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Regional and state unemployment rates were generally higher in November. Overall, 37 states and the District of Columbia recorded over-the-month unemployment rate increases, 5 states registered decreases, and 8 states had no change, the Bureau of Labor Statistics of the U.S. Department of Labor reported.

With a view that the global economy is experiencing a severe recession, Fitch is forecasting the steepest GDP decline in the major advanced economies since World War II. The financial profile of the U.S. consumer is expected to remain stressed in 2009, as weak employment trends coupled with depressed real estate and equity prices continue to undermine consumer confidence.

comScore, Inc. released its monthly analysis of U.S. consumer activity at the top online properties for November 2008 based on data from the comScore Media Metrix service. The official start to the holiday shopping season unleashed droves of Americans on retail sites, propelling several categories, including Toys, Consumer Electronics and Department Stores, to double-digit traffic gains in November.

With the grim economic news continuing to pour in, one might expect the average American worker to be too focused on keeping his or her job to think about taking time off this holiday season. But a new survey sponsored by The Workforce Institute™ at Kronos® Incorporated and conducted by Harris Interactive, finds that the vast majority of employees plan to forge ahead with their holiday time off requests as planned - some even plan to take more time off this year than in the past.

There’s little doubt that the current economic environment is fostering fear and uncertainty in the workplace, especially regarding changing jobs. Results of an ongoing survey by MRINetwork, one of the world’s largest search and recruitment organizations, revealed that employees are just as likely to be looking for a new job today as they were two years ago.

With a recession at hand, HR departments face increasing pressure to make the correct decision when evaluating new hires and ensuring that their internal hiring and immigration processing systems and associated expenses are under control. While the continued economic downturn will reduce hiring across the board, many companies still will require international workers for hard-to-fill openings including IT programmers, design engineers, doctors, nurses and other highly specialized positions. Now, more than ever, organizations must implement efficient hiring and immigration processing systems in order to optimize productivity and cost-effectiveness.

By 2013, Ericsson anticipates that there will be some 6.5 billion mobile phone subscriptions in the world, compared to today's 3.7 billion. About 90 percent of growth is expected to come from developing markets where more than half of the population lives outside city limits. To build mobile networks in rural areas with no or unreliable power grid means that the power challenge must be solved.

Federal regulators issued credit card rules today that take a significant and welcome step to curb some of the industry's most unfair and abusive practices. Unfortunately, implementation of the rules won't take effect for 18 months and, in several key respects, don't go far enough to protect consumers.

The number of companies implementing cost-cutting measures, including layoffs, hiring and salary freezes and smaller pay raises, has risen sharply in just two months, according to a new survey by Watson Wyatt.

Food banks across America are reporting a 30 percent increase in requests for emergency food assistance, according to a new survey conducted by Feeding America, the nation's largest hunger relief organization. At the same time, a new public opinion poll released by the organization finds that many Americans are unable to provide adequate amounts of nutritious food to their families, due to the current economic crisis.