Don't fool yourself: Your human resources manager probably knows you're managing your fantasy football team from work.

But according to a new survey, most HR folks don't seem to think a little time on the virtual football field is hurting your productivity much.

Outplacement firm Challenger, Gray and Christmas asked about 100 human resource professionals across the country to rank the level of distraction from fantasy football on a scale of 1 to 10, with 10 being the highest level of distraction. The average rating was 3.42.

Nearly half of the HR folks surveyed said they don't care if employees spend part of their day managing their team, as long as their work isn't affected.

About 22 percent said they asked their employees to limit personal activities like fantasy football to breaks and lunch time, and another 24 percent block sports and fantasy football websites.

That many HR managers are willing to let a little fantasy football slide is probably good news for the approximately 20 million Americans who are estimated to participate in the game.

Perhaps the HR managers are more forgiving because they are guilty of a little work-time football play too. Challenger said 65 percent of the HR professionals polled said they participate in fantasy football leagues.

And even though the HR manager may not mind a little time on the virtual field, fantasy football still has its costs.

In 2008, Challenger released a separate study estimating that fantasy football could cost corporate America as much as $10.5 billion over the 17-week NFL season. The dollar amount was calculated based on the average earnings of fantasy football players and the amount of time they spend on their teams during the work day.

The outplacement firm's chief executive, John Challenger, argued that you don't necessarily want to put an end to your staff's fantasy football careers. That could further sap productivity by decreasing employee morale, he said.

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Here’s another piece of good news on the temporary job front: A new survey says more hiring managers plan to add more seasonal employees this year than in the past two years.

Still, seasonal employment is not expected to reach the levels we saw in 2007, on the eve of the recession.

In its third annual survey, SnagAJob.com said 50 percent of hiring managers responsible for adding seasonal workers plan to do so. That’s up from 47 percent in 2009 and 43 percent in 2008.

In 2007, 51 percent of managers added seasonal employees.

On average, hiring managers expect to hire 3.9 seasonal workers, up from 3.1 in 2009 and 3.7 in 2008. In 2007, hiring managers added 5.6 seasonal workers on average.

The average hourly pay for seasonal employees also got a slight boost, to $10.60 an hour. That’s up from $10.40 an hour in 2009 and $10 an hour in 2008. The survey did not have average wages from 2007.

The data are based on a survey from Ipsos Public Affairs, which polled around 1,000 people responsible for hiring seasonal hourly employees in fields including retail, restaurants, customer service and healthcare.

Of course, a seasonal temporary job is not as good as a permanent one. Still, even a temporary reprieve should be welcome for many of the millions of Americans who are unemployed, and especially those who have exhausted unemployment benefits.

Related links:

A temporary fix for unemployment

‘Missing workers’ warily return to the job hunt

For 99ers, a job can feel like a mirage

If I ever meet a nice girl and we settle down and start a family, I hope it’s with someone I met while enjoying $22 off Brazilian capoeira classes at New York Capoeira Center ($45 value), or $20 for $40 worth of Italian food and drinks at Manhattan’s East Side Social Club.

That’s because Groupon — the online “deal of the day” Web site that fills my inbox with coupons for anything from donuts to haircuts — will give our darling child $60,000.

That’s right, free cash. The only catch is I have to use it for the kid’s college fees. Groupon’s CEO Andrew Mason made the strange offer at the TechCrunch Disrupt conference in San Francisco this week, according to Business Insider. The report says the $60,000 offer is actually a clever way to promote Groupon’s dating service, rather grossly called “Grouspawn.”

Grouspawn is a free service and it calls itself “the antidote for the poison of loneliness,” but what does the site get out setting me up on a date? Well, they’re hawking coupons to the sorts of places that could be date locations, and you have to use one on your first date (Grouspawn wants couples to provide some sort of proof that they did indeed meet on a Groupon date).

So I checked out the site. It notifies single Groupon users that they can cash in on the offer by using its “Date Assistant” feature, which offers a selection of “eligible hunks and she-hunks” for site users to contact. “They’re all real people,” the site hastens to add, although “Tess” in Chicago looks suspiciously like Sports Illustrated swimsuit model Marisa Miller. Still, she “likes Pina Coladas and getting caught in the rain” (presumably, half-price Pina Coladas purchased with a Groupon).

Besides, for $60,000 she just might possibly be Ms. Right.

A trade war with China will do nobody any good, least of all American workers and consumers.

