The U.S. Postal Service announced plans on Thursday to close or consolidate 223 mail processing centers and eliminate up to 35,000 jobs [starting in May] as part of its strategy to cut costs by reducing its network of facilities.

I recently moved to a new office. On my route home there is a little one-room post office; no lines, nice worker-person. I hope they don't close that one.

don't say anymore they may leave it alone

I don't think Bernanke sounded too confident this morning before Congress "The job market is far from normal," and "The decline in the unemployment rate over the past year has been somewhat more rapid than might have been expected."

(Of course Ron Paul was there to break into his usual rhetoric, brandishing a silver eagle, telling Bernanke that "the record of what you've done is destroy the currency." which Bernak replied with the ole "I'd like to discuss this with you later in private." )

All in all, the talks sent the dollar rising but the financial market and the gold value falling as the chairman hinted at NO need for QE3 and a possible rise in interest rates.

Of course if you ask me interest rates should have been raised well over a year ago. It is pretty pathetic when the Canadian dollar is worth what the US Dollar is, and we need to hike interest rates sky high and remove our dollar from a sub par status. A strong dollar is key if we are to experience any true recovery IMO.

And lest we not forget that while the federal funds rate is stuck at 0% indefinitely due to the volume of debt that has been accumulated by households, businesses and government over the past 30 years. (It was almost 5% in 2008.) Even a 50 basis point increase in the funds rate would collapse home prices and cause the debt servicing cost of the government to surge.

The United States is on excessively low interest rate life support and is fundamentally broken from an economic and financial standpoint. Zero interest rates DESTROYS the risk barometer because how can you gauge risk with 0% interest rates? Bernanke knows this, but he cannot come out and say it because the DOW would drop 1000 points in 10 minutes if he did.

He's basically reduced to using the job market as a scapegoat to justify the Fed's monetary policy when the real reasons for it are much broader in scope.

I say get rid of Bernanke just like you wanted to when you took office, O....

If the economy is growing why aren't worker wages growing? I'm not an economist but I know the curves for Gross Domestic Product and that of worker's wages should move in correspondance but are not of course. The nation's revenues increase but the wages of workers have stayed at the same basic level and will continue to do so for the forseeable future. The reasons for this are numerous and are generally reflections of systemic problems in the economy.

Hence I don't expect to see the anyone campaigning on that statistic.

For what its worth, during the past six months I have personally experienced the tough job market out there as I have actively been looking for a full-time position after I graduate in late May.

Anyways, today I officially accepted an offer to work in the NYC/NJ area for a certain agency. This was after TONS of interviews, second, third, fourth round interviews, tests, assessments, etc. I was told 1000 applicants (all very qualified in their own right) applied for the program and they interviewed the top 100 and made 7 offers!I praise God and am very thankful I was able to secure a good opportunity as honestly most (like 80+%) of my classmates dont have any offers yet. It is tough for many students as we attend a top school and thus some students (not me) expected automatically to land something.

Even though the media (and myself) have said the job market is slowly improving, I feel it is with an emphasis on SLOWLY.

P.S. If you are wondering where I will be working, I wont say specifically in this post since it is viewable by the entire internet (and I am occasionally paranoid lol). But the place has been discussed in this forum before and no it is not the FBI.

Congratulations on the job, Dapper Don! It's well-deserved, I'm sure.

I've been looking for a job for some time now. It's fairly discouraging out there, but what can you do? I have seen more activity of late on the job boards like Monster and Career Builder, but you summed it up perfectly. There's such an enormous pool of applicants that sometimes landing a job is like catching lightning in a bottle - timing and chance.

Thank you.

I wish you the best of luck. It is crazy out there and I feel that many employers just make you jump through all these hoops and just interview candidate after candidate, cause in reality they can, since there are sooo many people that are applying they can just pick and choose who they want and just wait endlessly for the "right" person to come along. I dont blame them cause if I was in their shoes I would do the same, its just very frustrating and I sympathize with many of the long-term unemployed because it can be a very demoralizing experience to go through.

It also doesnt help that NYC is one of those places that everybody and their grandma wants to work/live in.

I spent soo much time schmoozing with alumni, at cocktail receptions networking with people that I was tired of it. Thats something I never thought I would say, because who really gets tired of free top shelf booze on the university's dime? lol

I start in late July so I am thinking of heading off to the Dominican Republic after graduation to visit some family and lay in the beach and catch a tan(which I desperately need) or heading down to Costa Rica which I hear is extremely nice. I havent taken a real vacation in about 6/7 years because of schooling and working in the summers.

Now the next battle for me is to look for a decently affordable (I refuse to pay $2k for a closet) studio/one bedroom place in Manhattan/Brooklyn that is within walking distance of union square or less than a 30 minute commute on the subway. Much to my parents chagrin I am going to have to leave the old Bronx neighborhood.

