Summer job outlook is cloudy

The majority of respondents, 54%, said they think it will be "difficult" for teens to find a summer job this year. The survey did not ask that question last year.

"Just like last summer, employers have a wide range of [applicants] this year," said Shawn Boyer, chief executive of SnagAJob.com. "When managers can pick from the cream of the crop, it makes it tough for those applying."

Teens were likely hoping for a sunnier outlook this year, since 2009's summer job openings were slim amid a churning economy. But even as the recession has begun to abate this year, the unemployment rate remains at 9.7%.

Anyone who does score a summer job shouldn't expect to make much more than last year. According to the survey, the average summer job will still pay $10.20 an hour -- the same as last summer.

Although prospects for summer may not have improved much this year from last year, the good news is that 53% of the managers surveyed do plan to hire for the season.

According to the report, 29% of hiring managers say they'll hire the same number of summer workers as last year, while 6% said they will hire more workers than last year.

About 18% of managers said they will hire fewer employees than last year, versus 23% who planned to cut back last summer.

Start the summer search soon

In such a difficult climate, teens and college students should begin to search for summer gigs over the next several weeks, said SnagAJob's Boyer.

"If you wait until late May or June, you're behind the eight-ball," he said. "You might be in school until the summer, but you can offer to work weekends or nights right now. Cast the net wide."

Although 53% of the survey's respondents said teens will primarily be competing against other young people for summer gigs, 29% said that college kids will see the most competition from adults who are vying for burger-flipping jobs due to "economic pressures."

In order to stand out from more experienced counterparts, Boyer said teens should be flexible in their scheduling availability; play up their energy and excitement; bring 2-3 questions to ask the employer; and send a handwritten thank-you note after each interview.

"You want to project maturity, so speak well and overdress for the interview," he said. "Even if the uniform is T-shirts and shorts, come in wearing a suit and a smile that say: 'Hire me.'"

The survey also asked managers to share some of their own interview tips. Among the quirkier advice: "Take the ring out of your ear, and cover up the tattoos." Also: "Don't text during the interview." 

Employers still skittish on hiringPay rates take small step forward

Retail Sales

February's increase showed that Americans were still making it to the stores despite the snow and cold weather last month and customers were splurging on electronics for the Super Bowl, said Chris Donnelly, a senior executive at consulting firm Accenture.

February retail sales jumped 3.9% compared to the same month in 2009.

"This is consistent with the trend we've been seeing," said Donnelly. "We've seen a gradual thaw in the consumer pocketbook, and there is pent up demand -- we are certainly in a more optimistic place in February 2010 than in February 2009."

Consumer spending accounts for two-thirds of U.S. economic activity, and related reports such as retail sales are used to gauge whether a recovery is underway.

The monthly rise in sales was led by a jump in electronics and appliance store sales, which rose 3.7% last month. Purchases of TVs and other electronics leading up to Super Bowl Sunday, which took place early in the month, was likely a large part of this increase, said Donnelly.

The reading was weighed down by auto sales, which fell 2% after dropping 1.5% in the previous month.

Sales excluding autos and auto parts rose 0.8% last month, also beating expectations. A consensus of economists had projected ex-auto sales to edge up 0.1% in February.

Earlier in the month, many of the nation's retail chains reported much stronger than expected February sales.

Sales tracker Thomson Reuters, which looks at monthly same-store sales for 30 chains including Costco and Target, said February sales rose 4% in February, beating analyst expectations.

Donnelly said retail sales are likely to pick up more in the next few months as the season changes and consumers shop for spring and summer clothing.

"In January, February and March as a three-month stretch, there's not a lot of excitement," he said. "But at the end of March and in April and May, you will see a lot more people spending on apparel as the spring comes out, and a pick up in apparel will be a very encouraging sign."

In a separate report last week, the Labor Department said fewer jobs were lost in February than expected, boosting optimism about a recovering labor market. 

Retail SalesRetailers see best month in 2 years

Budget gurus in need of fiscal Prozac

Oh, and it will require cooperation among Democrats and Republicans. Lawmakers will need to present a united front in explaining to the public why shared sacrifice is needed to rein in the growth of debt, which otherwise will devour the federal budget.

But experts are increasingly convinced that Congress won't act until a true crisis hits.

"[A]sking people to accept short-term pain for ... long-term gain requires broad bipartisan leadership consensus. We are 0 for 3. We don't have bipartisanship. We don't have leadership. We don't have consensus," said Norman Ornstein, a resident scholar at the American Enterprise Institute, at a conference last month held by the Peterson-Pew Commission for Budget Reform.