Congress wants to fire a salvo in that war by passing legislation that would punish China with trade tariffs. The levies would push up the price of the relatively cheaper goods China exports that fill shelves in U.S. department stores and malls.

American lawmakers, with an eye on November elections, want to push China to let its currency float freely against the dollar and stop promoting Chinese exports by what they say is deliberately keeping its currency, the yuan, cheaper than the dollar.

Voters may think that talking tough with China is a good idea, but many experts say be careful what you wish for.

Visit msnbc.com for breaking news, world news, and news about the economy

Supporters of the bill argue it would save U.S. jobs against unfair trade competition. Critics say trade sanctions won’t do much to help American workers or consumers.

“It’s a double-edged sword,” James Thompson, the American-born chairman of Crown Worldwide Holdings, a global shipping company based in Hong Kong, told a group of American reporters on a recent trip to China. “It will shift jobs to Mexico and Brazil – not the U.S. And from the (American) consumers’ perspective, it will put higher prices on the products they buy in the U.S.”

A rising yuan could put pressure on companies making products in China to look for places to make those goods more cheaply. But if low-cost manufacturing is your objective, there are a lot of other low-wage countries to consider before setting up shop in the U.S.

Low-cost Chinese goods have also been a boon to American consumers and helped to contain inflation in the U.S. That trend could reverse if China lets the yuan's value rise more quickly.

Supporters of a “get tough” trade policy are also hoping that a higher-valued yuan would make U.S. exports more competitive relative to Chinese companies. But U.S. manufacturers would still have to compete with other highly developed countries like Germany and Japan. The prices of those goods wouldn’t be affected by a free-floating yuan.

Remember the late 1990s, when the Internet boom was in full swing? Everyone was predicting we’d soon be shopping for everything from dog food to cars in our pajamas, and we’d never leave the house.

They were partially right. We still leave the house to go shopping, just perhaps not as frequently as we used to.

Fifty-eight percent of Americans go online to research products and services they are considering purchasing, according to a survey released Wednesday by the Pew Research Center’s Internet & American Life Project. That’s up from 49 percent in 2004.

Jim Jansen, a senior fellow with the Pew Research Center, said the data show more people are going online first to do things like compare prices or read reviews, even if they end up making the purchase in a brick-and-mortar store.

The survey also found that 24 percent of Americans had posted reviews or comments of products and services online.

More people are also making their final purchases online. The Pew researchers said 52 percent of Americans were purchasing products online as of May 2010, up from 36 percent in May of 2000.

It turns out, there are no gender differences in e-commerce. The researchers said men and women do online research at similar rates.

There are other demographic differences between those who hit the keyboard to research a new refrigerator, and those who hit the appliance store.

The more money people make, the more likely they are to do online shopping research. The researchers said 88 percent of Internet users with a household income of $75,000 or more were using the Internet to research purchases, compared with 67 percent of those who make $30,000 or less.

Internet users over age 65 do much less online product research than younger adults who are online, the researchers found. In addition, African-Americans who use the Internet are much less likely to researche purchases online than whites or Hispanics who use the Internet, according to the Pew survey.

Even though the unemployment rate remains near 10 percent, the market is looking up for temp workers.

The American Staffing Association said Tuesday that its weekly index of people employed in temporary or contract positions rose to its highest level in nearly two years.

An increase in hiring for temporary positions could be good news for the economy. Conventional wisdom holds that employers often start hiring temporary workers to test the waters before committing to more permanent positions.

The ASA said temporary and contract employment rose 2.08 percent during the week ending Sept. 19, pushing the index up two points to a reading of 98.

That’s the highest reading since Sept. 22, 2008. A base reading of 100 was set in June 2006.

The group also said temporary employment is up 23 percent over the same week a year earlier. The index has generally been on the upswing since the start of the year, although there have been a few dips along the way.

Thanks to Carpe Diem, which first wrote about the data.

When it comes to making their way to the corner office, American women have made little progress over the last decade, according to a report released Tuesday by the Government Accountability Office.

As of 2007, the latest year for which comprehensive data on managers is available, women accounted for about 40 percent of managers in the United States, up slightly from 39 percent in 2000, according to the report. Outside of management, women held 49 percent of the jobs in both years, the GAO report said.

The report also shows that women managers are still paid less than their male counterparts, but they have made some progress in narrowing the gap.

