Get those red pencils from the '90s ready!
Hell may have frozen over yesterday when a $15 billion bill spurring job growth passed yesterday, 70 to 28, thanks to a bipartisan coalition of 55 Democrats, 2 independents and 13 Republicans.
The Times reports that the central element of the bill is giving companies who hire unemployed Americans an exemption from paying payroll taxes on those workers through the end of this year.
Happy job hunting, you lucky 25 million!
I always lie naked on a random rock when things get really sad.
The recent slowdown in job losses is welcome but only marks the beginning of the difficult process of rehiring the more than 8 million workers sidelined by the recession. With unemployment still rising, payroll levels have shrunk nearly 6 percent since the recession began in December 2007. That is nearly three times the level of job loss during the last recession in 2001.
After the 2001 recession it took 18 months to restore employment to pre-recession levels. At that rate, even if the economy began adding jobs next month, employment levels wouldn’t return to pre-recession levels until June 2014.
-[MSNBC]
