“Today’s news is a reminder of the severity of the economic problem that this administration inherited and continues to illustrate the pressing needs of American working families,” Labor Secretary Hilda Solis said in a statement today.

According to the BLS data, there were 14.7 million people unemployed in June. The number of part-time underemployed was at 9.0 million in June, the number of long-term unemployed not counted in the main set of unemployment data was at 4.4 million in June, and another 2.2 million poeple were referred to as being “marginally attached to the labor force,” because they wanted and had looked for a job sometime in the past 12 months, but were not counted as unemployed because they had not searched for work in the four weeks preceding the Bureau survey.

More from the Bureau report:

- Employment in manufacturing fell by 136,000 over the month and has declined by 1.9 million during the recession. Within the durable goods industry, motor vehicles and parts (-27,000), fabricated metal products (-18,000), computer and electronic products (-16,000), and machinery (-14,000) continued to lose jobs in June. Since the recession began, employment in motor vehicles and parts has declined by 335,000, or about one-third.

- In June, employment in construction fell by 79,000, with losses spread throughout the industry. Since the start of the recession, construction employment has fallen by 1.3 million. Mining employment fell by 8,000 in June, about in line with the average monthly decline since its recent peak in October 2008.

- Employment in the professional and business services industry declined by 118,000 in June. This industry has shed 1.5 million jobs since an employment peak in December 2007. Within this sector, employment in temporary help services fell by 38,000 in June; this industry has lost 848,000 jobs since the start of the recession.

- Health care employment increased by 21,000 in June. Job gains in health care have averaged 21,000 per month thus far in 2009, down from an average of 30,000 per month during 2008. Employment in federal government fell by 49,000 in June, largely due to the layoff of workers temporarily hired to prepare for Census 2010.

- Story by Chris Graham

Harrisonburg and Rockingham County were both in the same area, with the city going from 6.1 percent in April to 6.7 percent in May and the county going from 6.0 percent in April to 6.4 percent in May.

Charlottesville experienced the biggest one-month increase, going from 6.3 percent in April to 7.0 percent in May.

Albemarle County has the region’s lowest unemployment rate, at 5.3 percent in May, though that was up from 5.0 percent in April.

The state unemployment rate in May was 7.0 percent. The national rate was at 9.1 percent.

- Story by Chris Graham

A commercial for Staunton-based Augusta Eye Associates won a bronze Telly for use of animation in a commercial. Created by DIGICO design director Jeff Dobrow, the introduction and ending motion design incorporates the Augusta Eye logo and visually plays on a very recognizable piece of medical equipment. “The animation really sets Augusta Eye apart in branding, and quickly communicates what they do and who they are,” said Ryan Berry, DIGICO partner/producer.

The Telly Awards honor the best in local, regional, and cable television commercials and programs, as well as the finest video and film productions.

The winning videos and other examples can be seen online goDIGICO.com.

The average nationally is now at $2.64 a gallon, down five cents from a week ago at this time.

The average in Virginia is $2.52 a gallon, down four cents from last week.

Trading of crude oil dropped below $70 a barrel at the close of business on Friday. Crude oil had been trading at the $40-a-barrel mark in March.

Crude had been at $147 last July, when a gallon of regular unleaded was an average $4.11 a gallon nationwide. Even with the near-$1.50-gallon drop, AAA is projecting Fourth of July travel to dip this year by nearly 3 percent. The decrease, according to AAA, is to be attributed to uncertainty about the strength of the economy, as well as rising unemployment and sagging household incomes.

The ‘09 honor was also the second in the tenure of Gov. Tim Kaine, who didn’t waste any time having his office crank out a press release touting the good news.

“As governor, I’ve made it a priority to foster opportunity and quality jobs for Virginians while ensuring our workforce has the educational resources and skills it needs to compete globally,” Kaine said in a statement. “During these tough economic times in particular, reclaiming the No. 1 ranking speaks volumes about the consistent way in which Virginia does business—and demonstrates that we’re up for the challenge.”

Virginia was also first in the Pollina rankings in 2003 and 2007, second from 2004 to 2006 and third in 2008. That’s seven straight years in the national top three, all under Democratic governors in Kaine and predecessor Mark Warner.

The Pollina numbers are based on a review of 33 factors, including taxes, human resources, right-to-work legislation, energy costs, infrastructure spending and state economic-development efforts. Democrats can rightly claim credit for creating a solid pro-business environment under Warner and Kaine with partners in the Republican caucus in the Senate who worked with Warner in particular in the early years of the ’00s to boost Virginia’s efforts in infrastructure spending and economic development. House Republicans have generally been roadblocks to that end in recent years, making it curious, to say the least, that a former member of the House GOP Caucus, Republican Party gubernatorial nominee Bob McDonnell, is trying to recast himself as a positive force in its first general-election television ad, “Resurgence,” which makes McDonnell out to be a key player in the top-state-for-business movement.