A woman manager in the United States is paid 81 cents for every dollar earned by a male manager. That 19-cent wage gap represents a slight decrease from seven years earlier when women managers made 79 cents for each dollar earned by a man.

Having children is a significant factor in gender pay differences, the report found, with women managers with children earning 79 cents for every man’s dollar in 2007 and women managers who do not have children earning 83 cents for every male dollar earned.

The full findings are detailed here.

The number of years we’re staying with the same employer is on the rise, but that’s not necessarily a sign of job security.

As of January, workers had been with their current employers for an average of 4.4 years, according to the latest data from the Bureau of Labor Statistics. That’s up from 4.1 years as of January of 2008, the last time the government gathered that data.

The BLS said median employee tenure rose in part because so many less senior workers have lost their jobs in the past couple years.

That’s skewed the numbers in favor of the more experienced workers who were able to hold onto their jobs through the weak economy.

There also haven’t been many jobs out there for people to move to, even if they wanted to change employers.

There were 3 million job openings in July, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics. That’s up from a low of 2.3 million job openings as of July of 2009, but it’s still well below the 4.4 million job openings as of December 2007, when the recent recession began.

The employee tenure figure, which is collected every two years, has generally been on the rise since the 2000. That year, employees had stayed with their employer for 3.5 years, on average.

Not surprisingly, older workers are more likely to have had their jobs the longest. The median employee tenure for workers ages 55 to 64 was 10 years. That compares to 3.1 years for workers 25 to 34 years old.

If you are older, Republican and living in the suburbs on the East coast, congratulations! Chances are higher you made it through the Great Recession relatively unscathed.

That's according to new data from the Pew Research Center's Social & Demographic Trends project.

The report, "One Recession, Two Americas," found that overall about 55 percent of the country has lost ground as a result of the recession, because they experienced a job or income loss, foreclosure or other household financial crisis.

The other 45 percent were classified as having held their own as a result of the recession, because they largely did not experience major problems such as a job loss or difficulties paying the rent or mortgage.

Although the groups were divided almost equally, the demographic makeup of each side was quite different.

The researchers found that about 70 percent of people 65 and older held their own as a result of the recession. Almost exactly the same percentage of people ages 18 to 29 – 69 percent - lost ground because of the recession.

People who lived in the East Coast also were more likely to have held their own than those living in other parts of the country. In addition, rural and suburban dwellers were more likely to have held their own than people who live in big cities.

Also, although 49 percent of Republicans said they had lost ground as a result of the recession, a greater percentage of Democrats and Independent - 57 percent - said they had lost ground.

In addition, about half of the white people surveyed said they had lost ground during the recession, compared with about two-thirds of black people and 70 percent of Hispanics.

The one thing the recession has not divided us along? Gender lines. The researchers found 55 percent of both men and women said they lost ground because of the recession.

The data was based on interviews with nearly 3,000 people conducated in May of this year.

We already told you about the free beer. Next week is really shaping up with free ice cream, too.

Budweiser kicks off a monthlong free beer promotion next Wednesday. Bars and restaurants across the country will offer free Bud beginning with a "national happy hour" aimed at introducing the under-30 set to a brand they probably know best as a producer of award-winning Super Bowl ads.

No word yet on which bars and restaurants will serve the free brews. The Associated Press reports that the brewer has to be a bit cagey about the details because laws on giving away alcohol vary widely from place to place.

No such problems affect ice cream giveaways, however. So next Thursday from 5-8 p.m. (local time) Cold Stone Creamery will be giving away free scoops of a new flavor with an apple pie theme. Donations will be accepted as a fund-raiser for the Make-a-Wish Foundation, according to WalletPop.

WalletPop has details on more freebies, including free theater tickets, a free tote bag, free "sports tampons" and more. 'Nuff said.

The number of unmarried couples living together shot up by 13 percent between 2009 and 2010, and some of the decisions may not have been completely motivated by romance.

Maybe more folks needed someone to help pay the rent.

Rose Kreider, a researcher with the U.S. Census, crunched the numbers and found that the sharp increase in opposite-sex couples living together coincided with a big jump in unemployment among the unmarried couples.

Nearly 7.5 million couples were cohabitating in 2010, up from about 6.7 million in 2009.

The number of unmarried people living together has generally risen since the Census started tracking the data in 1996, but the gains have rarely been so great. In fact, there was a statistically insignificant 2 percent drop in cohabitating couples from 2008 to 2009. That followed a 5 percent gain from 2007 to 2008.

