A Little Love for the Long-Term Unemployed & 3 Other Stories You Need To Know

WHERE ARE THE JOBS? — President Obama will announce that 300 U.S. companies — including 21 of the nation's 50 largest — have pledged to do what they can to hire from the large pool of long-term unemployed workers. The idea is to "establish best practices" so that they don’t "screen people out of the hiring process just because they’ve been out of work for a long time," Obama said in an interview on CNN. The companies include AT&T, Citigroup, Ford, PepsiCo, Wal-Mart, Xerox, Apple, Visa and Boeing. Even as US unemployment has fallen to 6.7% millions remain out of work for more than six months. Federal law provides unemployment benefits for those 27 weeks, but during the grip of the recession new legislation extended the period for up to an additional 47 weeks. That law expired at the end of 2013, and Congress seems unlikely to take up another extension any time soon — "In terms of legislation. Let's face it: That's not going to happen,"say Gene Sperling, who heads the White House's National Economic Council.

SUNLIGHT FOR SHADOW WORKERS — Even larger than the number of long-term unemployed is the pool of immigrants who have jobs in the United States illegally because they are neither citizens nor in possession of the documents that allow non-citizens to get a job. The issue has been a political football for decades, and the rancor in Washington has prevented any serious movement despite will on both sides of the political spectrum. But now there seems to be movement afoot. The precise position top Republican leaders have now sketched out might seems hard to nail down, but Sen. Charles Schumer (D-NY) sees progress: "This is obviously a long, hard road, but I think since August, the number on the other side vehemently opposed has stayed the same, the number who think it should go forward has grown, and numbers in the wide middle are less opposed than they used to be."

GOOGLE GETS THE LAST LAUGH — Google bought Motorola Mobility for $12.5 billion and sold most of it to Lenovo for $2.9 billion fewer than two years later. Even the patent trove Google is largely keeping under the deal is substantially less valuable than it had thought. Wound-licking time, right? Maybe not. The Wall Street Journal argues that "the expense wasn't as big as it appears (maybe just a mere $6 billion), and Google may have achieved some strategic ends." What are they? A global strategic partner that actually will be able to flood the market with cheap smartphones powered with Google's Android operating system — Lenovo is already the fifth-largest handset maker, and the lion's share of its business is in China. That gives Google new muscle in the dogfight against Apple. And with volume, volume, volume Lenovo can level the playing field with Samsung — which sells six times the number of Android phones than its nearest rival. On that score, Lenovo CEO Yuanqing Yang leaves no doubt: "Our mission is to surpass them."

THOSE DRONES SURE WOULD BE HANDY NOW — Amazon Prime has dramatically changed the buying habits of millions of Americans — I can assert this as fact as one of them. My Amazon purchases increased by at least an order of magnitude when I signed up for the program, which offers unlimited free two-day shipping on almost everything for $79 a year. On its earnings call Amazon said it was considering raising that annual fee by up to $40. The reason? Rising shipping costs (at least until that drone air force is ready to go wheels up). Free shipping — and a liberal return policy — are two major pillars of customer satisfaction, and both are very expensive propositions. A few years ago LL Bean ended a nearly 100-year-old free shipping policy but reinstated it when customers balked. Amazon's not-quite-free shipping program spreads the cost of shipping over all of your purchases — the more you buy, the better the deal (see above). It also significantly subsidizes the actual cost and — most importantly — doesn't cause sticker shock at the precise moment a customer is about to finalize the buy. If the hike happens, Prime customers might grumble and gripe. But Wall Street loves the idea: it was the only factor which tempered the company's 10% share plummet after it announced slowing sales growth.

Photo Credit: Dorothea Lange, U.S. Farm Security Administration/Office of War Information Black & White Photographs

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