Unemployment in Europe Stays High Amid Signs of Recovery

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Economix Blog: Wanted: More Unemployment

U.S. Unemployment Claims Rise Slightly

WASHINGTON — The number of Americans seeking unemployment benefits rose just 1,000 last week to a seasonally adjusted 308,000, hovering near six-year lows. Companies are still cutting very few jobs, however the decline in layoffs has not been accompanied by a pickup in hiring.

The less volatile four-week average for applications fell to 305,000, the Labor Department said Thursday. That's the lowest since May 2007, seven months before the recession began.

Weekly applications could increase next week because of the partial government shutdown. Defense contractors and other companies that do business with the government may temporarily lay off workers. Federal workers who are temporarily laid off may also file for benefits, though their numbers are reported separately and published a week later than the other applications.

Still, the broader trend has been encouraging. Applications, which are a proxy for layoffs, have fallen steadily in the past three months as many companies have stopped laying off workers. That suggests more employers are confident enough in the economy to maintain their existing staffs.

Steady declines in applications are typically followed by more hiring. But that hasn't happened. Instead, job gains have slowed in recent months.

"Companies were not laying off workers ahead of the shutdown but they probably weren't hiring much, either," Jennifer Lee, an economist at BMO Capital Markets, said.

Employers have added an average of just 155,000 jobs a month in the four months through August, according to government data. That's down from an average of 205,000 for the first four months of the year.

On Wednesday, payroll provider ADP said that businesses added just 166,000 jobs in September, evidence that hiring remains sluggish. The ADP figures usually diverge from the Labor Department's more comprehensive monthly employment report, which was scheduled to be released Friday. But the September employment report will now be delayed until the government shutdown ends.

The government was able to release the unemployment benefits report because the data are compiled by the states, unlike the jobs report data, which is gathered by federal workers. The unemployment benefits report also requires little additional analysis by federal officials, a department spokesman said.

About 4 million people received benefits the week ended Sept. 14, the latest data available. That's about 80,000 more than the previous week. A year ago, more than 5 million people were on the unemployment benefit rolls.

The economy may not be growing quickly enough to encourage companies to ramp up hiring. Most analysts forecast that growth has slowed to an annual rate of 1.5 percent to 2 percent in the July-September quarter, down from a 2.5 percent annual rate in the April-June quarter.

Economists predict that growth is rebounding to an annual rate of 2.5 percent to 3 percent in the current October-December quarter. But those forecasts were made before this week's impasse that shuttered the government. The shutdown could shave about 0.15 percentage points from the fourth quarter figure for each week it lasts.

European Leaders Huddle on Youth Unemployment

PARIS — President François Hollande of France called Tuesday for “urgent action” to tackle alarmingly high rates of youth unemployment across the European Union, saying that mounting disillusionment among the “post-crisis generation” threatened the very future of the European project.

“We need to act quickly,” Mr. Hollande told a gathering of government officials, business leaders and students in Paris. “In this battle, time is the decisive factor.”

Mr. Hollande spoke ahead of a series of meetings between French and German officials this week in preparation for a summit meeting of European leaders at the end of June, where youth unemployment is expected to top the agenda. The subject is also expected to figure prominently at a meeting here Thursday between Mr. Hollande and the German chancellor, Angela Merkel.

Nearly six million people under the age of 25 are unemployed across the European Union — nearly one quarter of the total, according to Eurostat, the Union’s statistical office. Youth jobless rates are now roughly twice the national average in many of the Union’s 27 member states, with the figures reaching as high as 60 percent in countries like Greece and Spain, which have been hard hit by austerity-driven cuts to social services and other benefits.

Economists say the extraordinarily high rates are in part a result of the general economic slump across the region, but are also a consequence of inflexible labor market rules that make entry into the work force particularly difficult for young people.

In recent weeks, German officials have spearheaded a series of bilateral agreements with countries like Spain and Portugal aimed at helping more young people from those countries enter the work force or to receive vocational training. Discussions about a similar agreement with France are continuing, people with knowledge of the talks said.

Those agreements, while still short on details, are being seen as part of a broader blueprint for a pan-European plan to create jobs and apprenticeships for young people across the Union.

Mr. Hollande said Tuesday that the plan would rest on three pillars: easing the access to credit for small and midsize companies; developing new job-training and apprenticeship programs; and increasing the geographic mobility of young people by offering money for language training and moving costs.