And waiting until a crisis forces lawmakers' hands could mean extreme economic hardship for the country. "The Great Depression is a much better analogy than the Great Recession," said tax expert Len Burman, who is writing a book on catastrophic budget failure.

Here's what he means: High levels of debt can significantly lower economic growth and create runaway inflation. That, in turn, hurts Americans' job prospects, wages, borrowing opportunities and the value of their savings and investments.

"Bottom line: catastrophic budget failure would involve hyperinflation, an eviscerated public sector, taxes that would make a Scandinavian revolt, and a crippled economy. Avoiding that fate should be your highest priority," Burman told a House Ways and Means Subcommittee on Select Revenue Measures this week.

Unlikely, but not impossible scenarios

Moody's recently put out a report that said even though the United States is not in imminent danger of losing its triple-A credit rating, the country's margin for error has "substantially diminished."

Going forward, the ratings agency said, tough choices will need to be made. "Preserving debt affordability ... will invariably require fiscal adjustments of a magnitude that, in some cases, will test social cohesion."

During a House Appropriations hearing last week, Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner sought to assure a congressman that the U.S. rating would never fall.

"There's not a chance that's going to happen to this country," Geithner said. "But it is very important ... for people to recognize that ... this recovery will be weaker if we don't do a better job ... of demonstrating that we're going to have the political will to make some tough choices."

Financial markets seem to have faith in the United States for now -- judging by the low level of interest rates and the continued appetite for U.S. Treasurys.

Of course, deciding who's creditworthy and who's not among countries is a relative game. The United States, for all its fiscal issues, is still seen as a preferable place to invest than other countries, many of which are saddled with their own debt problems.

"A friend of mine likes to say, 'We're the best-looking horse in the glue factory,'" said Rudolph Penner, a former director of the Congressional Budget Office.

0:00/5:34Debt chairmen: 'Everything's on the table'

But looks can fade. And blithely assuming they won't is really gambling with the country's future.

It's true that a crisis may never materialize. And even if one does, no one can predict how or when. But that's exactly why there's a push now to take control of the situation while that control is still within the United States' grasp.

"[G]overnment budgets that are severely out of balance are inevitably reformed -- either by force of the markets or, preferably, by choice. Unfortunately, nations often must experience a profound crisis to focus the government's attention on taking corrective action," said Kansas City Federal Reserve Bank President Thomas Hoenig at the Peterson-Pew conference.

That's why, like Burman, Hoenig doesn't rule out the unthinkable -- like hyperinflation.

"Would anyone have believed three years ago that the Federal Reserve would have $1.25 trillion in mortgage-backed securities on its books today? Not likely. So I ask your indulgence in reminding all that the unthinkable becomes possible when the economy is under severe stress." 

New chief of product safety jumps into actionHow $1 trillion hides in plain sight

Take this job and tolerate it

The "quits rate," or frequency of people leaving jobs, is close to the lowest point since 2000, when the Labor Department began tracking the data. And workers' willingness to quit without having another job lined up is well below the historic norms going back to the 1960s, according to a separate government reading.

Recent surveys show many workers would like to find a new job once the labor market improves, but most are just too scared to make the jump yet.

An American Express survey found 54% of the general population willing to make significant concessions in the name of job security, including accepting pay cuts or even demotion.

Employment consultant Towers Watson found 86% of workers value job security and stability, topping the number of people who listed improved pay or career advancement as important to them. And while 43% of workers believe they have to leave their current employer in order to advance their career, only 12% of workers say they are looking to leave their current jobs.

"They're saying they're staying put," said Laury Sejen, a global practice leader at Towers Watson. She said she was surprised by how dug in workers have become in their current jobs.

"When you look at it from a lot of different angles, it's a mindset shift."

Stuck in a dead-end job

One worker who feels trapped in the job is a product manager for a consortium of travel agencies, who would only talk if her name was not used in this story. She said her stomach churns every day because she dislikes her job and her boss so much. But the state of the job market and worries about job security have kept her from even looking for a new job, especially since her husband was laid off last year.

"I hear so many people are out of work, I feel lucky that I have a job with insurance," she said. "I don't want to update my résumé and send it out and have it get back to my boss."

Another unhappy worker in the accounting department with a Midwest manufacturer says he's limited by the fact that his wife also works, making it difficult to relocate in the current job market.

"The job I'm in is a lot of number crunching that I'm not interested in doing anymore, but my wife likes what she's doing," said the worker who also asked that his name not be used. "If we were to move and she stopped working, it would require us to downsize a great deal."

Both workers quoted said that in a better job market they might be more willing to try to start their own business, but they're nervous about doing so in the current environment.