Democratic nominee Creigh Deeds doesn’t have to fluff up his credentials in that respect. The Bath County state senator swept to victory in the June party primary on the strength of his years of hard work on transportation and education infrastructure improvements that he has talked up as being foundational elements to business development in the Commonwealth.

“Virginia’s smart, businesslike approach to economic development must be a vital component of our overall efforts to create jobs and expand economic opportunity for Virginians,” Deeds said in a statement on the Pollina rankings news. “I have been proud to be a reliable partner with Governors Warner and Kaine in efforts to promote the Commonwealth’s pro-business climate, including a focus on good schools, safe communities, an excellent quality of life, and reasonable tax and regulatory policies. That responsible, bipartisan approach is at the heart of my plan to boost Virginia’s economy and put people back to work through smart, targeted investments and expanded economic opportunities,” Deeds said.

- Story by Chris Graham

There are exceptions; Sen. Durbin’s proposal for a Financial Product Safety Commission is one of them. The proposed commission would establish minimum standards for the safety of financial products, and would focus especially on identifying deceptive and fraudulent practices. The institution’s mandate would be analogous to the Consumer Product Safety Commission. As the proposal’s sponsors argued to the Treasury Secretary in a recent letter, “there is no reason for us to have regulations that prevent toasters from exploding into flames, but no protections to prevent mortgages and credit cards from doing the same.”

Opponents, thus far, have mustered what seems a half-hearted and formulaic argument against the proposal: introducing a new bureaucracy as the ultimate arbiter of product safety would effectively iron out differences in product structures and pricing, and dampen innovation.

The opposite is true. We have minimum standards on practically every consumer product - from automobiles to the aforementioned toasters - but innovation appears to proceed apace. You would be surprised what toasters can do these days!

Minimum product standards, then, don’t necessarily crowd out innovation. Instead, the difficulty for principled innovators in consumer financial services has been engineering new, improved product structures that can economically match the value captured through questionable, customer-unfriendly practices engaged in by competitors. Take the prime credit card business, for example. It is difficult to compete with large incumbents willing and able to use zero percent teaser rates, coupled with hair-trigger universal default repricing. The economic value of that customer-unfriendly practice was a killer advantage which stifled the need or potential for innovation.

A more persuasive objection to the proposed commission is that it would add to the existing thicket of state and federal financial regulators, rather than replacing them. By doing so it would create further administrative hoop-jumping and destructive friction on innovation.

The proposed commission avoids the political complexity of reducing an incumbent institution’s authority; but the fact remains that some regulators are dreadful when it comes to consumer protection. It was not by accident that Countrywide decided to re-charter its depository away from the OCC when the Fed and OCC began raising consumer protection concerns about non-traditional mortgage structures.

In reality, the industry suffers from too many regulators not from too much regulation. The proposed commission should pre-empt them - or, at least, it should pre-empt other federal authorities on these issues. The result would be more clarity, less arbitrage, and fewer burdens.

The proposal could be improved with an expansion of its mission from merely setting minimum standards. It is certainly true that deceptive sales practices are a major problem in consumer financial services, but they aren’t the main problem.

The main problem is that consumers - who, as it turns out, are human beings - are, in general, incapable of adequately weighing abstract financial risks and rewards. Perhaps the most telling example is banks’ “free checking” offerings, which aren’t free at all, because they tend to generate significant fees through non-sufficient funds (”NSF”) penalties on overdrafts. Consumers are aware of NSF fees; they just systematically underestimate how often they will incur them.

This is where the proposed commission could help. Let me suggest an analogy. Restaurants in Los Angeles County are required to post a large placard in their front windows, showing an “A”, “B”, or “C”. Those letter grades correspond to an establishment’s scoring in routine health department inspections. The Los Angeles approach made more transparent the hygienic disparity between restaurants. That is, it helps consumers understand that while many restaurants meet minimum standards, they are not all equally safe.

Using this approach with financial products would allow the Commission to encourage and reward especially consumer-friendly product structures, while not ironing out innovative product wrinkles. This is the outcome that we should all desire.

Raj Date is the chairman and executive director of the Cambridge Winter Center for Financial Institutions Policy. He is a former McKinsey & Company consultant, bank senior executive, and Wall Street managing director.