If anybody sees any decent studio/apt postings in the vicinity of Manhattan/Brooklyn for a swinging bachelor please PM it my way

I sent a resume in last week from a job I saw on Career Builder. Within ten minutes, I got a call from the company's HR dept. and went through a phone interview. She said that she wanted to get my resume in front of the search committee immediately and would call me to arrange an in-person interview. Never heard from her again.

Did they get someone better? Did they just forget me? Did they hire from within? I've often found that's the case. Many companies have to advertise an opening even when they have someone in-house in mind, but they have to prove they looked elsewhere.

Those are all plausible scenarios, and also maybe it just takes time (you know the reputation of HR).

I applied for my job back in the Fall by the deadline (think mid September/or Nov) and interviewed over the phone in December, in person interview in Feb, then "assessment day" aka four hour interview in early March and they just extended an offer to me last Thurs and I accepted today.

I'm just keeping my fingers crossed that she'll call me back. It sounded like the perfect job.

Good luck to you!

Keep looking/applying to other places as well, cant put all your eggs in one basket.

I send them out into cyberspace and patiently wait! And enjoy your vacation before you start the daily grind.

I am so glad that I don't have to do any of that anymore. That's what I love about retirement. I can teach a class or two when I want and, otherwise, not worry about interviews or callbacks. But then again, along with retirement comes the realization that I am getting elderly. Madonne!

I'm getting old AND have to find a job!

Check out this new article, the guy says hes concerned that the unemployment rate will continue to fall faster than what the federal reserve is projecting. Basically he is projecting a labor shortage in the because it’s not healthy for unemployment to be falling so rapidly when the economy is expanding at such a modest pace.

http://www.businessweek.com/articles/2012-04-17/economist-sees-a-dark-side-to-falling-unemployment

$3.29.

Well, then he has nothing to worry about. The unemployment numbers for May were awful. The lowest amount of jobs created in over a year (a paltry 69,000 nationwide). The total number of unemployed has crept back up to 8.2%.

http://www.nypost.com/p/news/business/un...ontent=Business

As an attorney I can tell you that things are DISMAL. Noone has money to pay me. I have started a number of cases in which clients became unemployed and can no longer pay fees, or can only pay portions of fees. Recently I had an architect in here wanting to collect money owed, and when I told him the cost to file and serve a lawsuit (did not get to my fees) he said he could not afford it. I said to him that he could just set it aside on his next project, and he burst into ters saying he had completed his last blueprint a week earlier and that he had no ward coming in at all.

I agree. I go along with the CBO projection of relatively high unemployment rates through the remainder of the decade. We are looking at restructuring of the economy. Globalization is the culprit and is not going away. Demand is just not there.

^^^^
And as a landlord and property manager, I can tell you that I've been forced into more eviction court proceedings in the past year than in the prior five years combined.

I worked for CBO last summer, you can take their detailed predictions pretty much to the bank as the most detailed/best out there. After today's unemployment news, I feel very blessed to have landed a good job considering how things are out there.

Things are not looking good for Obama or the economy, there is no economic stimulus in the works through election day as of now. And the GOP is not helping the President pass anything of the sort. This is going to be a very hot summer in more ways than one.

Pizzaboy, any luck in those court proceedings? After college, I worked for a year at an organization in Brooklyn that helped tenants take their landlords to court to prevent evictions amongst doing tons of other things...

Somebody told me to get into property. I ignored him - now he's suffering, while I'm being rewarded for sticking with money based accounts.

If the majority of people you know involve themselves with property, you shouldn't follow them.

He's suffering now in the short term, but in the long term if he is able to hold on to them and prices/economy improves (which it will one day) then he should be able to be in better shape.

The guy isn't like that. He has no patience, plus he's of the arrogant sort where he believes that it was done deliberately to hurt him. Like the financial crisis is to personally bring him down!!

Its all this borrowing for speculation that causes trouble. Those borrowing now when interest rates are low mostly can't pay it back when they go back up.

Its simple greed - "Lets make some money quickly" while they can.

This is true

It's the last resort, Dapper. You think I enjoy putting people in the street?

And yes, I've successfully evicted people in court. The Bronx housing court on the Concourse is particularly pro-tenant, but when you haven't been paid in almost a year, even the most liberal judge will eventually force the marshalls into action.

We also own a property on West 8th Street in Manhattan. From what I've heard, the courts are much more pro-landlord down there, but I've never been put in that position with that building. It's a much different clientele.

Pizzaboy - would you keep buying more property if you kept on making great profit?

I know you wouldnt enjoy kicking people out, no sane compassionate person would. It is a very sad thing. I have been to that courthouse for jury duty, it is a disaster with all the security and people in front of the building trying to get in. Takes forever.