Initial financing for the plan would come from a pool of roughly €6 billion, or $7.7 billion, that has already been earmarked for this purpose from the European Investment Bank.

The European youth jobs initiative is expected to be ready in time for a gathering of the Union’s ministers July 3 in Berlin.

Mr. Hollande’s call to action was echoed by other European officials in attendance at the conference, which was held before a packed hall of university students from France’s prestigious Institut d’Études Politiques de Paris, or Sciences Po.

“We have to rescue an entire generation of young people who are scared,” said Enrico Giovannini, Italy’s new labor minister. “We have the best-educated generation and we are putting them on hold. This is not acceptable.”

Joblessness among those aged 15 to 24 in Italy is above 38 percent, according to Eurostat, on par with the rate in Portugal, which has also adopted wrenching changes. Youth unemployment is much lower in Germany and Austria, below 8 percent in both cases, a reflection both of their stronger economies as well as their centuries-old apprenticeship systems, which offer paid vocational training to students while they are still in high school.

Ursula von der Leyen, Germany’s labor minister, emphasized the need to bring to bear the resources of the European Investment Bank, based in Luxembourg, to encourage companies to invest and create jobs.

“Many small and mid-sized companies, which are the backbone of our economies, are ready to deliver, but they need capital,” Ms. von der Leyen said, noting that small firms still faced “exorbitant” interest rates from private-sector banks that remain reluctant to lend. “We want to break this vicious circle,” she said.

Werner Heyer, head of the European Investment Bank, said the deepening youth unemployment crisis, alongside obstacles to cross-border lending within the euro zone, represented the region’s two “megaproblems.” But he cautioned that politicians would be mistaken if they believed that the European bank’s resources alone would be enough to solve the unemployment problem.

“Such expectations of the bank are beyond the horizon,” Mr. Heyer said. “There is no quick fix; there is no grand plan.”

Germany Works to Curb European Youth Unemployment

Wolfgang Schäuble, the German finance minister, and Vítor Gaspar, his counterpart in Portugal, announced a plan on Wednesday to use the German state development bank to help set up a financial institution to assist Portuguese under age 25 in getting jobs or job training.

This week, Ursula von der Leyen, the German labor minister, signed an agreement with her Spanish counterpart, Fátima Báñez García, that foresees bringing thousands of young Spaniards to Germany for apprenticeships. At the same time, Germany will seek to help Spain build a dual-track vocational system in which young people earn qualifications through a combination of work and study.

The initiatives are part of a multipronged effort by Berlin to quickly get more young people into the work force, a move that experts say is crucial if a unified Europe is to survive into the next generation. “What is decisive is that we must be faster and more definitive in fighting youth unemployment,” Mr. Schäuble said.

More than 5.6 million people under 25 are without work across the union, according to figures released by Eurostat, the statistical office of the European Union. Among the countries with the largest number of young people out of work are the weaker members of the euro zone that are undergoing deep cuts to social services and other structural changes, part of efforts to recover from the debt crisis.

Germany grappled with its own youth unemployment problem early last decade. While its numbers then were nowhere near the 60 percent of young people now out of work in Greece, or the nearly 56 percent in Spain, German leaders said their experience could be of value to their European partners.

Next week, German and French officials plan to draw up a bilateral agreement on employment when they meet alongside European business leaders at a conference in Paris. On July 3, Chancellor Angela Merkel of Germany will gather labor ministers and the heads of 27 European Union labor agencies in Berlin for a meeting to further discuss the problem.

Details of the German-French proposal remain vague, but Mr. Schäuble insisted that financing would not be an issue.

He cited the 6 billion euros, or $7.8 billion, that the European Union has earmarked in its new budget for addressing the problem, as well as additional money that was given to the European Investment Bank in Luxembourg intended for loans to small and midsize businesses, which would help create more jobs.

“We are working to use the existing funds more efficiently,” Mr. Schäuble said in Berlin.

Unemployment in the early stages of a person’s career damages the ability to integrate into society, or, in the case of the union, to later support the idea of more integration on the Continent, said Joachim Möller, director of the Institute for Employment Research in Nuremberg. “The long-term effects reach far beyond the working world,” he added. “It could be catastrophic for their idea of Europe.”

Euro Watch: Euro Zone Unemployment Rose to Another Record in January

That, along with new data showing a decline in inflation in the euro zone, could prompt the European Central Bank to take steps to stimulate the economy when its governing council meets on Thursday, analysts said.