Economic headwinds

The lack of mobility from job to job is a problem for more than just those unhappy workers. Economists say it can keep wages down and hinder economic recovery.

Changing jobs is an important method workers use to improve their income, giving them more dollars that they can then pump into the economy. Even the threat of leaving a job is often enough to increase pay.

"When you have low unemployment, people are much more free to leave their jobs and search for jobs with higher wages, and employers will have to pay a premium to find or retain the best workers," said Heidi Shierholz, labor economist with the Economic Policy Institute, a liberal think tank.

It makes sense that people are nervous about changing jobs in the current labor market, said Robert Brusca of FAO Economics.

"Even if you're unhappy in a job, it's the devil you know. You don't know for sure how they'll treat you in a new job, if they'll give you a fair shake," he said.

0:00/4:50Don't ask for a state job

Brusca said the latest jobs bill passed by Congress won't help get job mobility moving again because it gives a tax credit only for hiring the long-term unemployed.

But the economy would benefit as much from an employer offering a job to someone already working as it does from the hiring of someone without a job, because such a hire is likely to open up another position in the economy. He said the law is an example of the difficulty that Congress has reviving the moribund labor market.

Experts say the bad housing market is another factor keeping people from switching jobs, since people won't be willing to relocate for a better position if they have to take a large loss on the sale of their home.

And the unwillingness of workers to leave an established job to try to start a new business also slows economic growth.

The Labor Department estimates that more than a million fewer jobs were created than normal during the recession because of the low rate of new business start ups. While much of that could be due to the credit crunch and the overall economic downturn, some new businesses were undoubtedly lost because current employees are unwilling to take a chance to start something new.

"Until the economy gets better, many people won't be willing to take chances. And we need them taking chances," Brusca said.

Were you stuck in a job you hated and finally decided to leave? Tell us about it and you could be included in an upcoming story on CNNMoney.com.  

Tennessee’s unemployment rate won’t get much relief from jobs billJobs: Short-term hope, long-term despair

What health care reform means for your business

Thanks to the political maneuvering that followed the Democrats' loss of a filibuster-proof majority in the Senate, the House passed two separate health care bills. The first was an exact duplicate of the one passed by the Senate in December, enabling the president to sign it into law as soon as this week.

The second, a package of diverse amendments addressing elements of the Senate bill that the House wanted changed, will now be voted on in the Senate under "reconciliation" rules that require only a simple majority.

For small businesses, the effects of the now-passed health reform law include:

* By no later than 2014, states will have to set up Small Business Health Options Programs, or "SHOP Exchanges," where small businesses will be able to pool together to buy insurance. ("Small businesses" are defined as those with no more than 100 employees, though states have the option of limiting pools to companies with 50 or fewer employees through 2016; companies that grow beyond the size limit will also be grandfathered in.)

The Congressional Budget Office has estimated that the exchanges would ease small business insurance costs, albeit only marginally: premiums in the small-group market are forecast to fall between 1% and 4% under the exchanges, while the amount of coverage would rise by up to 3%.

* For the next four years, until the SHOP Exchanges are set up, businesses with 10 or fewer full-time-equivalent employees earning less than $25,000 a year on average will be eligible for a tax credit of 35% of health insurance costs. (Companies with between 11 and 25 workers and an average wage of up to $50,000 are eligible for partial credits.)

The tax credit will remain in place, increasing to 50% of costs, for the first two years a company buys insurance through its state exchange. The Congressional Budget Office predicts that the tax credit will affect about 12% of individuals covered via the small-group insurance market, lowering their cost of insurance by between 8% and 11%.

* Insurers will no longer be able to set rates or exclude coverage based on pre-existing conditions, and can vary premiums only by geographic location, age, and tobacco use.

These restrictions, however, would not kick in until 2014. Going into effect immediately: a ban on lifetime limits on coverage, and on "rescission" (canceling policies already issued) except in cases of fraud.

* Starting in 2014, businesses with more than 50 employees will be required to either offer healthcare coverage or pay a penalty of $750 a year per full-time worker. The coverage offered will also have to meet minimum benefits -- covering both a specific set of services and 60% of employee health costs overall -- or else employers will face additional penalties.

* So-called "Cadillac" plans costing more than $10,200 a year for individuals or $27,500 for family coverage (not counting dental and vision plans) will be subject to a 40% tax on the portion of the cost that exceeds the limit. Though the tax would actually be paid by insurers, it's expected that it would be passed along to plan holders in the form of higher premiums.

Furthermore, if the House amendments approved Sunday pass the Senate intact under the reconciliation process, some other small business provisions will change:

* Part-time employees would be counted toward the 50-employee minimum on pro-rated basis based on hours worked, bringing more small businesses into the group required to provide coverage.

