Hey, kids! Remember the last couple of months, when people could point at the unemployment statistics and think that maybe the economic free-fall was slowing down?

Well, forget that noise:

The American economy shed 467,000 jobs last month, and the unemployment rate rose to 9.5 percent from 9.4 percent, the Labor Department reported on Thursday. Job losses were widespread among the construction, manufacturing, and business and professional services sectors.

The losses were sharply higher than economists’ expectations of 365,000 lost jobs.

Here’s a direct link to the Bureau of Labor Statistics announcement.

In its story, the New York Times puts this month’s numbers into some context:

As the recession enters its 20th month, wage growth is stagnating, working hours are dwindling and 14.7 million people are unemployed.

In essence, economists say, months of deep, broad job losses are effectively making unemployment a way of life for millions.

The number of people who have been unemployed for more than 27 weeks has more than tripled since the recession began, to 4.4 million. The median time people go without a job has increased to more than four months, from slightly more than two months at the outset of the recession in December 2007.

“We have never seen a duration of that magnitude,” Lynn Reaser, vice president for the National Association for Business Economics, said. “There are a lot of ramifications. A lot of these people become discouraged, and they drop out of the work force. It affects their spending, their whole psychological frame of mind.”

In the Brownsville section of Brooklyn, Jeffrey Jones, 40, is feeling the weight of eight months without work. He has not found anything since losing his job as a cook at a senior center in October, and he worries about paying rent and caring for his four children. His blood pressure is up, he said, and some nights he stays up and watches television to distract himself from the worries that keep him from sleeping.

“I know I’m not supposed to be letting it stress me out,” he said. “The way I’m going now, I won’t be able to make it too much longer. I can’t go this long without doing something for my family.”

Perhaps the “centrists” who nickel-and-dimed President Barack Obama’s stimulus package back in February will call up Mr. Jones and ask him how their push to cut 500,000 jobs out of the stimulus so they could pose for the TV cameras as defenders of “fiscal responsibility” is working out for him?

Oh, right. Never mind.

(Image credit: the original photo from which the illustration from this post was created is part of French photographer Denis Darzacq’s collection La chute — “The Fall”.)

Big news out of Tar Heel, North Carolina today — the workers at the world’s largest pork processing plant have ratified their first-ever union contract:

Members of UFCW Local 1208 will join more than 10,000 other Smithfield workers, and more than 240,000 others who work in the meat packing and food processing industry who have a UFCW union contract.

The new contract includes:

• Wage increases of $1.50/hour over the next four years.
• Continued company-provided affordable family health care coverage.
• Improved paid sick leave and vacation benefits.
• Retirement security through protection of the existing pension plan.
• Continued joint worker/management safety committee, including company funded safety training for workers.
• Guaranteed weekly hours that protect full-time, family supporting jobs in the community
• A system to resolve workplace issues.
• Three working days of paid funeral leave following the death of immediate family members.

“This contract will completely transform our workplace,” said Orlando Williams. “This is the biggest four-year wage increase Smithfield workers have ever had and it will make a real difference for our families and in this community. We could never have gotten that increase without a chance to bargain with the company. We will finally have a sense of security on the job because through our union we can make sure we have a safe place to work, and that everyone’s treated fairly.”

That’s a big step closer to achieving the American Dream for five thousand workers. Congratulations to all of them!

You’ve probably heard lots of buzz about “green jobs” lately. But, you may have wondered, what does all that buzz translate to in the real world? How is the green jobs movement affecting real people and real communities? And are new green jobs being created in ways that make them good jobs — jobs that can help a worker achieve the American Dream — too?

Here’s a good story that answers all those questions: Seattle NPR affiliate KPLU reports on how Washington state has allocated nearly $15 million of the Federal stimulus money they received to create good jobs “weatherizing” buildings to make them more energy efficient — and how the Laborers’ International Union of North America (LIUNA, a CtW affiliate) has created a training program to provide its workers with the skills they need to fill those jobs:

Inside an old home in west Seattle, 23-year-old Joseph Cortez is cutting insulation as an instructor looks on. He gets praise for catching on quickly. He’s a trainee with the Laborers International Union of North America. His new position is part of a demonstration project, meant to show what the federal government’s five billion dollars in stimulus spending for weatherization can do. The union says their training program could create thousands of high-quality jobs and upgrade millions of homes in Washington State alone.

