The 155,000 new jobs were primarily added in the healthcare, food service, construction, and manufacturing industries. Hospitals and ambulatory health services companies continued to hire workers, together adding around 25,000 of the 45,000 jobs added in the health care sector. Restaurants and bars added 38,000 new workers, and the construction industry added 30,000. Manufacturers added 25,000 new employees in December, capping off a year in which factory employment rose by a total of 180,000 workers.

Though employees are being hired, the number of unemployed Americans continues to hold steady. 12.2 million U.S. workers are currently counted as unemployed, a number that is actually slightly higher than the 12 million counted in November 2012. The unemployment rate also held steady at 7.8%, the same number the rate has been at for the last four months, excepting a small uptick to 7.9% in October.

The unemployment numbers do look good when taking a longer view, however. The unemployment rate in December 2011 was at 8.5%, while the number of unemployed Americans was nearly one million higher, at 13 million.

The economy has been the biggest sticking point in this election year, with voters demanding to know what each man will do about unemployment once they’re in office. Clinton says that, for him, the election is strictly about which candidate is more likely to return America to full employment.

“President Obama has a plan to rebuild America from the ground up. Investing in innovation, education and job training. It only works if there is a strong middle class. That’s what happened when I was president. We need to go with his plan,” Clinton says in the ad.

He also takes aim at the Republican party for their plan to cut more taxes on upper income people and go back to deregulation, saying “that’s what got us into trouble in the first place”.

Clinton supported Obama’s tax cuts plan a while back, appearing at a press conference with him regarding the plan.

“I just had a terrific meeting with former president Bill Clinton, and we just happened to have this as a topic of conversation, and I thought that given the fact that he presided over as good an economy as we’ve seen in our lifetimes, that it might be useful for him to share some of his thoughts,” Obama said before turning the podium over to Clinton.

During the conference, Clinton said he still spends about an hour a day trying to figure out the economy problem, even though he’s not running for any office. He also stated that even though he is in the income bracket which would benefit from the Republican’s plan, he didn’t think it was the best fit for the U.S.

Hartley, who studied mathematics and computer science in Tasmania, had been working in Sydney for the past 10 years, that is, until she lost her job six months ago. Unable to make ends meet, she is now counted amongst the city’s homeless, albeit one with laptop and smartphone.

“It’s not that expensive to have a mobile these days. I’ve held onto it because people who know me sometimes get in touch with work,” she explained. In order to stay connected, Hartley plunks down $10 a day to plug in at a local Internet cafe.

Although a lot of folks are sympathetic towards Hartley — one man even offered her use of his vacant office, complete with WiFi — a few people do take issue with the fact that she’s essentially begging for money on the street while doing business on her iPhone.

“I don’t think people usually look close enough to see my mobile, when I use it, but one guy came up and yelled at me the other day,” she explained. To be fair, the thought of a homeless person owning both a laptop and a mobile device is a little hard to swallow, especially when so many people are struggling just to get by.

Given the amount of coverage this story has received as of late, I’d say it won’t be too long before Hartley finds a full-time job with a steady paycheck once again.

Image provided courtesy of NineMSN

“The big worry now is that this economic slowdown is widening and accelerating,” explained Sam Stovall, the chief equity strategist for the market research firm S&P Capital IQ.

Only 69,000 jobs were added in the United States this past May, causing the unemployment rate to rise to 8.2 percent. Ever hopeful, economists had initially hoped that employers would add nearly 158,000 jobs over the course of the month. Even China, which helped keep the global economy afloat during the recent recession, is showing signs of strain. According to reports, manufacturing was down in May.

In addition to issues with the Dow, the Standard & Poor’s 500 index and Nasdaq composite index were also down two percent. However, these two indexes are currently still up for the year.

“I would posit that at least one major driving factor here is…the pace with which technology and innovation is now accelerating,” said Weiner. “We are outstripping our ability to educate and train the existing workforce.”

The Bay Area Council is business-sponsored public policy advocacy organization based in the San Francisco Bay area. The group holds the yearly Outlook Conference that highlights future economic and political trends. This year’s conference featured speeches by former President Bill Clinton and former Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice.

Mario Sundar, senior social media manager and the chief blogger for LinkedIn, outlined the main points of Weiner’s speech in a post on the LinkedIn blog. Weiner has a three-pronged solution to ensure that jobs requiring a high level of skill can be filled. First, improving the U.S. education system. Second, make it easier for highly skilled workers to emigrate to the U.S. and fill jobs. Lastly, greater investment in the country’s digital infrastructure.

Sounds easy, right? Improving education and investing in infrastructure are causes nearly everyone can get behind, yet are much easier said than done. Has Weiner actually come up with workable solutions? Watch Weiner’s entire speech below and decide for yourself. Then, leave a comment and let us know what you think.

(How bad is it?)

I’m glad you asked. Remember back in late January when a woman was on a virtual meeting with President Obama and he told her to send her husband’s résumé to him and he’d “see what he could do”? Well, that guy still ain’t got a job.

Apparently there was a lot of interest in Darin Wedel, the husband of Jennifer Wedel, the woman who spoke with Obama. For weeks after the Google+ Hangout with President Obama the phone rang off the hook. There were recruiters, headhunters (anyone else think of Gilligan’s Island when they hear that?), media, the Texas Workforce Commission, the White House, and many companies. But nothing was taking.

