Latina workers face marked disadvantages in the workplace and the job market, according to a report released yesterday during the Labor Council for Latin American Advancement (LCLAA) Trabajadoras Awards Luncheon honoring Latina leaders who have paved the way for working women to have a better quality of life. The report, “Trabajadoras: Challenges and Conditions of Latina Workers in the United States,” examines economic and social issues affecting Latina workers, conditions of Latina immigrants, the role unions play in providing economic security and issues facing Latino children and youths.

The nation’s economy added 227,000 jobs in February, but the unemployment rate remained steady at 8.3 percent, according to the latest figures released this morning by the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS). The jobless rate has dropped by 0.8 percentage points since August and remains at its lowest point since February 2009

More confirmation that the extremely rich are getting richer and those without jobs are suffering even more. In 2009 and 2010, the first year of the current “recovery,” the 1 percent captured 93 percent of U.S. income growth. Repeat: 93 percent of income growth went to the 1 percent.

This is a cross-post by Chase Brandau from Working America’s Main Street blog.

In late 2008, 28-year-old Rochester, Minn., native Tim Wynn injured his hand on the job while working as a machinist and was eventually unfairly fired due to the injury. “It was at that time I had to file for unemployment insurance,” Wynn recalls. “Which was only a little over $400 a month, but we were able to make it work with one of us still working.”

We asked economist Dean Baker, co-director of the Center for Economic and Policy Research (CEPR), to expand upon recent reports that show a marked improvement in the nation’s jobs picture. In January, 243,000 jobs were created and unemployment dropped significantly for some of the hardest-hit workers. Baker’s intepretation of the data presents a still-mixed economic picture, but one bright point stands out clearly: President Obama’s support of the U.S. auto industry has been key to improving job creation for America’s workers. Be sure to pick up a copy of Baker’s latest book, The End of Loser Liberalism: Making Markets Progressive.

Unemployment insurance as we know it is on the chopping block.

The nation’s unemployment rate in January fell to 8.3 percent, down from December’s 8.5 percent, and the economy added 243,000 jobs, according to the latest figures released this morning by the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS).

President Barack Obama’s State of the Union address tonight made clear that he hears the people who aren’t being heard by the 1%, says AFL-CIO President Richard Trumka. Obama’s speech showed he “listened to the single mom working two jobs to get by, to the out-of-work construction worker, to the retired factory worker, to the student serving coffee to help pay for college.”

Unemployment for African American workers has remained virtually unchanged, hovering between 15 percent to 16 percent throughout 2011, while unemployment for the rest of the workforce dropped below 9 percent, according to a new report by the University of California-Berkeley’s Labor Center.

James Parks, communications director at the D.C. Office of Interfaith Worker Justice, sends us this.

More than 500 people packed the Shiloh Baptist Church in Washington, D.C., Jan. 16 for an Interfaith Service for Jobs. The service was sponsored by Faith Advocates for Jobs to celebrate Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.’s life and to call on our nation’s government to make King’s dream of economic justice and good jobs a reality.