unemployment

  On this edition of Your Call, we’ll discuss COVID's fall surge. According to the Covid Tracking Project, the US is averaging 48,000 new cases a day, the highest numbers since mid-August.

On Wednesday, California's Employment Development Department said that it has cleared about 250,000 of over 1.6 million unprocessed unemployment claims.

  On this edition of Your Call, we’re speaking with former Labor Secretary Robert Reich about the economic crisis and growing inequality. As of mid-August, more than 29 million Americans were receiving some sort of unemployment insurance.

On this edition of Your Call, we’re discussing escalating protests against the SF Giants. Unemployed Oracle ballpark workers say the SF Giants refuse to negotiate as they struggle to make ends meet. About 1,000 concession workers with UNITE HERE Local 2 are employed by the Bon Appetit Management Company, the Giants’ food service subcontractor.

On this edition of Your Call, we're discussing how the loss of additional unemployment benefits is impacting people who are struggling. Two months ago, House Democrats passed a bill to extend the extra $600 a week in federal benefits. Republicans want to reduce benefits to $200 a week.

  On this edition of Your Call, we’re discussing the struggle to make ends meet as COVID cases continue to surge in 40 states. Around 33 million Americans are now jobless.

  On this edition of Your Call, we discuss the pandemic’s mental health toll. More than 30% of adults in the US reported symptoms of anxiety or depression, according to a new Kaiser Family Foundation poll.

On this edition of Your Call, we'll find out what’s being done to prevent a massive eviction crisis from happening across the country. A backlog of eviction cases is already moving through the court system and it could get worse as unemployment benefits run out.

On this edition of Your Call, we’re speaking with Gray Brechin and Richard Walker, board members of the Living New Deal, a project that makes the legacy of the New Deal visible and educates Americans about what is possible when government is dedicated to the public good.

On this edition of Your Call, we're speaking with Nobel prize-winning economist Joseph Stiglitz about how the US government has handled the COVID-19 crisis. He says the public safety net is not working and the US is on course for a second Great Depression.

On this edition of Your Call, we’ll speak with Wendell Potter, a whistleblower and former VP of Cigna, about how the COVID-19 crisis is exposing our broken public health system and the failures of private health insurance.

On this edition of Your Call, we’ll take your questions about the $2.2 trillion stimulus package.

  In breathless mainstream coverage of national crises, the realities on the ground are being lost, says journalist Charlie Leduff.

A majority of Americans say their biggest financial concern is that they won’t be able to save enough money to retire. This finding, by a recent Gallup poll, is likely one reason that the average age of retirement in America has increased from 60 to 62 years old since the 2008 recession. For many people, though, retiring in their 60s simply isn’t possible.

Sky-high rents, Google buses and gentrification are all buzzwords around the Bay Area. But that is not the case in the city of Richmond. With unemployment at 10.1 percent, the city of more than a hundred thousand residents stubbornly trails behind the rates of Bay Area neighbors like San Francisco and Berkeley.  

After years working in low-paying-but-rewarding social service jobs, Delynn Parker went back to school to get her Masters in Psychology. She had high hopes for more opportunities and better compensation after she graduated. That is not how it worked out. She is now saddled with a huge student loan and has found it difficult to find full-time work in her chosen field. Parker shared a day in her life – from her morning commute to her early bed time – giving insight into being underemployed in the Bay Area.

San Francisco currently has the third lowest unemployment rate of all California's counties. But while that’s good news, it doesn't mean that much if you’re one of the more than 23,000 San Franciscans still finding it difficult to get work.

What happens to young people in the Bay Area with no college degree? How can they navigate a labor market that demands high tech skills without adequate education or training? Producer and guest host Victoria Thorp and guests explore new strategies for addressing the opportunity divide in the Bay Area.

Guests:

Even with almost 13 million Americans out of work, companies still complain that they have open positions that go unfilled because they can’t find the right talent. One organization thinks it’s found a solution to the skills gap problem. It’s helping young people who have a high school diploma or GED find jobs in growing sectors of the economy like technology and high finance.

Two years ago Breyana Scales says she was stuck between a dead end job painting kids’ faces at a theme park while trying to get through college.

Instead of working alone, independent workers—freelancers, contractors, independent consultants and temps—are increasingly joining co-working spaces. These are collaborative work environments where independents can rent desk and meeting space down to the hour. Roughly like a gym membership, at co-working spaces, you pack your laptop instead of your sweats.

In Oakland, 2012 is the boom year for formally expanding the prevailing cubicle-centered notions of work and worker archetypes. By the end of the year, Oakland will have at least four formal co-working spaces. 

Close to 100,000 jobless Californians will lose as many as 20 weeks of federal unemployment insurance benefits by the end of May. Improvements in California’s economy and a drop in the unemployment rate will end an extension of federal benefits. At an Employment Development Department on Franklin and Turk, KALW’s Angela Johnston spoke to Little Vila, John Saunders, Maurice Gonzales and Yvette, who wouldn’t give her last name. Here are their thoughts on being unemployed in today’s economy:

Three years ago, we aired a piece about Caffe Delle Stelle in Hayes Valley, San Francisco. The café was changing up its menu to fit the times – the economic downturn was beginning to slow the flow of lunchtime customers, so it formulated an economy meal. KALW’s Laura Klivans spoke with then-server Flori Mashmeyer, who said the restaurant’s ten-dollar soup or salad and pasta dish was bringing in “a lot more business.”