First, there's this technical definition that says there's a recovery. Why? Because some rich people are getting richer? If the economy doesn't serve the broadest group of citizens and there aren't jobs for people who want them, what kind of recovery is that? Perhaps this is why economists are so often confused.

Maybe, as Atrios says, somebody should do something?

A slowdown in American manufacturing and weak employment data sent stocks lower on Thursday as investors continued to absorb news of a weak economic recovery.

The separate reports from the Federal Reserve and the Labor Department were a fresh reminder of the slow pace of the recovery. Manufacturing, in particular, had shown tentative signs of a rebound in recent months.

The reports were enough to reverse the upward trend of the previous two days, when the market rose 1.1 percent.

“You had a one-two punch in one day,” said Doug Roberts, chief investment strategist for the Channel Capital Research Institute.

The result was a broad sell-off. The Dow Jones industrial average fell 144.33 points, or 1.39 percent, to 10,271.21. The broader Standard & Poor’s 500-stock index declined 18.53 points, or 1.69 percent, to 1,075.63, and the Nasdaq composite index fell 36.75 points, or 1.66 percent, to 2,178.95.

Financial, materials and industrial stocks all fell more than 2 percent.

For the past three decades, we've been fed this line about retraining for "the jobs of the future." It started under Reagan, who did an amazing job shifting the expectation (and the costs) that your employer would train you for the job, to putting the onus on local school districts to prepare job-ready graduates, and on job seekers to make themselves "employable."

So with that campaign, Reagan successfully planted the seeds we see blossoming today into full-blown insanity: If you're not employed, it's your own damned fault!

Hundreds of thousands of Americans have enrolled in federally financed training programs in recent years, only to remain out of work. That has intensified skepticism about training as a cure for unemployment.

Even before the recession created the bleakest job market in more than a quarter-century, job training was already producing disappointing results. A study conducted for the Labor Department tracking the experience of 160,000 laid-off workers in 12 states from mid-2003 to mid-2005 — a time of economic expansion — found that those who went through training wound up earning little more than those who did not, even three and four years later. “Over all, it appears possible that ultimate gains from participation are small or nonexistent,” the study concluded.

In the last 18 months, the Obama administration has embraced more promising approaches to training focused on faster-growing areas like renewable energy and health care. But most money has been directed at the same sorts of programs that in past years have largely failed to steer laid-off workers toward new careers, say experts, and now the number of job openings is vastly outnumbered by people out of work.

“It’s such an ugly situation that job training can’t solve it,” said Ross Eisenbrey, a job training expert at the Economic Policy Institute, a labor-oriented research institution in Washington, and a former commissioner of the federal Occupational Safety and Health Review Commission. “When you have five people unemployed for every vacancy, you can train all the people you want and unfortunately only one-fifth of the people will get hired. Training doesn’t create jobs.”

Hey, this oughta cheer everyone up -- we set a new record! We're in the history books!

June 4 (Bloomberg) -- Unemployed Americans are facing the longest wait on record to find work, a sign faster economic growth is needed to reduce the jobless rate from close to a 26- year high.

Hey, I have an idea! Why don't we stop paying unemployment, cut jobless programs by 50%, and start slashing social programs to cut the deficit? That'll fix the economy!

The average duration of unemployment jumped to 34.4 weeks in May from 33 weeks the prior month and 16.5 weeks in December 2007, when the recession began, a Labor Department report showed today in Washington. The number of unemployed has almost doubled to 15 million since the start of worst slump since the 1930s.

“We need faster growth, because without it, we won’t get the jobs,” said Henry Mo, an economist at Credit Suisse in New York. “We are working in that direction, but it’ll take a very long time to resolve the long-term unemployment problem. The Federal Reserve acknowledges that the labor market will take time to fully recover.”

How, exactly, are we "working in that direction" when Wall Street is pressing for deficit reduction?

Private payrolls rose by 41,000 in May, today’s Labor Department report showed, trailing the 180,000 gain forecast by economists. Including government workers, employment rose by 431,000, boosted by a jump in hiring of temporary census workers. The jobless rate fell to 9.7 percent from 9.9 percent as Americans discouraged by the lack of available jobs dropped out of the labor force.

“If that level of private job creation continues, it will not make a substantial dent in the unemployment rate,” Federal Reserve Bank of Atlanta President Dennis Lockhart told reporters today after a speech in Braselton, Georgia. “It is my view we will make progress on unemployment. Perhaps by the end of 2011, we will be below 9 percent.”

And really, it might even be 8 percent, if enough of us die from hunger -- or suicide. Isn't this a great country?

Regulators are starting to pay attention to the widespread practice of using unpaid interns as free labor. It's about time. In addition to being illegal, the practice also means that poorer students are shut out of career-track opportunities, leading to a concentration of the privileged and well-off in influential occupations like the media and public policy:

Convinced that many unpaid internships violate minimum wage laws, officials in Oregon, California and other states have begun investigations and fined employers. Last year, M. Patricia Smith, then New York’s labor commissioner, ordered investigations into several firms’ internships. Now, as the federal Labor Department’s top law enforcement official, she and the wage and hour division are stepping up enforcement nationwide.

