This Wall St. Journal article also says that despite the cutbacks in teaching jobs even for programs like Teach for America, the number of students working toward teaching certifications is rising:

Jacqueline Frommer thought her career path was set when she landed her dream job last summer teaching fourth grade in Pompano Beach, Fla. Last month, she got laid off. Ms. Frommer, 25 years old, said in college she was told teaching was among the steadiest jobs around. Now "there is no job security anymore," she said.

In a sign of how severe the employment downturn is getting, even schoolteachers, an occupation once viewed as recession proof, are feeling the pain.

Education jobs grew steadily in recent years amid rising enrollment and government efforts to reduce class sizes. Now the increase in teaching positions has leveled off as school districts struggle with budget pressures. The demographic bulge caused by children of baby boomers -- the so-called echo boom -- has also begun to wane.

Los Angeles Unified School District laid off 2,500 teachers this spring. Broward County, Fla., Ms. Frommer's district, cut 400 school jobs. Rochester, N.Y., laid off 300 teachers.

Other districts have avoided cuts by negotiating pay reductions and enacting furloughs and hiring freezes. In June, education jobs actually ticked up 0.5% nationally to just under 3.1 million on a seasonally adjusted basis. But the number of education-related jobs has declined in six of the past 12 months, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics.

That contrasts with annual growth of about 3% over the past 15 years in the education field. In the past year, education jobs have grown at about half that rate. Most in demand are teachers in math, science and special education. College instructors have also been in high demand.

Many of the layoffs came in June as teachers prepared to say goodbye to their students for summer. Union and state rules require schools to give teachers notice before the end of the school year if their jobs won't be there in the fall.

Heather Clutter, an elementary teacher in Desert Hot Springs, Calif., learned 15 minutes before the end of the last day of school in early June that she was one of 200 teachers being laid off in the area -- just weeks after learning she was pregnant.

"You always think of teaching as a safe profession. Once you get in, you're there, you'll be able to retire," she said. "Not so much right now."

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From The Cafferty File:

There is a fundamental gender gap when it comes to American politics. A new Gallup poll of almost 150,000 people shows women are significantly more likely than men to identify themselves as Democrats.

Consider this: 41 percent of women say they’re Democrats; that’s nine-points higher than the 32-percent of men who say that. 26-percent of women identify themselves as Independents — compared to 34-percent of men. As for those who identify themselves as Republicans, there’s not much of a difference there — 25-percent of women compared to 28-percent of men.

What’s especially interesting here is that the gender gap is evident across all age groups — from 18 to 85-year-olds. Also, it shows up within all major racial, ethnic and marital-status groups.

For example — African-Americans and Asians are more Democratic than whites; but within each of these groups, women are more Democratic than men.

The poll also shows Democrats have their greatest advantage among baby boomers and the very young; and relatively speaking, are the weakest among people in their late 30s and those in their mid-to-late 60s.

Gallup says these findings suggest that by the time young men and women are 18 years old — the different cultural and social factors that determine party identification are already well established.

Here’s my question to you: Why are women more likely to be Democrats?

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It would make more sense for the government to keep extending unemployment benefits until the recession lets up, because the effects of this poverty-inducing trend are far more harmful to the long-term economy than putting out cash now to keep people afloat:

Reporting from Washington -- Instead of seeing older workers staying on the job longer as the economy has worsened, the Social Security system is reporting a major surge in early retirement claims that could have implications for the financial security of millions of baby boomers.

Since the current federal fiscal year began Oct. 1, claims have been running 25% ahead of last year, compared with the 15% increase that had been projected as the post-World War II generation reaches eligibility for early retirement, according to Stephen C. Goss, chief actuary for the Social Security Administration.

Many of the additional retirements are probably laid-off workers who are claiming Social Security early, despite reduced benefits, because they are under immediate financial pressure, Goss and other analysts believe.

The numbers upend expectations that older Americans who sustained financial losses in the recession would work longer to rebuild their nest eggs. In a December poll sponsored by CareerBuilder, 60% of workers older than 60 said they planned to postpone retirement.

Goss said it remained unclear whether the uptick in retirements would accelerate or abate in the months ahead. But another wave of older workers may opt for early retirement when they exhaust unemployment benefits late this year or early in 2010, he noted.

The ramifications of the trend are profound for the new retirees, their families, the government and other social institutions that may be called upon to help support them.

On top of savings ravaged by the stock market decline and the loss of home equity, many retirees now must make do with Social Security benefits reduced by as much as 25% if they retire at age 62 instead of 66.

"When the recession ends and the economy bounces back, there may be a band of people for whom things will never be the same again. They'll still be paying the price for 10, 20, 30 years down the road," said Cristina Martin Firvida, director of economic security for AARP, the nation's largest membership organization for people 50 and older.

If this is true, this is exactly why it would be such a good idea to lower the Medicare age to 55 - because otherwise, industry paints a target on every Boomer back:

Every day there's another layoff announcement, so Sean O'Grady finds himself confused about why his Philadelphia-based recruiting company, CareerTV USA Inc., is doing so well.

"We had to shake our heads at that," he said, "because we're doing our best sales ever, and we had our best quarter at the end of 2008."

So O'Grady started asking his clients to explain why they are bothering to recruit in these times, even when, in some cases, they are cutting back on hiring.

What he learned and what he is seeing "is the layoff of the baby-boom generation. Companies are filling those holes with bright-eyed, bushy-tailed college graduates.

"They are essentially trying to hire people they can pay less and get a lot of energy and enthusiasm," said O'Grady, 26, a senior producer at CareerTV.

[...] One was Andrew Vavra, 55, of Schwenksville, an unemployed marketing project manager. He had been to a another job fair recently "and no one under 40 was there," he said. "It made me angry.

"They are laying off older workers to reduce their pension exposure and their health-plan exposure," he said. "The young people are being hired in without medical plans and pension plans."

What is clear, said economist Joel Naroff, is that companies are using the recession to reconfigure their workforces - and that is what they should do.

"There is a popular phrase - 'don't waste a perfectly good crisis'," said Naroff, chief economist with TD Bank N.A. "The idea behind that is you can do things you couldn't do under a normal set of circumstances. You have the opportunity to make the changes that you really should have made before."

Companies that cut jobs just to shave expenses will not be prepared when the economy rebounds. The cuts should be strategic to position the companies for the future, said Naroff, of Holland, Bucks County.

If companies are going to announce layoffs of 5,000, he said, it does not give them much more of a publicity problem if they say they will lay off 5,500, with the idea of getting rid of "dead wood" or entire unproductive divisions. "It looks the same to the public."

"Now they've been given free hand to do it," Naroff said. In a sense, "the economy gives them cover."

January 31, 2009 C-SPAN
Philip Shabecoff, former chief environmental correspondent for the New York Times, and Alice Shabecoff, former executive director of the National Consumers League, contend that there is a link between the high percentage of the children of baby boomers that are born with or develop health problems and corporate pollution. This event was hosted by Politics and Prose bookstore in Washington, DC. See more CSPANJunkie videos here.