San Jose, CA – Representatives of the U.S. Senate and House of Representatives agreed upon a compromise economic package Feb. 11 totaling $789 billion in federal spending and tax cuts over the next two years. The bill is expected to quickly pass the House and Senate and be signed into law by President Obama within the next week.

Will It Get the Economy Going?

San José, CA – On Jan. 7, the Congressional Budget Office (CBO) estimated that the federal budget deficit for this fiscal year (October 2008 to September 2009) would be $1.2 trillion. But the CBO estimate only counted the $68 billion approved for the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, when they actually cost more than $186 billion in 2008. Given that the wars will cost at least another $100 billion, the federal budget deficit will be $1.3 trillion, or even more if the economy worsens more than expected. This estimated deficit is almost 10% of the Gross Domestic Product (GDP), which measures the value of all the goods and services* produced in the United States in a year, and would be the biggest deficit since World War II.

_ 2.5 Million Jobs Lost in 2008, the Most Since 1945_

San José, CA – On Friday, Jan. 9, the Department of Labor reported that 524,000 jobs were lost in December. With even more jobs losses in November than estimated last month, 2008 was the worst year for jobs since 1945, with more than 2.5 million jobs lost. The official unemployment rate rose by one-half of one percent, to 7.2% from 6.7% in November. This is the highest unemployment rate since 1992. The measure of underemployment, which includes people working part-time because full-time jobs are not available and workers who gave up looking for work or didn’t look last month, rose by almost a full percentage point to 13.5%. With more and more part-time workers, the average number of hours worked in a week fell to the lowest level since records began in 1964.