Many regulators say that violations are widespread, but that it is unusually hard to mount a major enforcement effort because interns are often afraid to file complaints. Many fear they will become known as troublemakers in their chosen field, endangering their chances with a potential future employer.

The Labor Department says it is cracking down on firms that fail to pay interns properly and expanding efforts to educate companies, colleges and students on the law regarding internships.

“If you’re a for-profit employer or you want to pursue an internship with a for-profit employer, there aren’t going to be many circumstances where you can have an internship and not be paid and still be in compliance with the law,” said Nancy J. Leppink, the acting director of the department’s wage and hour division.

Ms. Leppink said many employers failed to pay even though their internships did not comply with the six federal legal criteria that must be satisfied for internships to be unpaid. Among those criteria are that the internship should be similar to the training given in a vocational school or academic institution, that the intern does not displace regular paid workers and that the employer “derives no immediate advantage” from the intern’s activities — in other words, it’s largely a benevolent contribution to the intern.

Robert Farley at Lawyers Guns & Money sums it up:

Good on ‘em. Let’s be clear; the unpaid internship effectively excludes a wide socioeconomic swath from gaining useful experience and making effective connections in business, government, and NGOs. For example, it was utterly impossible for me to even consider an unpaid internship as an undergraduate; paying the bills was difficult even with loans and full time work. Lots of young people lack significant parental support, and require minimum payment to have any hope of making ends meet. Moreover, even for those with support the “payment” for unpaid internships (connections, experience, and recommendations) often has no lasting effect on the intern’s job prospects. If you’ve ever wondered why DC NGOs and journalistic organizations are dominated by Ivy Leaguers, it ain’t just because they’re smart.

I suppose this is good news ("good" meaning "less horrible"), but most of the new jobs added are in health care, or they're temp jobs. As we saw the other day, businesses are sitting on huge piles of cash but refusing to hire permanent employees:

After losing eight million jobs since the recession began in December 2007, payrolls finally surged in March, the Labor Department reported on Friday. Employers added 162,000 nonfarm jobs last month. Nationwide, the unemployment rate held steady at 9.7 percent.

“We are beginning to turn the corner,” said President Obama, speaking in Charlotte, N.C., calling it “the best news we’ve seen on the job front in more than two years.”

Though everything seems to be moving in the right direction, he was careful not to raise expectations too high. “It will take time to achieve the strong and sustained job growth that we need,” President Obama said.

The economy needs to add more than 100,000 jobs a month just to absorb new entrants into the labor market, let alone provide a livelihood for the 15 million Americans already looking for work. Without constant, robust growth, the unemployment rate won’t budge. Indeed, the Congressional Budget Office has projected that the rate will hover around 10 percent for the rest of the year.

And in the meantime, two million Americans will lose their unemployment benefits Monday:

The interruption in benefits will last two weeks at a minimum, according to Judy Conti of the National Employment Law Project (NELP), since lawmakers return from spring break on April 12.

As the two-week recess began, Congress was at an impasse over how to extend the emergency unemployment insurance program and other expiring provisions, including increased COBRA health insurance subsidies for the unemployed, the Medicare doctor payment rate and federal flood insurance.

Senate Republicans said the $9.3 billion, 30-day extension preferred by Democrats should be paid for, while Democrats said the bill's cost didn't need to be offset because the program was "emergency spending."

Under the jobless benefits program that ends Monday, Americans out of work are eligible for up to 99 weeks of unemployment benefits. The program, aimed at helping jobless Americans stay afloat when new jobs aren't readily available, gives an unemployed worker more than the 26 weeks of unemployment insurance normally available. But with the program ending, those out of work for as few as six months will see an interruption in their benefit checks.

This will be fixed when Congress returns and the benefits will be paid retroacticely, but in the meantime, a lot of people will be suffering real hardship. Nice work, House of Lords!

Awfully optimistic, aren't they? I hope they're right:

Dec. 31 (Bloomberg) -- Fewer Americans than anticipated filed claims for unemployment benefits last week, pointing to an improvement in the labor market that will help sustain economic growth next year.

Initial jobless claims fell by 22,000 to 432,000 in the week ended Dec. 26, the lowest level since July 2008, Labor Department figures showed today in Washington. The number of people receiving unemployment insurance fell in the prior week to 4.98 million, and those receiving extended benefits jumped.

Companies are retaining staff as sales improve and production picks up. Gains in consumer spending, which accounts for 70 percent of the economy, may encourage more hiring in coming months, helping to bolster the rebound from the worst recession since the 1930s.

“It’s boding well for outright job growth,” said Stephen Gallagher, chief U.S. economist at Societe Generale in New York, who forecast claims would drop to 430,000. “It seems that some of the layoffs that took place in the early part of the year were excessive.”

Let's see: No new jobs, benefit extensions screwed up and Christmas is coming. You'd think the administration and Congress would be doing something about this, but you'd have better luck asking Underdog:

Nov. 19 (Bloomberg) -- The number of Americans filing claims for unemployment benefits held at a 10-month low last week, a sign firings are letting up as the economy recovers.