Turns out there is a little complication that Mr. Wedel faces that is not uncommon. He has two daughters. Wedel has a custody agreement involving one of them that prevents his moving away. Many offers he received simply were not feasible for him and his family. And this guy lives in the Fort Worth area.

Wedel’s predicament is all too common. He was a semiconductor engineer at Texas Instruments and lost his job three years ago.

Unemployment is a hot topic in the upcoming presidential race. It seems like every day you hear something different about what the numbers are and who is to blame or who gets credit. One report tells you the numbers are down, the next says they are up. then another says they are down, but not by as much as expected. The next says the short winter is to blame for the disappointing unemployment numbers. All people like Mr Wedel know is that they can’t get a job.

So, for those of you sitting at home pounding away at the computer, trying to submit yet another résumé on this Friday the 13th, here’s something to let you know that you’re not alone. Things are tough all over. I know it doesn’t make it any better, but just know you’re not alone. There are a lot of people out there just “trying to get back to zero”.

Rumors suggest that the first cuts will come from ad technology and the search segments of their staff. There has been no official word on the Yahoo layoffs, but All Things D has published names of some of the key management figures involved in the restructure and downsizing initiatives.

Apparently, the changes at Yahoo have been the subject of a lot of speculation in Silicon Valley with a few somewhat credible rumors emerging from the buzz. One of those rumors is the emergence of a small innovation-centered work group, and a second is a new global media devision comprised of components from their current search and global sales entities.

We’ll be watching for an announcement of the changes at Yahoo in the coming weeks though it is possible the changes will take place incrementally throughout 2012 and go relatively unnoticed by those outside the organization.

That’s the goal of a recent study by Global Pulse. They, along with software company SAS, examined job-related postings on blogs, discussion forums, and social media in order to gauge whether increases in the discussion of certain kinds of topics could predict a spike in unemployment rates.

Job-related posts were assigned a mood score to determine how those who were talking about their jobs felt about them. This data was then correlated to unemployment rates in the two countries surveyed – the US and Ireland. In Ireland the study found that an increase in negative mood scores – confusion, anxiety, depression, etc. – warned of a spike in unemployment about three months ahead of time.

They also examined references to coping mechanisms – tightening budgets, cancelled vacations, foreclosures, etc. The data showed that such references tended to follow an unemployment spike by about two months in the US.

The purpose of this study was not to develop means of predicting rises in unemployment before they happened. Instead the goal is to add depth to unemployment figures by gauging the way people feel about and cope with their situations.

Global Pulse is an initiative of the UN Secretary General’s office. It is a research and analytics organization designed to use digital information to provide real-time analytics data to the UN so that the organization can better understand and respond to current events. SAS is a software company specializing in business analytics software.

The full report is embedded below. Check it out, then let us know what you think in the comments.

Over 60% of the same firms say they will likely increase outsourced labor in the years to come. The graphic positions these trends as positive news for unemployment numbers, but if you think that’s true, your not living in the real world.

Would you give up your current position at your organization for an unstable assignment as a “temp” worker? I think most people would tell you NO! Typically temporary assignments and contract work don’t provide the benefits or incentives that permanent employment at organizations provides. Benefits like healthcare, paid holidays, 401K, or vacation time typically are not available.

Remember when General Motors said that their decision to outsource production to other countries wouldn’t hurt our (the United States) economy? Ask the people of Flint, Michigan if that was true. What outsourcing truly represents is reduced responsibility and minimal investment to the people who do corporations grunt work. I think it’s unacceptable. Many growing corporations and businesses pride themselves on providing stability and security for their employees and their communities.

I am shocked at how populations consider this practice acceptable and how we allow the media to paint it in a positive light. We need to demand increased responsibility from the organizations who occupy our neighborhoods and consume our resources. Don’t be fooled by deceptive statistics and boastful PR campaigns, outsourcing is bad for the general population and bad for the economy.

However, I would be foolish to insist that some professionals can’t benefit from the flexibility and financial freedoms that contract work can provide. Not all professionals lend themselves to being tied down to one organization. It simply doesn’t make sense. However, I fear this growing trend isn’t about catering to these specialized experts, but more a tactic to increase profit margins and minimize obligations.

I don’t see the corporate giants who destroyed the economy with the housing bubble taking responsibility for their actions. No, as usual it is the taxpayers responsibility to bail out the organizations who have been abusing us and leaching money from our family budgets. I don’t think so, unacceptable! There are a lot of great corporation s and organizations out there, let’s not encourage this trend.

Anyway, enough of my ranting, take a look at the infographic and the shocking statistics:

by Column Five Media.

This comes as no surprise. IBM has been decreasing American jobs for half a decade.

IBM has reduced its American workforce by over 21,000 employees since 2007. It is not possible at this time to pinpoint exactly how many IBM employees have been let go over the past two years because “IBM stopped disclosing its specific U.S. head count in 2010, following the practice of many other large technology companies”

The decision to cut these positions comes at a time when profits are up by 7% with revenue of 106.9 billion and IBM feels no need to discuss details of their staffing plans, at least not in public. A spokesmen for IBM claims shifts in demands as the reason for the corporation is “[...] constantly rebalancing its workforce.” IBM went on to say that “that means reducing in some areas and hiring in others — based on shifts in technology and client demand. This flexibility allows IBM to remain competitive and relevant in an industry that is constantly changing.”

Do you think that these tech based companies genuinely rebalance their workforce, or do they trend towards radical overhauls? Should America be more conservative in their hiring and firing practices and prepare employees to thrive in new industries? If so, would this result in a more stable U.S. economy?