Unemployment in the 17-nation euro zone climbed to 11.9 percent in January from 11.8 percent the previous month, according to Eurostat, the statistical office of the European Union.

For the 27 nations of the European Union, the jobless rate was 10.8 percent, up from 10.7 percent in December. All of the figures were seasonally adjusted.

A separate Eurostat report showed price pressures easing in February. In the euro zone, the annual inflation rate was 1.8 percent, down from 2 percent in January and below the central bank’s 2 percent target.

The jobless data suggests “that wage growth is set to weaken from already low rates” and further depress consumer spending, which has already been hurt by government austerity measures, wrote Jennifer McKeown, an economist at Capital Economics in London, in a research note.

Ms. McKeown said that the low inflation and high joblessness “should leave the E.C.B.’s policy options open,” and that the central bank “might discuss an interest-rate cut or other unconventional policies.”

There was some bright news on Friday. A survey of European purchasing managers by Markit, a data and research firm, showed that German manufacturing output grew for a second consecutive month in February as new business levels improved.

The composite German purchasing managers’ index rose to 50.3 — just above 50, the level that separates growth from contraction — from 49.8 in January. And the Federal Statistical Office in Wiesbaden reported that German retail sales rose 3.1 percent in January from December, when sales fell 2.1 percent.

Another bit of data this week also supports the view that the German economy will recover from a fourth-quarter slump. The European Commission’s economic sentiment indicator for the euro zone rose to 91.1 in February from 89.5 in January, with German confidence leading the gain.

“German industry is clearly rebounding and taking advantage from better external traction,” wrote Gilles Moëc, an economist at Deutsche Bank in London.

Employment is sometimes seen as a lagging indicator of economic growth because companies try to avoid adding to their costs until they are convinced that a rebound is at hand.

But despite the glimmers of hope in German industry, there are few reasons to regard a recovery as imminent. Markit’s overall euro zone purchasing managers’ index was unchanged in February at 47.9, indicating continued contraction.

Olli Rehn, the European commissioner for economic and monetary affairs, forecast on Feb. 22 that the euro zone economy would shrink 0.3 percent this year, about the same as last year. The bloc’s debt problems, and the tax increases and government spending cuts that have been prescribed as the remedy, have sapped spending power, reducing business demand for labor.

In absolute terms, Eurostat estimated that 19 million people in the euro zone and more than 26 million in the European Union were unemployed in January.

Spain’s unemployment rate was 26.2 percent, and Portugal’s was 17.6 percent. Austria had the lowest rate, at 4.9 percent, followed by Germany and Luxembourg, at 5.3 percent each.

Greece’s unemployment rate in November, the latest month for which Eurostat has figures for the country, was 27 percent.

France, which has the second-largest euro zone economy, after Germany’s, had a 10.6 percent jobless rate in January. Britain, which is not a euro member, had a 7.7 percent rate in November.

That compares with unemployment rates of 7.9 percent in the United States in January and 4.2 percent in Japan in December.

This article has been revised to reflect the following correction:

Correction: March 1, 2013

An earlier version of this article carried a headline that misstated the month of the data. The report was for January, not February. An earlier version of the article also misstated the name of a federal agency in Wiesbaden, Germany. It is the Federal Statistical Office, not the Federal Statistics Office.

Unemployment Compensation: Early Retirement Acceptance Doesn't Preclude Benefits

An employee who accepts an early retirement package may collect unemployment benefits under the "voluntary layoff option" proviso in the state's Unemployment Compensation Law, the state Supreme Court has ruled, overruling a string of Pennsylvania cases along the way.

Euro Watch: Unemployment Continues to Climb in Euro Zone

The euro zone jobless rate rose to 11.8 percent in November from 11.7 percent in October, according to Eurostat, the statistical agency of the European Union. Eurostat estimated that 18.8 million people in the euro zone were unemployed in November, two million more than a year earlier.

Germany has provided momentum to the European economy over the past three years, as strong exports protected the country from the crisis.

But on Tuesday, the Federal Statistics Office in Berlin said that German exports declined 3.4 percent while imports slid 3.7 percent in November from a month earlier. The weakness narrowed Germany’s trade surplus to €14.6 billion, or $19 billion.

German factory orders also fell in November amid weak demand from outside the euro area, the Economy Ministry said Tuesday. Orders, adjusted for seasonal swings and inflation, slid 1.8 percent from October, when they jumped 3.8 percent.

