Much like the Lego Obama inauguration, Christoph Niemann combines two of my favorite things in rendering aspects of the New York City experience in Lego form. Absolutely brilliant. (Thanks Mo for the link).

A few of my favorites…

And having at least a portion of our business centered around freely distributed weekly jobs newspapers, I have to also include this one:

As always, I try hard to refrain from self-congratulatory pats on the back, but once in a while I feel the urge to highlight notable, and even at times not-so-notable, achievements of JobDig and LinkUp. Earlier today, LinkUp received inclusion on Tech Crunch’s Go2Web2.0 site as a member of their highly esteemed web 2.0 canon. Though we’re in very good company among some of the most innovative, creative, and amazing web companies in the world, mention of the fact risks being likened by some to Steve Martin in The Jerk as he celebrates the arrival of the new phone book. “I’m somebody now! Things are going to start happening to me now.” So be it. We’re happy to be on the list.

It’s almost impossible, and probably somewhat silly to try to segment the decline of the daily newspaper industry into discrete chapters or phases, but I’m going to do it anyway because it seems that over the past month or so, the industry has begun entering its final chapter. All year, the story has been building for the dramatic finale, and it seems that we are now entering that stage where certain players get killed off, others manage escape, and the dust settles after the bloodbath to reveal a dramatically altered landscape. (The epilogue or sequel of this book will be how the survivors manage to establish themselves in their new environment). The events that have led me to the conclusion that we are now in the final chapter include the following:

1) The New York Sun published its final edition and will be shutting down

2) The futile, ridiculously insufficient attempts to salvage the Trib through redesign fail as miserably as everyone knew they would

3) The Minneapolis Star Tribune begins withholding debt payments on its senior debt in an effort to conserve cash. Management of the paper admits that every option, including filing for bankruptcy, are on the table.

4) Teamsetsr representing drivers for the Seattle Times and Seattle Post-Intelligencer voted to approve a strike that may begin on October 21st. The Seattle Times is in miserable shape and a strike could be the final blow that knocks it out completely.

5) Creative Loafing, which publishes alternative weeklies in multiple markets, has declared bankruptcy under the weight of $40 million in outstanding debt. And although the publisher is not a daily paper, it is a distant cousin suffering from the same critical disease (over-leverage in a horrendous market).

There are undoubtedly others stories from around the country, but the point is that almost every patient, having exhausted the menu of cures, fixes, and elixirs over the past year or so, is on their deathbed, and the plugs are going to start getting yanked from the wall one by one over the next year or so.

Doonesbury’s Rick Redfern was layed off from the Washington Post this week in another high profile sign that the daily newspaper industry is coming to an end almost as swiftly as the investment banking industry. To add insult to injury, Redfern’s boss suggests that he could use his buyout package to ease the transition to becoming a full-time blogger. As always, Garry Trudeau has perfectly encapsulated in just 4 panels not only the entire demise of the daily newspaper business, but also the tectonics shifts that are taking place in the worlds of media and journalism (not to mention baby-boomers, agism, and disingenuous bosses). Brilliant. And on behalf of the 110 million, Rick, welcome to the club.

Mirroring the figures released by the Department of Labor last week, data released by LinkUp.com on Monday provided further evidence that the nation’s jobs picture deteriorated substantially in July. The number of total job openings posted on corporate web sites dropped 4% from June, while the total number of new openings posted dropped 2%. Even more alarming, only 10 states in the nation showed an increase in the number of total jobs posted, and only 15 states showed an increase in the number of new positions listed. LinkUp.com aggregates and publishes job listings pulled directly from 8,307 corporate web sites from around the U.S.

In July, a total of 947,745 positions were listed on corporate web sites, down from 991,804 in June. Of those job listings, 694,392 were new positions, down from 706,111 new positions listed in June. Over 25% of the decline in total jobs was accounted for by California alone, which saw a decrease of 11,937 total job postings. Maryland showed the largest increase in both total job postings and new job postings, rising by 1,735 total job listings and 2,156 new job listings.

