Oregon Increases the Maximum Weekly Unemployment Benefit Payment

According to the Portland Business Journal, the maximum weekly unemployment insurance benefit for Oregon's jobless is going to climb to $493/week beginning June 28th, 2009.

Oregon reported an unemployment rate in May 2009 of 12.4%--This is one of the nation's worst unemployment rate and the state's jobless will really be able to put the increased weekly payments to meaningful use.

White House states the obvious--unemployment will breach 10%

According to the AP the White House has finally recognized something that seems completely obvious---"The United States will see 10% Unemployment in a few months".

Now with the may unemployment rate being 9.4% and more than a dozen states suffering from double-digit unemployment, it's all but guaranteed that you'll be seeing the average unemployment rate breach double-digits in July 2009.

5 More States have Double-Digit Unemployment in May

Click for a larger Chart

Things continued to worsen in the month of May for many states. An additional 5 States (TN, IN, KY, FL & IL) and Washington DC saw their unemployment rates jump to over 10% in May 2009.

Now 13 states have unemployment rates breaching double digits with Michigan, Oregon, South Carolina, Rhode Island and California rounding out the top five.

In two short months the states that make up this list have seen, on average, their unemployment rate rise by 0.8 percentage points.

Click for a Larger Chart

The State of California reported that things got worse in May 2009 as the unemployment rate for the Golden State jumped to 11.5%.

This is the highest rate of unemployment since records began being kept over 30 years ago---And there are currently over 430,000 Californians who have been without a job for over 6 months... California is ground zero of a negative feedback loop where property prices are falling, causing more people to lose their jobs, cause more people to lose their homes.

China's solution to the unemployment problem

According to the AFP, Chinese government officials have an idea to reduce the ranks of the nation's unemployed.

China is likely have over 40 million people lose their jobs this year as manufacturing and construction jobs evaporate as the export heavy communist country suffers from a severe slow down in exports. So what's their idea to reduce the unemployment rate? Train people to become housekeepers---The thought is that as the ranks of China's middle class continues to grow and there are plenty of Dual-Income families, the demand for housekeepers is not currently kept.

My guess is that this initiative while it makes for interesting news---it won't cause a meaning decrease in the unemployment rate in China.