Initial jobless claims were unchanged at 505,000 in the week ended Nov. 14, in line with the median forecast of economists surveyed by Bloomberg News, Labor Department figures showed today in Washington. The number of people collecting unemployment insurance dropped in the prior week, while those getting extended payments jumped.

The loss of 7.3 million jobs since the recession began in December 2007, the biggest drop of any postwar economic slump, makes an acceleration in firings less likely as consumers begin to spend. A rebound in hiring may take longer to develop as companies have ample room to boost hours for current employees before taking on additional staff.

“The labor market is improving, but at a glacial pace,” said Tom Porcelli, a senior economist at RBC Capital Markets in New York, who had forecast claims would fall to 503,000. “People are having a hard time finding a job as companies remain wary of the economic recovery. We expect it will be a jobless recovery.”

While new unemployment claims rise again and Americans are losing their homes because they can't find work - work that doesn't exist, Republicans obstruct the passage of extended unemployment benefits by adding "poison pill" amendments aimed at ACORN and at providing yet another tax cut.

We won't forget. And we won't let you forget.

NEW YORK (CNNMoney.com) -- The number of first-time filers for unemployment insurance rose last week, snapping two weeks of significant declines, according to a government report issued Thursday.

There were 531,000 initial jobless claims filed in the week ended Oct. 17, up 11,000 from an upwardly revised 520,000 the previous week, the Labor Department said in a weekly report. The week included the Columbus Day holiday.

A consensus estimate of economists surveyed by Briefing.com expected 515,000 new claims.

"[The initial claims figure] is somewhat surprising," wrote Jim Baird analyst at Plante Moran Financial Advisors, in a research note. "Excess slack in the system and employers' hesitance to ramp up hiring appear likely to weigh on the labor markets for some time."

[...] The government said 5,923,000 people filed continuing claims in the week ended Oct. 10, the most recent data available. That was down 98,000 from the preceding week's ongoing claims, and would -- if not revised -- mark the first time since late March that continuing claims were below 6 million.

But the slide in continuing claims may signal that more filers are falling off those rolls and into extended benefits.

Continuing claims reflect people filing each week after their initial claim until the end of their standard benefits, which usually last 26 weeks. The figures do not include those who have moved to state or federal extensions, nor people who have exhausted their benefits.

That's a serious drop from April, which is when this video said we were at a mere five-year high. If you're apartment-hunting, time to renegotiate the rent.

This is right in line with my own economic indicators, which are based on Craigslist. I've noticed that nice apartments that used to go within a day or two now linger for weeks as landlords keep dropping the asking prices. (Also, people are selling fine guitars at deep discounts. Just in case through some miracle, you can actually afford one.)

Oct. 6 (Bloomberg) -- U.S. apartment vacancies rose to 7.8 percent in the third quarter, the highest since 1986, as rising unemployment reduced rental demand, Reis Inc. said.

Actual rents paid by tenants, known as effective rents, declined 2.7 percent from a year earlier, the New York-based property research firm said in a report today. Asking rents, or what landlords sought, fell 1.8 percent from a year earlier.

Job losses and falling wages are shrinking the pool of potential tenants. The U.S. unemployment rate rose to 9.8 percent in August, the highest since 1983, the Labor Department said Oct. 2.

Vacancies “continued to rise despite what has traditionally been a strong leasing period for apartment properties,” Victor Calanog, director of research at Reis, said in a statement. “Given the inherent seasonality of rental and lease-up patterns we expect fourth-quarter figures to be even weaker, implying that we may break historic vacancy levels by year-end 2009.”

The apartment vacancy rate was 7.7 percent in the second quarter and 6.2 percent in 2008’s third quarter, Reis said. Compared with the second quarter, asking rents fell 0.5 percent and effective rents fell 0.3 percent.

Those of us out here already know how bad it is. When are the economists going to catch up with reality?

Oct. 2 (Bloomberg) -- The U.S. economic slump earlier this year was so severe it short-circuited the government’s model for calculating payrolls, raising the risk that today’s jobs report may be too optimistic.

About 824,000 more jobs may be subtracted from the payroll count for the 12 months through last March when the figures are officially revised early next year, a Labor Department report showed today. The revision would be the biggest since at least 1991.

The bulk of the miss occurred in the calculations for the first quarter of this year, the Labor Department said. The economy shrank at a 6.4 percent annual pace in the first three months of 2009, the worst performance since 1982.

The figures raise the possibility that the government’s calculations continue to miss the mark.

“We are probably still underestimating job losses,” said John Silvia, chief economist at Wells Fargo Securities LLC in Charlotte, North Carolina. “There could be another 30,000 to 40,000” that the data isn’t picking up, he said.

That would mean the loss of jobs for September could turn out to be as high as 300,000, rather than the 263,000 reported today by the Labor Department. Today’s report also showed the jobless rate climbed to 9.8 percent last month, a 26-year high.

The potential revision for the year through last March would mean that the economy lost 5.6 million jobs for the period instead of the 4.8 million now on the books.