Friday, 1 June 2012
US recovery stalls as unemployment rate rises amid dismal job growth
The economy added only 69,000 jobs in May—only about half of what is needed to keep up with natural population growth. The unemployment rate rose to 8.2 percent.
In the weakest recovery since the Great Depression, nearly the entire reduction in unemployment since October 2009 has been accomplished through a significant drop in the percentage of adults working or looking for work. Some of these folks returned to the labor market in May; consequently, unemployment ticked up a tenth of a percentage point.
Growth slowed to 1.9 percent in the first quarter from 3 percent the previous period, and was largely sustained by consumers taking on more car and student loans, business investments in equipment and software, and some inventory build. The housing market is improving and that should lift second quarter residential construction a bit but overall, the economy and jobs growth should remain too slower to genuinely dent unemployment.
A broader measure of unemployment, the U6, rose to 14.8% in May from 14.5% in April. The U6 takes into account job seekers as well as those working part-time who want to work full-time jobs.
The White House moved swiftly to dampen the political fallout of the report, which will provide ammunition for Republican presidential nominee Mitt Romney, who is attacking President Barack Obama's economic policies ahead of this November's election.
Alan B Krueger, chairman of the Council of Economic Advisers, said: "Problems in the job market were long in the making and will not be solved overnight. The economy lost jobs for 25 straight months beginning in February 2008, and over 8m jobs were lost as a result of the Great Recession. We are still fighting back from the worst economic crisis since the Great Depression."
He said the US economy faced "serious headwinds, including the crisis in Europe and a spike in gas prices" but it was important not to read too much into one month's figures.
Betsey Stevenson, professor of business and public policy at Wharton business school, said: "This is a very bad report. It changes where I thought the US economy was."
She said the cuts to April's job figures were particularly worrying, pointing to a slowdown in the US recovery. The number of long-term unemployed rose to 5.4m from 5.1m, another worrying sign of weakness, said Stevenson.
Gus Faucher, senior economist of PNC Financial Services, said he had been shocked by the numbers. "They were much worse than we had expected. There was a big drop in construction [down 28,000 in May] which is worrying, wage growth was weak. It is hard to see anything good in this report," he said.
The news comes after other economic reports have pointed to a slow down in the US recovery. Yesterday the commerce department said the US's gross domestic product (GDP) – the broadest measure of economic growth – rose just 1.9% in the first quarter, down from an estimated 2.2% and far slower than the 3% reported in the fourth quarter of last year.
That figure came as the labour department announced that first-time claims for unemployment insurance payments had increased by 10,000 to 383,000 in the week ended 26 May.
Those figures came as the latest monthly survey by ADP Employer Services reported private employers had added 133,000 in May, economists had been predicting 150,000.
The US jobs market is at least recovering. In Europe there were 17.4 million people without jobs in the 17 nations that use the euro in April, an increase of 110,000 since March and 1.8 million higher than a year earlier, European Union statistics agency Eurostat said Friday. The bloc's unemployment rate is 11%.
Decades, diamonds and dollars: The reign of Elizabeth II by the numbers
Relive the momentous events in the 60-year reign of Britain's 63rd monarch, from the Queen's coronation and her tribute on the death of Princess Diana, to the wedding of Prince William and Kate Middleton.
60 years, four months -- The length of Queen Elizabeth II's reign as of June 6, 2012, making her the second-longest reigning monarch.
63 years, seven months, two days -- The length of the reign of Queen Victoria, from 1837 to 1901.
Crown Jewels sparkle in major new exhibition
Inside an enduring royal romance Brooke Baldwin on Jubilee preps Queen's personal diamonds
Jewels
2,868 -- The number of diamonds in the Imperial State Crown that the queen wears at the state opening of Parliament.
4.9 lbs -- The weight of the St. Edward's Crown worn by Elizabeth at her coronation in 1953. (Photos: Monarchs' diamonds, rubies and sapphires)
Money
£32.1 million -- Amount the British government provides Elizabeth and Prince Philip annually (about $50 million U.S.)
$500 million -- The queen's approximate net worth.
$4.2 billion -- Net worth of British entrepreneur Richard Branson.
