Warning Job Loss is Bad for Your Health

Today the New York Times reported on a Harvard study that speculates that becoming unemployed is bad for your health.

The study focuses on 8,125 people and found that the rate of health issues (including high blood pressure, diabetes and heart disease) occurred almost twice as much in people who unexpectedly lost their job than people who were continously employed. This increase in health issues occurred even if people quickly found new jobs after getting the axe.

Let's hope that most of these folks were still covered by COBRA or some sort of health insurance!

As Unemployment Rate Climbs, so do Mortgage Delinquencies

Click on Image for a bigger chart

Data released from Freddie and Fannie show that the rate of serious delinquencies continue to worsen in March (Freddie) and February (Fannie).

Freddie saw a 2.29% serious delinquency rate in its single family home mortgage portfolio, while Fannie Mae saw almost 3% of it's single family home loan portfolio in the seriously delinquent category. [both of these data points are shown as bars & use the left hand scale on the chart].

Fannie and Freddie have large amounts of prime mortgages on their books and as you can see, as the unemployment rate and underemployment rate in the US continue to increase (Lines on the chart using the right hand scale), the numbers of people with prime mortgages who fall behind and run into payment problems continue to increase.

Since we can see that the unemployment continued to rise in April, 2009 I think we can safely forecast that the GSE's delinquency rate will continue to climb upwards.

If you're one of the many people falling behind on your mortgage payments there are several diffent techniques that may be useful in delaying or forstalling the bank foreclosure process.

Unemployment Rate Rises to 8.9% in April 2009--U6 Unemployment up to 15.8%

According to figures released from the bureau of labor statistics, the US unemployment rate increased from 8.5% in March 2009 to 8.9% in April 2009---losing 539,000 jobs in the process.

There are now 3.7 million people who have been unemployed for over a half year. This is up from 1.3 million people in the same position at the start of the "Great Recession" in 12/2007.

Click on Image for a larger chart

One other interesting point is the fact that even though the unemployment increased by 0.4 percentage points in the month (8.5 to 8.9%), the U6 Unemployment Rate (which includes the unemployed as well as peole working part-time b/c they can't find full time work) increased only 0.2 percentage points (15.6 to 15.8%). Now maybe I'm being a pollyanna, but this is pretty good news--It means that the number of people who were working part time work, but wanted full time work actually fell!---I hope that means they found full time work, and not that they are now just happy with their part-time careers.
Click on Image for a Larger Chart

Colorado Unemployment Line is Still Busy

Back in January, I blogged about how the state of Colorado is constantly serving up the busy signal to the jobless who need to call in to file for unemployment or to get questions answered.

Here we are 4 months later and KRDO reports that people are still getting busy signals or waiting on hold for hours---This is even though they have expanded their workforce from 20 people to 110 people in the past year.

According to KRDO, you can email Bill Thoennes (at bill.thoennes@state.co.us ) if you're not having any luck in getting your phone call answered. [Or else you could try and find your answers at www.coworkforce.com. ]

Just When WIll Ohio's Unemployed Start Collecting the Extra $25/week in Unemployment Benefits?

According to vindy.com the state of Ohio is getting close to retroactively paying the extra $25/week to the jobless collecting unemployment insurance.

The extra money was supposed to be delivered in February, but computer glitches delayed the payments until now. If you're a buckeye looking for the extra cash, you can expect in the next couple of weeks.

There will be a separate "catch-up" payment and then the extra funds should start showing up in future checks.