It’s likely that the economic recovery that we’ve been seeing looking at selected economic indicators is at the heart of the increase at the pump. Crude-oil prices, for example, have more than doubled since hitting $32.40 a barrel in December, which is around the time we saw regular unleaded at a few locations in the Shenandoah Valley dip below $1.40 a gallon.

As of this morning, the average price of a gallon of regular unleaded was at $2.52 a gallon in Virginia.

The newspapers in question simply repeated the company’s public relations material on the controversial project.

The press release was seemingly designed to help the developer obtain or retain the investors needed to finance the 19-turbine, $65 million project proposed for a remote and exceptionally wild area in the northwest corner of Virginia’s highest elevation and least populated county.

Despite Mr. Maisano’s statement, the wind project developer:

- does not have a building permit

- does not have an Erosion and Sediment Control permit

- does not have approval from the FAA

- has not met conditions imposed by the State Corporation Commission

- has not obtained an Endangered Species Act permit

Highland New Wind has faced a series of legal and environmental challenges since losing its first development partner in 2003. Virginia’s wildlife management agency has concluded that the project may result in the highest mortality of birds and bats for wind projects in the eastern United States. Virginia’s historic resources agency has raised concerns about impacts to the adjacent Camp Alleghany, listed on the Federal Register of Historic Places and recognized as the most pristine among the remaining undeveloped Civil War battlefields.

Following the death of thousands of bats flying into turbine blades during the first weeks of a West Virginia wind project, and given the location of the proposed Highland project within the range of endangered bat species, the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service has repeatedly recommended that Highland New Wind obtain a permit under the Endangered Species Act, and both Highland New Wind and the Highland County supervisors have been served a notice-of-intent to sue if the project goes forward without the permit. A federal suit has been brought against a West Virginia developer over the same issue, and earlier this year the U.S. Forest Service blocked plans for a wind turbine project in the George Washington National Forest in part because of the risk to the endangered bats that inhabit Virginia’s mountain ridges.

The developer of the proposed Highland New Wind project has complained that investors would be scared away by strict wildlife monitoring requirements imposed on the project by the SCC.

To date no investors have been publically identified, and Mr. Maisano made no reference to investors in his press release.

Rick Webb heads up Virginia Wind. He can be reached at rwebb@vawind.org.

Remember Galileo? His heresy was challenging the belief that the earth was the center of the universe. It’s as heretical today to enact policies that don’t place markets at the center of the economy. Excommunicating Galileo didn’t change planetary orbits, but misguided fealty to markets does affect our future.

Today, over 14.5 million Americans are jobless and another 9 million are working reduced hours. All 372 metropolitan areas in the U.S. saw unemployment rise in May, and 93 recorded jobless rates of at least 10 percent.

To fight unemployment and reduce unnecessary suffering the Social Security Act of 1935 established a joint Federal-State system of unemployment insurance (UI). Today, state unemployment programs set benefits so low that few households dependent upon UI can make ends meet.

We are the skinflint states.

The stingiest state is Arkansas where the average weekly benefit ($207) contributes only 29 cents of each dollar a family needs to cover the bare minimum for food, rent and utilities, transportation, child care, clothing and household expenses. Arkansas’ average weekly unemployment benefit works out to $1.36 per hour less than the federal minimum wage. The least stingy state is Wyoming where the average weekly benefit ($328.34) delivers 53 cents of each dollar needed to meet basic needs. U.S. workers collect, on average, $269.29 per week in UI. This replaces a mere 40 cents of each dollar needed to cover the basics.

Now is the time to embrace an economics of the people, for the people and by the people. Meaningful jobs at decent wages are as essential to democracy as freedom of speech and freedom of religion.

Consider this simple math: hire 10 million people at $25 thousand per year (about $12 per hour). The cost? $250 billion dollars — a fraction of what we’ve handed the nation’s bankers who neither lend nor spend. In contrast, all $250 billion (less payroll taxes) will be spent immediately, putting a sharp brake on the downward spiral of joblessness.

Ten million people should not be paid $12 an hour to be idle. Rather, the federal government should step in as the employer of last resort. We know this works. It worked in the 1930s and it will work again today.

During the New Deal, direct federal employment created over 10 million jobs, driving unemployment to its lowest level since the Great Crash. Federal employees built schools, hospitals and libraries; brought electricity to millions of rural households; preserved thousands of acres of forest; and produced art that is now a treasured part of our heritage.

Now, as then, there is plenty of work to do and plenty of people who want work.

FDR knew that “Necessitous men are not free men.” We have a choice: America — the land of the free or the home of the broke?

Susan F. Feiner is the director of women and gender studies and a professor of economics at the University of Southern Maine.