“The November numbers are not a one-off but an extension of the current trend of weakening exports,” Carsten Brzeski, an economist at ING, wrote in a research note Tuesday. He pointed out that German exports had fallen about 4 percent since May.

“Today’s data confirmed our view that exports should have turned from driver of growth into drag on growth,” he wrote.

A separate report from Eurostat showed that retail sales fell 2.6 percent in November from a year earlier, though they gained 0.1 percent from October.

The gloomy reports come as the Governing Council of the European Central Bank prepares to hold a policy meeting Thursday, followed by an interest-rate announcement. Despite a sharp decline in bank lending reported last week, which had some analysts suggesting that the central bank might try new steps to stimulate the economy, economists surveyed by Reuters said they expected the E.C.B. to leave policy unchanged in January as it waited for a clearer picture of economic conditions.

Like their counterparts in the United States, Japan and Britain, the monetary authorities in the euro zone have already opened the spigots, allowing banks to borrow essentially as much as they want at the benchmark rate. Mario Draghi, president of the E.C.B., has pledged to do whatever is necessary to ensure the stability of the euro, including, if needed, buying the sovereign bonds of Spain and Italy to hold their borrowing costs to sustainable levels.

The president of the European Commission, José Manuel Barroso, said Monday in Lisbon that “the existential threat against the euro has essentially been overcome. ”

“In 2013 the question won’t be if the euro will, or will not, implode,” he said.

The central bank’s actions have succeeded in calming markets and driving down government bond yields for embattled countries. The European Commission reported Tuesday that an index of economic sentiment in the euro zone had improved by 1.3 points in December, to 87. “Economic sentiment in the euro area improved among consumers and across all sectors, except retail trade,” the commission reported.

Gilles Moëc, an economist at Deutsche Bank in London, said the data Tuesday were consistent with expectations that the euro zone economy would remain in recession through the winter, with the unemployment rate possibly rising to as high as 12.4 percent.

“We’re still far below the level of growth that would stabilize the labor market,” he said.

But he added that the commission’s report on economic sentiments, as well as recent surveys of purchasing managers, suggested that the downturn in the manufacturing sector had “bottomed out,” making possible a return to growth later in the year.

“External demand seems to be holding up better than we had thought,” Mr. Moëc said. “Now we are to a large extent dependent on what happens in the United States,” he added, referring to the negotiations on spending.

Europe also got a vote of confidence from Tokyo on Tuesday, as Finance Minister Taro Aso said Japan would buy bonds of the European Stability Mechanism, the euro zone bailout fund, as well as sovereign debt in the currency zone.

“The financial stability of Europe will help the stability of foreign exchange rates, including the yen,” Mr. Aso was quoted by the Nikkei newspaper as saying.

Attacking joblessness may require governments to ease back on austerity measures that many economists, including some at the International Monetary Fund, say might have gone too far. In France, President François Hollande has vowed to turn around the flagging labor market, where, according to Eurostat, unemployment was 10.5 percent in November.

Eurostat said Spain, which is suffering from the collapse of a real estate bubble and the impact of a raft of tough austerity measures, had the highest unemployment rate in the bloc, at 26.6 percent. Greece, where the sovereign debt crisis began, was next at 26 percent, according to data released in September. The lowest rates were in Austria, at 4.5 percent; Luxembourg, at 5.1 percent; and Germany, at 5.4 percent.

Worryingly, youth unemployment in the euro zone continued to grow, with 5.8 million people under age 25 classified as jobless in November, up 420,000 from a year earlier.

The Greek prime minister, Antonis Samaras, who was in Berlin for talks with Chancellor Angela Merkel on Tuesday, singled out youth unemployment as one of the biggest challenges Greece faces in reviving its economy. But he said at a news conference before meeting the chancellor that, over all, he was positive.

“I see the glass half-full,” Mr. Samaras said before taking part in an economic conference in Berlin. “We’re delivering and Europe’s helping.”

It was the Greek prime minister’s second trip to Berlin since taking office. The mood appeared lighter than during his visit in August, which came on the heels of calls from within Ms. Merkel’s government for Greece to leave the common currency.

Greece is focusing its efforts on winning back the trust of Europeans, as well as the markets, Mr. Samaras said. But he emphasized that high unemployment, especially among young people, weighed heavily on Greeks.