1 -- Number of ATMs in Buckingham Palace.
Travel
261 -- The number of official overseas visits Elizabeth has made as of January 1, 2012.
116 -- The number of different countries she has visited during her 60 years as queen.
5 -- The number of times the queen has made a state visit to the United States; the first was in 1957 and the most recent in 2010.
Prime ministers and presidents
12 -- Number of prime ministers who have served during Elizabeth's reign, from Winston Churchill to David Cameron.
2 -- Number of prime ministers born during her reign (Tony Blair in 1953 and David Cameron in 1966).
12 -- Number of U.S. presidents in office since Elizabeth ascended to the throne, from Harry Truman to Barack Obama.
1 -- Number of U.S. presidents born during Elizabeth's reign (Barack Obama in 1961).
1 -- Number of sitting U.S. presidents with whom the queen did not meet (Lyndon B. Johnson)
Photos: All the queen's presidents, from Truman to Obama
Hugh Hefner
Hugh Marston "Hef" Hefner, born April 9, 1926 is an American magazine publisher, founder and Chief Creative Officer of Playboy Enterprises.
Hefner was born in Chicago, Illinois, being the elder of two sons born to Grace Caroline (née Swanson; 1895–1997) and Glenn Lucius Hefner (1896–1976), both teachers.Hefner's mother was of Swedish descent and his father had German and English ancestry. On his father's side, Hefner is a direct descendant of Plymouth governor William Bradford. He has described his family as "conservative, Midwest, Methodist. He went to Sayre Elementary School and Steinmetz High School, then served as a writer for a military newspaper in the U.S. Army from 1944 to 1946. He later graduated from the University of Illinois at Urbana Champaign with a B.A. in psychology with a double minor in creative writing and art in 1949, earning his degree in two and a half years. After graduation, he took a semester of graduate courses in sociology at Northwestern University but dropped out soon after.
Career
Working as a copywriter for Esquire, he left in January 1952 after being denied a $5 raise. In 1953, he mortgaged his furniture, generating a bank loan of $600 (or $800 — he cannot recall which) and raised $8,000 from 45 investors — including $1,000 from his mother ("Not because she believed in the venture," he told E! in 2006, "but because she believed in her son.") — to launch Playboy, which was initially going to be called Stag Party. The undated first issue, published in December 1953, featured Marilyn Monroe from her 1949 nude calendar shoot and sold over 50,000 copies. (Hefner, who never met Monroe, bought the crypt next to hers at the Westwood Village Memorial Park Cemetery.)
After it was rejected by Esquire magazine in 1955, Hefner agreed to publish in Playboy the Charles Beaumont science fiction short story, "The Crooked Man", about straight men being persecuted in a world where homosexuality was the norm. After receiving angry letters to the magazine, Hefner wrote a response to criticism where he said, "If it was wrong to persecute heterosexuals in a homosexual society then the reverse was wrong, too."
On June 4, 1963, Hefner was arrested for selling obscene literature after an issue of Playboy featuring nude shots of Jayne Mansfield was released.[citation needed] A jury was unable to reach a verdict.
His former secretary, Bobbie Arnstein, was found dead in a Chicago hotel room after an overdose of drugs in January 1975. Hefner called a press conference to allege that she had been driven to suicide by narcotics agents and federal officers. Hefner further claimed the government was out to get him because of Playboy's philosophy and its advocacy of more liberal drug laws.
He has a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame for television and has made several movie appearances as himself. In 2009, he received a "worst supporting actor" nomination for a Razzie award for his performance in Miss March.
A documentary by Brigitte Berman, Hugh Hefner: Playboy, Activist and Rebel, was released on July 30, 2010. He had previously granted full access to documentary filmmaker and television producer Kevin Burns for the A&E Biography special Hugh Hefner: American Playboy in 1996.
Hefner and Burns later collaborated on numerous other television projects, most notably on The Girls Next Door, a reality series that ran for six seasons (2005–2009) and 90 episodes.
In 1999, Hefner financed the Clara Bow documentary, Discovering the It Girl. "Nobody has what Clara had. She defined an era and made her mark on the nation," he stated.