The recession of 2007-09 has taken its toll on unmarried couples. In 2008, 59 percent of cohabitating couples said both partners were employed, but that percentage fell to 52 percent in 2009 and 49 percent in 2010.

In addition, people who moved in together this year were more likely to include at least one jobless partner than couples who already were living together. Kreiser said just 39 percent of newly cohabitating couples were both employed, compared with 50 percent of couples that were already together.

Although the recession officially started in December 2007, Kreiser speculates that the big spike in couples moving in together began more recently because, as unemployment has dragged on, more people have exhausted savings, unemployment benefits and other ways to pay rent on their own.

"The fact that a higher proportion of the new couples are younger may also make it more difficult for them to find jobs in a tough economy where older workers with more skills are also looking for jobs," Kreider wrote in a white paper released this week.

The Census data also show an increase in same-sex cohabitating couples this year, but Kreiser says that was expected because of a change in how same-sex couples are counted.

Since the early days of the recession there's been a lot of talk about whether the U.S. would experience the equivalent of Japan's "lost decade" of economic stagnation in the 1990s.

Business Insider, citing data from Deutsche Bank, shows that there's one way our current economic doldrums are different from Japan's, and it's not necessarily something to celebrate.

When Japan's economy hit the skids in the early 1990s, Japanese companies largely held onto workers even as the economy slumped along.

In the U.S., however, companies were quick to slash jobs by the millions, and they haven't been eager to hire those workers back. Although the National Bureau of Economic Research said this week that the recession officially ended in 2009, unemployment remains startlingly high. The U.S. unemployment rate was 9.6 percent in August, with about 14.9 million people looking for work.

With most retirement accounts battered and bruised by the financial turbulence of the past few years, many of us could use some helpful advice on how to stash away more money for our twilight years.

Mary Beth Franklin, senior editor at Kiplinger's Personal Finance, appeared on CNBC Thursday offering three simple changes to a 401(k) plan that she says can double (yes double) your prospective nest egg. Click below for the video:

Visit msnbc.com for breaking news, world news, and news about the economy

These days, homebuyers seem to be getting more and more like regular consumers, unwilling to pay full price because they know that same house - or one just like it - could end up on the sale rack pretty soon.

Increasingly, that bet is paying off.

The percentage of homes on the market that have had their price reduced has slowly edged up over the course of the year, according to real estate brokerage ZipRealty’s analysis of prices in 26 major markets.

ZipRealty said about 47 percent of homes in those markets had at least one price reduction in August, up from about 40 percent in January.

The price drops may be helping move some homes, but they don't appear to be enough to really jump-start the weak real estate market. The National Association of Realtors said Thursday that existing home sales rose 7.6 percent in August from a month earlier, to a seasonally adjusted annual rate of 4.13 million. Still, that's a 19 percent drop from a year earlier.

The NAR said median price for an existing home was $178,600, up less than 1 percent from a year ago.

Buyers might be smart to hold out even after the price has been reduced once. According to ZipRealty’s data, sellers who drop their asking price typically reduce the price a second time.

How much should you expect your dream house to go down in price?

The median reduction was $19,092 in August, or 7 percent of the list price. That amount that has remained fairly steady this year, according to ZipRealty’s analysis.

The data was culled from MLS listings in major markets such as Boston, Dallas, Las Vegas, Seattle and Los Angeles. ZipRealty only included the 26 major markets in which it operates, representing most of the nation’s 35 biggest markets.

Feeling good about yourself today? We can fix that. On Wednesday’s Forbes ranking of the 400 richest Americans (to get on the list, you had to be a billionaire), eight were under 40. Four were under 30.

How does one become a fat cat before the hair starts to gray? Do something on the Internets. Of the 20 youngest members of the list, three are from Google and another three are founders of Facebook (along with relatively-speaking mature Web businesses like Yahoo and Paypal).

Of course that latter group includes founder Mark Zuckerberg who is worth $6.9 billion and at 26 certainly acts his age sometimes (if an upcoming movie is to be believed).

That said, the caricature of the nerd-as-tycoon doesn’t completely hold water. Some of the rich kids hit it big in finance – hedge funds were particularly lucrative. Owning a pipeline or two, or an NFL franchise also helped.

And, of course for some there was the time-honored American way of making money. They inherited it.

