The nation’s unemployment rate climbed to 9.8 percent in November, a seven-month high, with construction companies cutting 5,000 jobs, according to the U.S. Labor Department. Employers overall added only 39,000 jobs last month, a sharp decline from the 172,000 created in October. The most significant job losses were in manufacturing and construction, while the health care industry experienced the largest gains. “Today’s numbers make clear the need to push sensible, effective and efficient ways to create jobs,” said secretary of Labor Hilda Solis. “Extending federal unemployment benefits now will help those who need it most and also will provide needed momentum for the economic recovery.” TRD [more]

Unemployment is the number one impediment to a housing recovery, according to Pete Flint, CEO of a real estate listing site Trulia. The housing market needs the federal government to more aggressively encourage banks to help homeowners facing foreclosure, Flint told CBS, otherwise the market sentiment may remain low. Rick Sharga, senior vice president with RealtyTrac, agreed. “Until we have [looser credit], we really can’t have a full-fledged housing market recovery,” Sharga said. As for lenders’ pledges to help at-risk homeowners with mortgage modifications? “Unfortunately, it’s all been lip service and little action,” Flint said.

A statewide survey of real estate professionals puts unemployment at the top of a list of stumbling blocks to a robust market recovery. Since unemployed people don’t need office space, don’t shop, don’t pay rent and don’t buy houses, one respondent said, it’s unlikely to mean a serious recovery is in the offing. Reactions from 319 participants in 13 urban regions of the state representing reactions for 15 types of property were largely unified: more vacancies and decreasing rents will hit commercial and residential real estate for some time. The current unemployment rate of 11.8 percent must decline before people can start participating in the market again, said Tim Becker, director of the University of Florida’s Bergstrom Center for Real Estate Studies in Gainesville, which conducted the survey. [GlobeSt]

Florida hit an 11% statewide unemployment rate in September, the worst since October 1975, according to the Florida Agency for Workforce Innovation. The rate increased slightly from 10.8% in August, and is at least four percentage points higher than a year ago. About a million people are out of work in a labor force of 9.2 million, the agency said. Director Cynthia Lorenzo said the latest unemployment figures confirm that the economic downturn continues to impact a significant number of Floridians and businesses. However, a reduction in employers announcing closing or large-scale layoffs is a positive sign of Florida’s growing economic stability, she added. [GlobeSt]

Florida is the most delinquent state in the nation for mortgage payments, according to second quarter figures from the Mortgage Bankers Association. One in four mortgages was at least 30 days behind, the group said, and this is just the beginning of a new foreclosure wave driven by rising unemployment, weak home prices, and a sagging economy. A crisis that started with exotic subprime loans and real-estate flippers has progressed to include condos and suburban homes like Leslee Ramos’ on Northeast 11th Drive in Malibu Bay, now worth less than half what she paid for it in 2006. After losing her job and using up her savings on mortgage payments, the home was finally foreclosed on earlier this year. She has a new job now, but her credit is severely damaged and she has moved back in with her mother.  [Miami Herald]

Although about 500,000 American families have taken part in the federal home loan modification program thus far, the Mortgage Bankers Association said rising unemployment means that fewer will be able to save their homes from foreclosure in the coming months. “You can’t modify someone if they don’t have income or a job,” John Courson, president and CEO of the MBA, explained in a press conference on Tuesday. When depressed home prices and the complexity of loan modification paperwork are factored into the equation, it appears that the predicted next wave of foreclosures may be difficult to thwart without novel solutions, the group said. To find them, the MBA is planning to put together a think tank that will focus on overcoming the developing foreclosure crisis in creative new ways. [SFBJ]

Rising unemployment is causing the foreclosure crisis, which started with the relatively small subprime market, to expand to prime borrowers. That’s a much larger pool of homeowners, a sign that the foreclosure rate — more than 6,600 home foreclosure filings per day, according to the Center for Responsible Lending — isn’t likely to slow down in the near future. “People are no longer defaulting simply because of a change in the payment structure of their loan. They are defaulting because of lost jobs or reduced hours or pay,” said a September report by a Florida foreclosure task appointed by the state’s Supreme Court. Michael Barr, assistant secretary for financial institutions at the Treasury Department, said last month that more than six million families could lose their homes over the next three years.

U.S. apartment vacancies hit 7.8 percent in the third quarter, the highest rate in 23 years, according to commercial real estate research firm Reis. The rise may be attributed to the climbing national unemployment rate, which the Department of Labor said last week had increased to 9.8 percent in August. With fewer jobs available, rental demand decreased in turn. Asking rents declined 1.8 percent from a year earlier, and actual rent paid by tenants shrank 2.7 percent over the same period.

As the national unemployment rate remains high, the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation is stepping up efforts to prevent another round of home foreclosures, urging banks to allow some borrowers a six-month forbearance on mortgage payments when times get tough. The new program would allow a loan payment reduction for borrowers who have defaulted on mortgages due to job losses or salary cuts. While the plan extends to 53 financial institutions, it doesn’t include Wells Fargo, Bank of America, Citigroup or JPMorgan Chase, four of the biggest U.S. mortgage lenders. Jack Schakett, an executive in Bank of America’s credit loss mitigation strategies department, said that allowing forbearance packages for troubled lenders is a tricky prospect, because their employment outlook is often less rosy. “People who were already struggling with their mortgage payments would be less likely to end up with a job that would help them be successful in the future,” Schakett said.

When construction of single-family homes rose for the fifth consecutive month in July, analysts were excited. And as projections show that August will mark the fourth consecutive month of growth in sales of existing homes, that excitement is holding strong, according to the Economist. But as the unemployment rate in the U.S. fails to rebound (the current rate is at 9.7 percent, according to public data), there is reason to believe that the housing recovery is tenuous. “We’ve finally found a level where people want to do deals,” Pamela Liebman, CEO of the Corcoran Group, said. But the Economist argues that fledgling U.S. unemployment figures and lack of available credit make that hard to maintain.