Personal life
Hefner married Northwestern University student Mildred Williams (born March 10, 1926) in 1949. They had two children, Christie (born November 8, 1952) and David (born August 30, 1955). Before the wedding, Mildred confessed that she had had an affair while he was away in the Army. He called the admission "the most devastating moment of my life." A 2006 E! True Hollywood Story profile of Hefner revealed that Mildred allowed him to sleep with other women, out of guilt for her infidelity and in the hopes that it would preserve their marriage. They divorced in 1959.
Hefner remade himself as a bon viveur and man about town, a lifestyle he promoted in his magazine and two TV shows he hosted, Playboy's Penthouse (1959–1960) and Playboy After Dark (1969–1970). He admitted to being "'involved' with maybe eleven out of twelve months' worth of Playmates" during some of these years.[19] Donna Michelle, Marilyn Cole, Lillian Müller, Shannon Tweed, Brande Roderick, Barbi Benton, Karen Christy, Sondra Theodore, and Carrie Leigh — who filed a $35 million palimony suit against him — were a few of his many lovers. In 1971, he acknowledged that he experimented in bisexuality. He moved from Chicago to Los Angeles.
Hefner had a minor stroke in 1985 at age 59. After re-evaluating his lifestyle, he made several changes. The wild, all-night parties were toned down significantly and in 1988, daughter Christie began to run the Playboy empire. The following year, he married Playmate of the Year Kimberley Conrad. The couple had two sons, Marston Glenn (born April 9, 1990) and Cooper Bradford (born September 4, 1991).The E! True Hollywood Story profile noted that the notorious Playboy Mansion had been transformed into a family-friendly homestead. After he and Conrad separated in 1998, Conrad moved into a house next door to the mansion.
Hefner then began to move an ever-changing coterie of young women into the mansion, even dating up to seven girls at once, among them, Brande Roderick, Izabella St. James, Tina Marie Jordan, Holly Madison, Bridget Marquardt, and Kendra Wilkinson. The reality television series The Girls Next Door depicted the lives of Madison, Wilkinson and Marquardt at the Playboy Mansion. In October 2008, all three girls made the choice to leave the mansion. Hefner was quick to rebound and soon began dating his new "Number One" girlfriend, Crystal Harris, along with 20-year-old identical twin and models Kristina and Karissa Shannon. The relationship with the twins ended in January 2010. After an 11-year separation, Hefner filed for divorce from Conrad stating irreconcilable differences.Hefner has said that he only remained married to her for the sake of his children, and his youngest child had just turned 18. The divorce was finalized in March 2010.On December 24, 2010, Hefner presented an engagement ring to Crystal Harris, publicly announcing the proposal the following day. Hefner and Harris had planned to marry June 18, 2011. Harris called off the wedding just 5 days before they were due to be wed.
Politics and philanthropy
The Hugh Hefner First Amendment Award was created by Christie Hefner "to honor individuals who have made significant contributions in the vital effort to protect and enhance First Amendment rights for Americans.
He has donated and raised money for the Democratic Party. However, he has more recently referred to himself as an Independent due to disillusionment with both the Democratic and Republican Parties.
In 1978, Hefner helped organize fund-raising efforts that led to the restoration of the Hollywood Sign. He hosted a gala fundraiser at the Playboy Mansion and personally contributed $27,000 (or 1/9 of the total restoration costs) by purchasing the letter Y in a ceremonial auction.
Hefner donated $100,000 to the University of Southern California's School of Cinematic Arts to create a course called "Censorship in Cinema," and $2 million to endow a chair for the study of American film.
Both through his charitable foundation and individually, Hefner also contributes to charities outside the sphere of politics and publishing, throwing fundraiser events for Much Love Animal Rescue as well as Generation Rescue, a controversial autism campaign organization supported by Jenny McCarthy.
On April 26, 2010, Hefner donated the last $900,000 sought by a conservation group for a land purchase needed to stop the development of the famed vista of the Hollywood Sign.
Sylvilagus palustris hefneri, an endangered species of Marsh rabbit, is named after him in honor of financial support that he provided.
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