Healthy Job Market will help Real Estate

The only way that the housing sector in the United States to recover is for the unemployment numbers to improve. However, Fed Chairman Ben Bernanke says that he is not completely certain on how to guarantee or even predict whether the recent job growth in the economy is to be sustainable.

We have had some good numbers in the jobs market. Private employment has climbed by 250,000 jobs for the quarter ending in February. According to Bernanke, there is still a lot of long-term unemployment and the number of jobs and hours worked is still under the 2007 levels. There is also the unsolved puzzle that the people in the know have to solve — that the job growth has failed to be directly proportional to the growth in gross domestic product.

Accoording to Bernanke, long-term unemployment may be becuase of of lagging demand, or it may be a structural issue, such as workers with mismatched skills.  The latter will require a different policy to correct.

If indeed structural issues are the reason for climb in long-term unemployment, it will become more important to make it possible for workers to obtain the skills required for the fast-changing job market.

The government is also taking other measures to help with the reviving of the real estate market.  By revising the HARP 2 Refinancing guidelines, it is now possible for underwater homeowners to refinance their mortgage into a lower rate.

Gretchen Wegrich

Gretchen Wegrich is an editor at Lender411. She specializes in mortgage basics, personal finance and green living. She graduated with a bachelor's degree in writing from University of California, San Diego and previously worked at the Santa Cruz Sentinel. Contact her at gretchen@lender411com.