“I would like to make it clear up front that our country is making enormous efforts and many are paying a high price, in order to get things back on track,” Mr. Samaras said.

Ms. Merkel said that Greece’s European partners must continue to support the country. She was perhaps wary of the fragility of Mr. Samaras’s three-party coalition government, which has been pushing through deeply unpopular reforms.

“We also must do everything to guarantee economic growth, security and jobs,” Ms. Merkel said.

David Jolly reported from Paris. James Kanter contributed reporting from Brussels and Hiroko Tabuchi from Tokyo.

More Work for Unemployment Compensation Lawyers in the Near Future?

Unfortunately for claimants, it appears that the Department of Labor will be scrutinizing their applications closer than ever in the foreseeable future.

More Work for Unemployment Compensation Lawyers in the Near Future?

Unfortunately for claimants, it appears that the Department of Labor will be scrutinizing their applications closer than ever in the foreseeable future.

Online Job Seeker Held Ineligible for Unemployment Pay

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Euro Watch: Euro Zone Unemployment Hit New High in September

“We called on the Greek authorities to solve remaining issues so as to swiftly finalize the negotiations with the troika institutions,” the so-called Eurogroup of finance ministers said in a statement issued shortly after a scheduled conference call.

The troika, a reference to the European authorities and international lenders supervising the Greek bailout, consists of representatives from the European Commission, the International Monetary Fund and the European Central Bank.

Greece and the troika have been negotiating for weeks over an austerity budget package that would require the approval of the lenders, and be passed by the Greek Parliament, before a loan installment of €31 billion, or $40 billion, can be unlocked. Without that money, Greece could face default by the end of the month.

Greek politics continue to add uncertainty to the process. After the government on Wednesday released details of the austerity package — including raising the retirement age by two years, to 67; cutting salaries and pensions, and increasing taxes — the country’s labor unions responded by announcing a 48-hour strike next week when the parliamentary vote is expected to be held. The Democratic Left, the smallest member of Greece’s shaky three-party coalition government, has said it will not give its full support to the budget package if it includes changes to labor laws that the party opposes.

Adding to the political tension, the Parliament on Wednesday passed only narrowly a bill aimed at speeding the process of raising money by selling publicly owned Greek assets. Several members of Parliament from the Democratic Left and the other coalition partner, the Socialists, voted against the measure, and the leaders of the parties abstained. Afterward the leader of the Socialists, Evangelos Venizelos, hastily convened his party’s members of Parliament for an emergency meeting, in an apparent effort to contain dissent ahead of the vote next week on the budget package.

But Greece, in perhaps the most dire circumstances of the 17 members of the euro zone, is hardly alone in its economic problems. Data released Wednesday by the European Union indicated that euro zone unemployment set another record in September, with 18.49 million people out of work.

The jobless rate in the 17-nation currency union ticked up to 11.6 percent from 11.5 percent in August, according to Eurostat, the E.U.’s statistical agency. The August figure, which had itself been a record level for the euro zone, was revised upward from the 11.4 percent initially reported.

Meanwhile, in Portugal on Wednesday, the Parliament passed the biggest tax increases in modern Portuguese history in an effort to meet the budget targets of its European bailout program. While the nation’s center-right ruling coalition supports the tax increases, the opposition Socialists are challenging them in court.

The Eurogroup finance ministers, in their statement Wednesday on Greece, said any decision to release the next round of money “was subject to the completion of prior actions by the Greek authorities” — a reference to commitments already made by Greece to overhaul labor laws and raise the retirement age.

The group said it hoped to finish assessing Greece’s progress by Nov. 12.

“Even if the troika report has not (yet) been officially released, it seems clear that the euro zone is willing to give Greece somewhat more time for the adjustment,” Carsten Brzeski, an economist at ING Belgium, wrote in a briefing note issued Wednesday. But, he wrote, “Filling the funding gap for Greece will again require some creativity.”

Many economists still contend that without some form of debt forgiveness, Greece will ultimately have to leave the euro union.

The German finance minister, Wolfgang Schäuble, said Wednesday after the Eurogroup conference call that no decisions had been made at the meeting. He said he did not expect the next status report by Greece’s troika of lenders to be issued before Nov. 11. “There are a lot of difficult issues that still need to be resolved,” he said.

At a news conference, Mr. Schäuble said the country’s relatively strong economy and low unemployment would expand Germany’s tax receipts by €29 billion this year, for a total of €602.4 billion.

