at GM combining engineering and other operations, at the cost of huge swaths of Chrysler and those jobs disappearing. GM is running short of cash and combinig with Chrysler does not make any sense except for Cerberus, and for GM it would means using the cash from Chrysler to buy time while eliminating most of Chrysler's jobs and operations in what would be a travesty of the word merger.

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According to the Center of Automotive Research about 600,000 jobs in the midwestern states and about 3.6 million jobs counting industries that depend on the automotive industry are at stake in the failure of the Big Three auto companies. Even if one of the companies goes into bankruptcy Chapter 11 taxpayers will be on the hook for millions in retiree benefits from that company. Even with a merger of Chrysler and GM the auto companies in Detroit do not look like they can handle a deep recession and protracted dowturn. Which is why it looks increasingly likely that the federal government will have to keep the midwestern economies from sinking with the failure of any of the Detroit automakers.

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One third of UK junior doctors and trainee doctors are at high risk of burnout. After a 22% pay increase under Labour the junior doctors say more needs to be done about the stressful conditions junior doctors face. Junior doctors feel like they are doing multiple jobs, and the culture of blame can be toxic, a sense that things can deteriorate at any time.

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Thousands of jobs affected at Port Fourchon in Louisiana which services the oil rigs that are shut down as aresult of the 6 month ban on deepwater offshore drilling in the Gulf of Mexico.

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India replaced a patchwork of 15 state and federal taxes with a unified single Goods and Services Tax to ease the hurdles for businesses to operate nationwide across state boundaries. This is a major a accomplishment for the Modi government as it is expected to increase economic growth by between 0.5% to 2%, according to experts. This removes the obstacles to growth and doing business when companies had to comply with a maze of different tax policies by individual states. Ironically the GST was introduced by the Congress party government in 2011, but opposed by opposition parties then and the Congress party in opposition now in the upper house, Rajya Sabha. By winning the support of smaller parties the Modi government was able to reduce the influence of the Congress party and get the constitutional amendment passed for the single GST tax system replacing the old patchwork taxes. The amendment has to be approved by the majority of state legislatures in India and by the president. Parliament must pass legislation to setup the new tax system, and state legislature pass their legislation. Issues at what rate to set up the GST remain to be solved, with the need to avoid sparking inflation and thereby hurting slow job growth with millions of young people entering the job market each year. ...

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Harold Meyerson looks into the causes of the decline of white working class Americans by 2015. A whole section of society that was helped by the work of FDR is being undone by a combination of forces, from the decline in working class wages and jobs through globalized business, social structures unravelling, and support structures weakening. Meyerson refers to the Deaton-Case Princeton study on increasing death rates for this group. The white working class is much smaller now than in 1940 when he says 82% of Americans over 25 had only an high school education, down to 29% in 2007. The result is that it has less power to affect policies, yet is close to one third of Americans. Economic recovery, the American dream, all remain hobbled without efforts to tackle this problem. Trump's effort to appeal to this class, Meyerson points out, is similiar to the National Front's effort in France, making the political dialogue even more divisive by targeting immigrants.

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Paul McCartney of the original Beatles group does a new solo impromptu effort that ends up as an album. It was done in a very casual manner with no intention of producing work that does a job. During the lockdown period McCartney experimented with unfinished work on the musical instrument that he had used for the work. Each day he would decamp to his studio to relax and have fun. He says it was all about making music for yourself and having a lot of fun not doing a job or work. The album is called McCartney III to be released in December.

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McCarthy says he is open to running for the Speaker's job. Scalise who is Majority leader and Jordan lack support of moderates who form the largest bloc of Republicans in Congress. WSJ reports that the chaos in Congress also hurts how Republicans are perceived by voters.