* The $750-per-employee penalty for not providing insurance would rise to $2,000.

* The Cadillac tax would be delayed until 2018 and apply only to the most expensive plans, making it more of a "Maserati" tax, in the words of Kaiser Health News.

* Individuals earning more than $200,000 a year, or couples earning $250,000 or more, would be hit with a 3.8% surcharge on investment income to help pay for the bill.

0:00/3:22MDs go online to cut costs

What's next: For the immediate future, all eyes will likely be on the SHOP Exchanges, which can receive federal aid as soon as next year, though most states probably won't implement them until closer to the 2014 deadline.

"The departments of insurance and the governors' offices and the legislatures will all start thinking about that stuff," said New America Foundation director of health policy Len Nichols in a January interview. "It'll take a while."

Meanwhile, says Nichols, a small business owner "is going to be buying tomorrow in the same market they are today," because the new markets aren't going to be set up until 2014. 

Health care bill to cost $940 billionTennesseans’ diagnoses vary on health-care plan

Geithner promises mortgage fix

Geithner acknowledged that devising a new system to finance U.S. house purchases would be a "complicated, consequential" process. He emphasized that he hasn't "seen an ideal model" to replace the current arrangement, which is widely viewed as undesirable because of its role in inflating the housing bubble and the conflict between Fannie and Freddie's profit-seeking and public policy missions.

But with the Senate moving ahead on reform of bank regulation, "we're at a point to begin" the process of shaping housing-finance legislation, Geithner said. "I don't see why it should take years."

Republicans in Congress have accused the administration of dragging its feet on reforming the housing finance system. Fannie and Freddie have taken $127 billion in Treasury aid since their collapse in September 2008, and Geithner said Tuesday the government will eventually recognize "substantial losses" from running the companies.

0:00/4:22Geithner's bailout burden

At the same time, Geithner said it would take time to create a plan that keeps mortgage credit widely available, protects consumers and ensures the financial system remains stable.

Fannie and Freddie have emerged as central to the administration's support for the nation's troubled housing markets. The Treasury's funding for the companies and the Federal Reserve's purchases of their debt have kept U.S. mortgage rates at historically low levels, making houses more affordable and offering some support to tattered bank balance sheets.

While some Republican plans would eventually remove the government from the mortgage business altogether, Geithner said he believes there is "a quite strong economic and public policy case" for federal mortgage guarantees of some sort. He cited the need for "a stable housing finance market."

Geithner said the administration will solicit comments starting next month from "a wide variety of constituents, market participants, academic experts, and consumer and community organizations." 

Nashville Business PeopleHome Prices

Manufacturing (ISM)

Economists expected the index to fall slightly to 58.0, according to a consensus compiled by Briefing.com.

"It's obviously a weak report, but it follows a strong January report, which was the strongest we've seen in six years," said David Wyss, chief economist for Standard & Poor's. "We think a lot of this is weather-related."

In general, an index reading above 50.0 indicates manufacturing growth, while anything below 50 signals contraction. A reading above 42.0 generally implies expansion in the overall economy, making February the tenth consecutive month of economic growth.

The monthly report surveys ISM members, who are purchasing managers in the manufacturing industry.

Of the 18 manufacturing industries reporting, 11 posted growth including categories such as machinery, apparel, paper products, and computer & electronics. Five sectors reported contraction, including wood products, furniture & related products, and primary metals.

Employment: The employment index, a measure of growth in manufacturing jobs, also rose, reaching 56.1 from 53.3 in January. This is the third month of employment growth and the highest reading since January 2005.

"With these levels of activity, manufacturers are seemingly willing to hire where they have orders to support higher employment," said Norbert J. Ore, chair of the ISM Manufacturing Business Survey Committee in a press release.

While 10 of the 18 manufacturing industries posted job growth, four reported declines, including construction-related industries such as wood products and furniture & related products.

"Construction is the most weather-dominated industry," said Wyss. "It's clearly not turning around yet."

New orders and production: The ISM's new orders index and production index both fell to just below 60 in February.

The index of new orders for manufactured goods, a forecast of manufacturing activity in the near future, declined 6.4 percent to 59.5 in February. Still, this was the eighth consecutive month that the index was above 50.2, indicating growth in new orders. Wyss attributed the decline in new orders to stormy weather in February, which was in many places the worst on record.

The ISM's production index was 58.4, down from 66.2 in January, marking the ninth consecutive month the production index has been above 50.

"We think the first quarter will stay positive but not by much," said Wyss. "You always have to take these winter reports with a grain of highway salt." 

Jobless rate high but steady at 10.7 percentConsumer prices rise 2.6%