But in the European unemployment figures released Wednesday it was not Germany, with a jobless rate of 5.4 percent, that had the lowest figure. Austria, at 4.4 percent, had the lowest. Most euro zone nations are faring much worse, particularly Spain, where the jobless rate reached 25.8 percent. Close behind was Greece, at 25.1 percent in July, the most recent month for which data were available for that country.

In contrast, the United States had an unemployment rate of 7.8 percent in September, and joblessness in Britain was at 7.9 percent in the three months through August.

The euro zone economy is expected to have contracted again in the third quarter, after a 0.2 percent quarterly decline in the three months through June. With the global economy showing signs of slowing and European governments cutting spending to balance budgets, economists say the contraction could extend into next year.

David Jolly reported from Paris. Niki Kitsantonis contributed reporting from Athens, and Melissa Eddy from Berlin.

More Work for Unemployment Compensation Lawyers in the Near Future?

Unfortunately for claimants, it appears that the Department of Labor will be scrutinizing their applications closer than ever in the foreseeable future.

Euro Watch: Unemployment in Euro Zone at Record High

Unemployment in the 17-member euro area rose to 11.4 percent in August, Eurostat, the statistical agency of the European Union, reported from Luxembourg.

The agency also revised the figure for June and July to 11.4 percent, up from the previously reported 11.3 percent, which was already a record level for the region since the introduction of the euro in 1999.

The jobless numbers, which compare with the August rate of 8.1 percent in the United States, suggest that Europe’s recession is deepening, despite the continued efforts of policy makers and finance ministers to cure the region’s malaise.

Unemployment in Greece and Spain, currently the euro zone’s most economically troubled members, reached new euro-era highs. And as both countries move ahead with plans for even tougher austerity budgets — Greece to appease its international creditors, Spain to potentially clear the path for European aid — their job outlooks could worsen further.

Visiting Madrid on Monday, Olli Rehn, the European commissioner for monetary affairs, said Europe stood “ready and willing” to act in response to a possible bailout request from Spain.

Greece had an unemployment rate of 24.4 percent in June, the latest month for which data were available.

Spain, meanwhile, still had the region’s highest jobless rate, at 25.1 percent over all, and an even bigger problem among young people. Nearly 53 percent of Spaniards under age 25 were classified as unemployed in August.

“Youth unemployment, especially if prolonged, threatens to harm the self-esteem and economic potential of young people now and in the future,” Jonathan Todd, a spokesman for the European Commission, said in a statement Monday after the release of joblessness figures.

“This could also pose a serious threat to social cohesion and increase the risk of political extremism,” he said. “E.U. institutions and governments, businesses and social partners at all levels need to do all they can to avoid a ‘lost generation,’ which would be an economic and social disaster.”

Reinforcing the dismal data, the Markit Economics purchasing managers’ index on Monday confirmed an initial report showing that euro zone industrial production declined in September for a seventh consecutive month.

Jennifer McKeown, an economist with Capital Economics in London, noted in a report that while the economic strain was being felt most heavily at the “periphery” of the euro zone, in places like Spain and Portugal, “the situation is bad in the core, too,” with the French jobless rate at 10.6 percent. Last week the government of France said the number of jobless people had passed three million for the first time since 1999.

The data Monday “suggest that the industrial sector is experiencing a sharp downturn,” Ms. McKeown wrote, “and with unemployment at a record high, the outlook for the consumer sector is gloomy, too.” She estimated that the gross domestic product of the euro zone would shrink 2.5 percent next year.

Mr. Rehn, of the European Commission, met Monday with the Spanish prime minister, Mariano Rajoy, and the economy minister, Luis de Guindos, but refused to speculate afterward whether the Spanish government would be pushed into asking for more European help to meet its debt financing obligations.

Still, Mr. Rehn urged Madrid to make further efforts to overhaul its economy, saying that “Spain must continue the reform of its pensions system,” as well as align the retirement age more closely to today’s longer life spans.

More Work for Unemployment Compensation Lawyers in the Near Future?

Unfortunately for claimants, it appears that the Department of Labor will be scrutinizing their applications closer than ever in the foreseeable future.

More Work for Unemployment Compensation Lawyers in the Near Future?

Unfortunately for claimants, it appears that the Department of Labor will be scrutinizing their applications closer than ever in the foreseeable future.