Cortez is newly married and has a child on the way, so he’s grateful for the prospect of union career, specializing in green building.

“Not a job paying minimum wage,” he says, “but a job that’s paying $20 an hour, so that we can live comfortably and have a great success in our lives.”

Washington passed a law in May that guarantees access to these jobs for low-income and disadvantaged populations. Cortez fits the demographic. The union plans to train hundreds more this summer.

And the program isn’t just benefiting people like Cortez. The retrofitting of the single mom’s home where he’s working is being done at no cost to her - $3,500 worth of work, which will also save her an estimated $350 a year in heating costs.

LIUNA’s not just training workers for green jobs in Washington state, either. Green for All reported a few months back on LIUNA’s weatherization training work on the other side of the nation, in Newark, New Jersey:

On a snow covered street in a suburb of brick houses in Newark, a sea of green hard hats filled the street to celebrate the first house “weatherized” as part of this new pilot program…

Laborers Local 55 will train the first class of 25 Newark residents in green construction techniques this winter. The weatherization work on homes will continue through January, and the laborers will earn accreditation while being paid union rates, with health benefits.

Ray Pachino, Vice-president of the Laborers’ International Union of North America, spoke of the immediate benefits of weatherization:

“In our training center, where we had some of these workers training on Saturday, they put some of their newly learned skills to work and did some insulating around the building, especially in the garage area. We got a call this morning that the temperature in the garage was ten degrees warmer with the thermostat ten degrees lower.

So it works! It does work.”

From coast to coast, there’s lots of work to be get our economy ready for the energy challenges of the 21st Century — and the working men and women of LIUNA are leading the way.

I’ve written before in this space on the campaign among the warehouse workers of California’s Inland Empire to join together in unions and achieve the American Dream, so it’s good to see that the Los Angeles Times has taken note of the movement:

The fledgling movement is backed by a coalition of unions with more than 6 million members known as Change to Win. That’s the national labor group that broke with the AFL-CIO in 2005 and includes the Service Employees International Union, the United Food and Commercial Workers International Union, the United Farm Workers of America and the International Brotherhood of Teamsters, among others…

Nearly 2,900 warehouses of at least 50,000 square feet each dot the Inland Empire. The facilities, which employ nearly 113,000 people, are operated by hundreds of companies, including some of the nation’s largest retailers…

“We’re not expecting to get these workers into the middle class this year, but we think our momentum is growing,” said Nick Allen, campaign coordinator for Warehouse Workers United. “The workers are hungry.”

Read the whole thing, or learn more about the campaign at the Warehouse Workers United Web site.

The Minnesota Supreme Court rules unanimously in favor of Al Franken in the long-running drama of who won that state’s Senate contest last fall:

We affirm the decision of the trial court that Al Franken received the highest number of votes legally cast and is entitled under Minn. Stat. § 204C.40 (2008) to receive the certificate of election as United States Senator from the State of Minnesota.

Responding to the Court’s decision, our Chair, Anna Burger, calls on Minnesota Governor Tim Pawlenty to certify Franken’s election and give Minnesotans the full representation in Congress that they deserve:

Now that the Minnesota Supreme Court has made its final ruling, it is time to recognize Al Franken as the duly elected Senator from Minnesota. As is appropriate after any extremely close election, Minnesotans took the time to conduct an extensive and thorough recount process, but now that all reasonable legal options have been exhausted, Minnesota deserves its full representation in Congress. We call on Governor Pawlenty to pursue the state’s best interests and end this contest instead of favoring those who would allow the recount to continue for purely partisan reasons.

During the election, Senator-elect Franken made clear he will work hard to rebuild our economy through real healthcare reform and the Employee Free Choice Act, as well as tackling the long-term challenges we face on the environment, keeping college education affordable and fixing our broken immigration system. Working families need him in the United States Senate to help restore the economy, rebuild the middle class and renew the American Dream for all workers.

UPDATE (4:15PM): Norm Coleman concedes the race to Franken.