One persons' problem is another persons' good fortune?

Caffe Vita, a coffee shop and roastery, has a full-time trainer who teaches customers around the country “the science or physics of making good coffee,” he said.

When the training sessions started about 12 years ago, they were by appointment only, but about four years ago, they expanded to about three days a week and about two years ago increased the sessions to five days a week, Buckley said. MORE

Most people realize that the economy has cycles of ups and downs," said Wachovia economist Sam Bullard. "Fortunately, the last two recessions were some of the shortest on record, so in 2009 we should be pulling up out of this."

Of the more than 1,000 American adults surveyed in the poll, conducted March 14-16, 83% said they are "confident" that they will be able to maintain their standards of living next year, and 85% are "confident" they will keep their jobs over the next six months.

Cornell University just released a study about international Employment

In 2007, 1.2 billion women around the world worked, almost 200 million or 18.4 per cent more than ten years ago. But, the number of unemployed women also grew from 70.2 to 81.6 million over the same period and in 2007, women at the global level still had a higher likelihood of being unemployed than men. The female unemployment rate stood at 6.4 per cent compared to the male rate of 5.7 per cent.

Economic empowerment for women has a lot to do with their ability or inability to participate in labour markets and with the conditions of employment that the women who do manage to find work face. The international community stresses more and more the fact that promoting decent work is the only sustainable way out of poverty. In fact, a new target was recently introduced in the Millennium Development Goals calling for “full and productive employment and decent work for all”.4 There is also growing recognition that labour markets are the key transmission mechanism through which the benefits of growth can be distributed to the poor and disadvantaged groups.

Access to labour markets and, more specifically, to decent employment is thereby crucial in the process towards improving equality between men and women. Decent work for women is also a precondition for economic development since, in the long run, economies cannot afford to ignore an untapped resource such as that which could be offered by female labour.

Despite the evident challenges involved in achieving gender equality in the world of work the goal remains a worthy one and the challenges well worth taking up. As of now, however, the fact remains that far fewer women participate in labour markets than men. At the global level less than 70 women (66.9) are economically active for every 100 men.

In terms of economic activity, 82 women per 100 men in the region of the Developed Economies & European Union were participating in the labour market in 2007. (See table 2.) This represents the smallest gap worldwide. Also, employment-to-population ratios of women have changed considerably in the last ten years, moving up from 47.2 per cent in 1997 to 49.1 per cent in 2007. (See table 4 and figure 1.) In contrast, male employment-to-population ratios decreased from 65.9 to 64.0 per cent. The statistics reflect the fact that employment creation was dominated by the increase in the number of jobs for women: employment grew by 12 per cent for women and by only 4.9 per cent for men between 1997 and 2007. At the same time, unemployment continues to be higher for women than for men with rates of 6.7 and 6.2 per cent, respectively. (See table 3 and figure 5.) Both rates are lower than ten years ago.

The overall picture for young people looks different. First of all, the employment-topopulation ratios do not show as large a gap as the overall ratios: young women’s employment-topopulation ratio stood at 42.8 per cent, 0.6 percentage points higher than ten years ago, whereas the rate of young men was 45.6 per cent after a considerable decrease of 2.4 percentage points between 1997 and 2007. At the same time, a young person’s risk of being unemployed continues to be 2.4 times higher than an adult’s, although the risk for young women is smaller than that for young men (youth unemployment rates are 12.5 per cent for women and 13.8 per cent for men).

The move out of industry and into services continues in the region with a larger share of women leaving the sector than men. Even though the employment share in industry was already much lower for women than for men, it further decreased by 4.2 percentage points to a share of 12.5 per cent. (See table 5 and figure 3.) At the same time, employment of women in services increased to a share of 84.3 per cent. Men’s industry share decreased to 34.3 per cent and the services sector share was 61.1 per cent in 2007.

The Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS) in the US describes the Employment Situation.

FEBRUARY 2008 Nonfarm payroll employment edged down in February (-63,000), and the unemployment rate was essentially unchanged at 4.8 percent, the Bureau of Labor Statistics of the U.S. Department of Labor reported today. Employment fell in manufacturing, construction, and retail trade. Job growth continued in health care and in food services.

Average hourly earnings rose by 5 cents, or 0.3 percent, over the month. Unemployment (Household Survey Data)

The number of unemployed persons (7.4 million) and the unemployment rate (4.8 percent) were essentially unchanged in February. Over the month, the unemployment rates for adult men (4.3 percent), adult women (4.2 percent), teenagers (16.6 percent), whites (4.3 percent), and Hispanics (6.2 percent) showed little or no change. The jobless rate for blacks fell to 8.3 percent, in line with the average rate for 2007. The unemployment rate for Asians was 3.0 percent, not seasonally adjusted. (See tables A-1, A-2, and A-3.) Total Employment and the Labor Force (Household Survey Data)

Both the civilian labor force, at 153.4 million, and the labor force par- ticipation rate, at 65.9 percent, declined in February. Total employment (146.0 million) and the employment-population ratio (62.7 percent) were little changed over the month. (See table A-1.)

Population Clocks U.S. 303,686,689 World 6,658,371,224 18:02 GMT (EST+5) Mar 22, 2008