A German forklift manufacturing company is planning to close its distribution plant in eastern Henrico County early next year, affecting 57 employees. Jungheinrich AG said it will relocate its sales and service operation to Houston later this year, and it will shut down all operations at its 80,000-square-foot plant at 5601 Eastport Blvd. early in 2010.

A Norfolk plant that has produced contact lenses since the 1950s will close next year, eliminating 570 jobs. CooperVision Inc. announced the closure yesterday, citing excess manufacturing capacity as the reason for moving production from Norfolk to its plants in Puerto Rico and England over the next 15 months. The Norfolk plant’s work force includes about 65 temporary and 505 full-time employees, said Chuck Rogers, its vice president of operations. Employees will receive severance, and Rogers said the company decided to phase down the operation in part to give employees time to prepare.

Employers laid off fewer workers in July and the unemployment rate dipped for the first time in 15 months, providing signs that the country may be coming out of the longest recession since the Great Depression. Stocks soared yesterday before settling back on a better-than-expected jobs report showing that nonfarm payrolls lost 247,000 jobs in July, less than the 325,000 expected, and unemployment edged down to 9.4 percent from 9.5 percent in June.

In a positive sign for the economy, companies are laying off fewer workers as they prepare to ramp up production to replenish their depleted stockpiles of goods. Many analysts pointed to yesterday’s drop in jobless claims as evidence of a trend signaling fewer job losses in coming months, particularly compared with the flood of layoffs earlier this year.

Have both you and your spouse or partner been laid off? The Richmond Times-Dispatch is working on a story about pink-slip couples, their job searches, how they are coping and life changes they have made. Please contact Emily C. Dooley at (804) 649-6016 or .

A ski instructor gets hired in November and laid off in May. A lifeguard is hired in June and let go in September. What does that say about the U.S. economy? Nothing. It is all radio static. To get rid of that static, the government’s number crunchers often provide economic data that have been “seasonally adjusted.“ It’s a process that seeks to estimate and then remove seasonal “noise” from the numbers. That happens when ski instructors are hired every fall and lifeguards every summer, potentially affecting employment statistics. Or when increases in heating oil production are reported each September as producers prepare for the winter heating season.

Fewer people are claiming jobless benefits, leading economists to project that next week’s employment report will show a sharp drop in job losses for July compared with June. Claims for jobless aid, which track layoffs and firings, are trending downward in a modest sign of improvement in the labor market, economists note. That helps explain why analysts are forecasting that a net total of about 340,000 jobs will be lost in July. This would compare with a net total of 467,000 jobs lost in June and the staggering 741,000 that were lost in January—the most for any month since 1949.

The government says the number of newly laid-off workers seeking jobless benefits rose last week, though the report was distorted by the timing of auto plant shutdowns.

Nearly one in five young Europeans could not find a job in the first three months of this year as the region sank into the worst recession in 60 years, the EU statistics agency Eurostat said.

Michigan————————————-15.2%
  Rhode Island————————————-12.4%
  Oregon————————————-12.2%
  South Carolina————————————-12.1%
  Nevada————————————-12.0%
  California————————————-11.6%
  Ohio————————————-11.1%

Virginia’s unemployment rate nudged up by a tenth of a percentage point to 7.2 percent last month, the Labor Department reported yesterday. Unemployment topped 10 percent in 15 states and the District of Columbia in June. The rate in Michigan, home to the nation’s struggling automakers, surpassed 15 percent, the first time any state hit that mark since 1984.

Relentlessly rising unemployment is triggering more home foreclosures, threatening the Obama administration’s efforts to end the housing crisis and diminishing hopes that the economy will rebound with vigor. In past recessions, the housing industry helped get the economy back on track. Home builders ramped up production, expecting buyers to take advantage of lower prices and jump into the market. But not this time.

President Barack Obama says unemployment is likely to tick up for several months as the economy recovers from its deepest downturn in decades.

The June “jobs” report issued by the Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS) on July 2 caused shock and dismay. Payrolls declined by 467,000 jobs, more than the 345,000 lost in May, and much more than the 363,000 that economists had predicted. The only reason that the reported unemployment rate rose by only 0.1 percentage points (to 9.5 percent) in June was that many jobless people became discouraged and stopped looking for work. As bad as the BLS report was, it should not have come as a surprise.

Eduardo “Ned” Sayoc had been through many career changes. As he neared his 30s, he was wondering what he could do to make money, change lives and make his family proud. A couple of years ago, he was living with friends who were teachers, and their stories motivated him to seek a master’s in teaching from VCU.