Delegates are gathering in Copenhagen, Denmark, to reach a consensus on a global warming treaty.

Thomas J. Donohue
Special to CNN

There's been a lot of gloom surrounding the climate talks in Copenhagen, Denmark, and let's face it, some of it is well-founded. Trying to get 192 countries to agree on a new treaty would be tough even in the best of economic times, and these aren't the best of economic times.

Nevertheless, I remain optimistic that a workable climate change agreement is possible over time if the governments and business communities agree on some fundamental principles. Let me suggest what some of those principles should be.

First, whatever we do should not harm our economies or destroy jobs. Our policies must embrace the aspirations of people everywhere for a better life. We should never stand in the way of progress that reduces poverty, measurably improves health and living conditions, and restores human dignity. The fact is, we can't have healthy environments without first having healthy economies.

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Rising job losses are sparking widespread anxiety.

Gloria Borger
CNN Senior Political Analyst

If you're a Democratic political adviser right now, you've got one major question heading into the 2010 midterm elections: Do voters worry more about the skyrocketing deficit or high unemployment?

The answer: unemployment.

In fact, according to a recent survey done by Democracy Corps, a Democratic research firm, Americans worry twice as much about jobs as the deficit: "...When forced to choose, voters embrace a bold jobs initiative over a long-term deficit reduction program by two-to-one."

Ipso facto, a new jobs bill is born.

Never mind that the first stimulus package has yet to truly kick in. Or that, within the next month, the Senate has to hold its nose and vote to raise the federal debt limit above its current $13 trillion level. That's a tough vote, even for big spenders.

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Barbara Kiviat
Time

The Obama Administration is out to create jobs. Let's not get our hopes up.

The day before the Labor Department announced a second month of 10%-plus unemployment last week, the White House hosted a get-together to hear from executives, labor leaders and academics about how the Federal Government can jolt job growth. "We're looking for fresh perspectives," the President said. "I am open to every demonstrably good idea."

That may sound promising, but the truth is, drumming up new jobs on short notice isn't exactly in the government's wheelhouse. In the long term, what the government does and doesn't do is incredibly important to the health of the labor market. Trade policy, corporate tax rates, the structure of health care — these things all have a real impact on economic growth. But Washington's tool kit doesn't work nearly as well in the short run. Right now companies aren't hiring for a very specific reason: there's not as much demand for their products and services. Callous as it may sound, high unemployment at the front end of an economic recovery is perfectly normal.

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Chris Isidore
CNNMoney.com senior writer

The long-suffering U.S. jobs market improved significantly in November, as employers trimmed the fewest jobs of any month since the start of the recession, and the unemployment rate posted the biggest one-month decline in more than three years.

U.S. payrolls slipped 11,000 jobs in the month, far below any of the job losses posted over the last 23 months. Economists surveyed by Briefing.com had forecast a loss of 125,000 jobs in November.

The October and September job loss estimates were also revised sharply lower, trimming previous job loss estimates by 159,000 between them.

The new reading put October job losses at 111,000 jobs, and September's loss estimate was cut to 139,000. Each of those new estimates would have been the smallest declines in more than a year.

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CNN

The Obama administration says the Recovery Act created or saved 640,000 jobs through September. View a state-by-state breakdown.

According to a recent article in USA Today, with the nation's unemployment rate at a 26-year-high of 10.2 percent, many Americans are looking for jobs outside the country.

Ruben Navarrette Jr.
Special to CNN

In the early 1990's, I was listening to the Rush Limbaugh radio show when a young man from Youngstown, Ohio, called in to complain about... well, life.

The caller was upset that, since the steel mills had closed years earlier, there was no opportunity for him in his beloved hometown. Youngstown was where his father and grandfather had raised families and where he had hoped to raise his own.

So he was attracted to the protectionist rhetoric of presidential candidates promising to erect trade barriers in the hopes of resurrecting U.S. cities. But, short of attending a political rally, the young man from Youngstown didn't know what to do.

Noting that our most daunting obstacles are often self-imposed, Limbaugh gave the caller some simple but valuable advice: "Move!"

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Recovery.gov

Bill McMorris
The Franklin Center

Just how big is the stimulus package? Well for one, it has doubled the size of the House of Representatives, according to recovery.gov, which says that funds were distributed to 440 congressional districts that do not exist.

According to data retrieved from recovery.gov, nearly $6.4 billion was used to “create or save” just under 30,000 jobs in these phantom congressional districts–almost $225,000 per job. The web site operates on an $84 million budget and is tasked with monitoring the distribution of the $787 billion stimulus package passed by Congress–which, for the record, counts 435 members–in early 2009.

The site’s monitors, however, are not too savvy about America’s political or geographic landscape. More than $2 million was given to the 99th District of North Dakota, a state which has only one congressional district. In order to qualify for 99 districts, North Dakota would have to have a population of about 60 million people, almost 24 million more people than California.

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Chris Isidore
CNNMoney.com Senior Writer

The nation's unemployment rate rose above 10% for the first time since 1983 in October, a much worse jump than expected as employers continued to trim jobs from payrolls.

The reading, reported by the government Friday, is a sign of the continued weakness in the labor market even though the economy grew in the third quarter following the longest and deepest downturn since the Great Depression.

The government reported that the unemployment rate spiked to 10.2%, up from 9.8% in September. It is the highest that this rate has been since April 1983. Economists had forecast an increase to 9.9%.

There was also a net loss of 190,000 jobs in October, according to the Labor Department, an improvement from a revised estimate of 219,000 job losses in September. However, economists surveyed by Briefing.com had forecast a loss of only 175,000 jobs in October. This was the 22nd straight month of job losses.

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CNNMoney

The Obama administration says the Recovery Act created or saved 640,000 jobs through September.  View a state-by-state breakdown.

Editor's Note: This article continues our series excerpted from AC360°'s contributor David Gewirtz's upcoming book, How To Save Jobs, which will be available in December. Over the next few months, we'll be excerpting the first section of the book, which answers the question, "How did we get here?". Last time, we looked at riots, massacres and the transactional nature of work This time, we'll look at our changing relationship with work. To learn more about the book, you should follow David on Twitter @DavidGewirtz.

David Gewirtz | BIO
AC360° Contributor
Editor-in-Chief, ZATZ Publishing

Our relation with work has changed as time passed. With the advent of the Industrial Revolution, more and more people lived in cities and areas removed from the land. Individuals became more reliant on buying food and goods rather than growing their own.

America transformed from a tradesman-based economy to one based on the economies of scale factories and industry could produce. The shoemaker, for example, who'd spent years honing his craft and would take weeks to make a pair of shoes, couldn't compete with the industrial age shoe manufacturers that could crank out virtually identical shoes of equal (and sometimes better) quality in mere minutes, and at a fraction of the cost.

For a newly industrialized America, the Great Depression was a one-two punch. Farmers, who were normally relatively self-sufficient, were put out of work due to a man-made occurrence known as the Dust Bowl. But because of the worldwide economic downturn, there also weren't jobs in the cities. Farmers couldn't move to the city to find work, and city dwellers couldn't move to the non-arable open land.

Both of these problems (the economic downturn and the bad land) were man-made. Every school child has been taught about the 1929 stock market crash and the massive bank failures that led to the economic disaster that followed.

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