On August 1st, the Department of Labor reported that the nation’s unemployment rate rose to 5.7% in July from 5.5% in June with a total of 51,000 jobs eliminated during the month. For the year, a total of 463,000 jobs have been shed by employers throughout the country. Figures for May and June were revised slightly upward, with 26,000 fewer jobs lost than previously reported. (See related analysis here).

LinkUp.com aggregates job listings that employers post on their own corporate web site. These job listings or openings are often not advertised anywhere else on the web or in print. As well, the aggregated data, pulled from  8,307 companies of all sizes and in all industries throughout the U.S., does not include any duplicate job listings. But while the data presents a high-quality, unique, and relevant snapshot of the nation’s employment picture, it is not meant to represent the exact number of job openings in any given state. The vast majority of companies in the U.S. do not list their job openings on their company web site, if they even have a corporate web site, and LinkUp is still accumulating data from new companies being included in the data set.

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Without getting overly political as to the causes, one of the most startling aspects of the current U.S. economy is the phenomena of the working poor – individuals and households that work one or more jobs (most often more than one) and are still unable to climb out of poverty.  In 2003, there were 7.4 million working poor in the U.S., roughly 24% of the entire U.S. labor force. It is a horrifying set of circumstances and institutional barriers that prevent people from achieving financial stability in their lives despite their best intentions, hard work, and dedication. For anyone interested in the topic, or for those who approach poverty with the typical assumptions and biases, I would highly recommend reading David Shipler’s The Working Poor: Invisible in America or Barbara Ehrenreich’s Nickel and Dimed: On (Not) Getting By in America.

Among the thousands of institutional barriers that exacerbate people’s financial difficulties, payday loans are one of the worst and most despicable. These are small, short-term (two-week) loans used to cover expenses until the loan can be paid back with the borrower’s next paycheck. Typical interest rates, on an annualized basis, range between 390% to 900%. Unfortunately, what happens is that when the loan is paid back with the following month’s paycheck, the borrower is in the same circumstance that drove them to take out the loan in the first place – in need of cash to cover basic living expenses. They therefore have to borrow the same amount of money again and pay the outrageous fee on the money they just paid back. They are, essentially, borrowing the same $100 or $200 again and again, but have to pay the fee each time.

In a study of payday lending in Colorado, it was discovered that 50% of payday borrowers used payday loans 8 or more times during the year, and 20% borrowed 16 or more times during the year. Because low-income borrowers, who are financially on thin ice to begin with, cannot pay back the loan in installments, they become trapped in a vicious cycle from which most cannot escape. And while the payday lending companies claim they are providing an essential service to people who often have no other alternatives to cover financial emergencies, two former employees of Check ‘N Go stated otherwise in a congressional hearing. These whistle-blowers stated that, without question, the business model of these companies consisted of only two elements: 1) target African-Americans and 2) trap borrowers.

Two of the common misperceptions about payday lending are also worth pointing out. The exorbitant fees are not risk-based. The average default rate for payday loans nationwide is 2.3% – far less than credit card default rates. As well, payday lending is not an inner city issue. With the explosion of payday lenders around the country (in Minnesota, there were 5 such companies in 1999 that lent $1,169,101 and 24 in 2006 that lent $58,280,035 ), 50% of all loans are made from payday lenders operating in the suburbs, 30% from rural locations, and only 20% from the inner city.

Payday lending is a horrendous phenomena that not only provides little or no value to consumers, but is actually a classic ‘debt trap’ that prevents the working poor from achieving financial stability. It has been outlawed in some states, like North Carolina, and is regulated in others. But these serial lenders have found ways to circumvent many of those regulations and continue to prey upon the most vulnerable in our economy. In 2006, Congress passed a law that limited the interest that payday lenders could charge military personnel to 36%, with the Department of Defense calling the practice ‘predatory.’ It’s time to apply this same standard to the rest of society.

Tags: Payday Loans, Payday Lending, Predatory Lending, The Working Poor

I cannot wait.

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On this horrendous day, please take a moment to pause and remember.