You probably already know that you pay more for gas than drivers do in a neighboring state. Or perhaps you have a nagging sense of being overtaxed, especially compared with residents in some other, more enlightened part of the country.

Now the good folks at WalletPop have taken a look at this “geography pricing gap” for 10 different items ranging from cigarettes to car insurance.

Among the results: New York state has the highest taxes on cigarettes at $4.35 a pack, while smokes are likely to be far cheaper in Missouri, where the tax is only 17 cents per pack (not including the federal excise taxt of $1.01 a pack imposed nationwide.)

In Hawaii, it’s a good thing that residents don’t have to drive to far or worry about heating their homes because the island state lands at the top of the list for gasoline, electricity and natural gas prices. Hawaiians do enjoy relatively low tax rates, according to WalletPop, except when it comes to beer, which is taxed at 93 cents per gallon, compared with 2 cents in Wyoming, the cheapest state for suds.

Gasoline is cheapest in New Jersey, but Jersey residents more than make up for it by paying through the nose for car insurance. The average yearly premium in the Garden State is $2,468, nearly double the national average and nearly triple Indiana’s average premium of $916.

Other items on the list include hockey tickets (cheapest in St. Louis) and speeding tickets (cheapest in Texas).

To see if your state or city is listed, check the complete list at WalletPop.

The recession may have kept many of us from going on vacation, but look on the bright side – at least shark attacks are down.

That's one of the quirky things our partners at LiveScience found when they took a look at some of the unexpected results of the recession, which began in December of 2007 and officially ended in June of 2009. (Yes, we know it doesn’t feel much like the recession is over.)

According to ichthyologist George Burgess of the University of Florida, shark attacks hit a five-year low in 2008. LiveScience says the scientist saw this as a sign that fewer Americans were taking a trip to the beach, and thus reducing their risk of being chomped.

It would be a stretch to say the recession has made our celebrities fat, but the beauty icons of today may not be as super-skinny as they were before the downturn. LiveScience said researchers at Coastal Carolina University found that when the economy is bad, people tend to favor women who are heavier and taller, with larger waists and less babyish features.

Economic hard times also have reduced our desire to bring those little bundles of joy (and expenses) into the world. LiveScience cites a Pew Research Center analysis showing the decrease in birth rates in 2007 and 2008 roughly mirrored an increase in foreclosure rates in 2007.

Have you seen any unexpected results of the recession? Share your thoughts below.

It’s not your imagination: Your boss is likely more anxiety-ridden than a year ago.

A survey of more than 1,000 managers by staffing firm OfficeTeam found that 30 percent of managers are more stressed today than a year ago. Only 11 percent said their stress level at work is lower than it was last year.

Don’t expect things to get much better, either. The survey, released this week, also found that 28 percent of managers expect their anxiety levels to increase further in the coming year. Only 8 percent are expecting their stress levels to decrease.

The survey included senior managers at companies with more than 20 employees.

It shouldn’t come as a surprise that work is stressing us, and our bosses, out. Although the National Bureau of Economic Research said this week that the recession officially ended more than a year ago, many of us don’t feel like we’re in recovery. The unemployment rate is still at 9.6 percent, and those people who are lucky enough to have a job are working pretty hard to hold onto it.

Employers are increasingly stressed about housing problems, based on calls to a major provider of employee assistance programs, sometimes known as EAPs.

ComPsych Corp., among the largest providers of such programs, says that in the first half of this year, for the first time it received more calls about housing woes than childcare needs. That’s a major shift that shows just how big of a problem the housing crisis continues to be, even for working Americans.

ComPsych said calls about moving rose by 14 percent in the first half of the year, as compared to the previous six months. The increase was driven largely by employees dealing with foreclosure or the need to find more affordable housing.

Housing was the No. 1 problem for employees with 10,250 calls, compared with 8,000 calls related to childcare needs, usually the top problem.

A slump in the housing market has been a major factor in the recession and weak economic recovery. The Commerce Department said Tuesday that housing starts grew by 10.5 percent in August from a month earlier, driven largely by increases in condominium and apartment construction. Still, the figures are very weak by historical standards.

Employees are facing other stresses related to the economy as well. ComPsych said it received 4,250 calls about caring for elderly relatives, with many seeking less expensive options. That was a 23 percent increase in that category.

Another 2,500 called the employee assistance lines with health-related questions, up 11 percent over the previous six months. Many were seeking lower-cost options for medical care.

ComPsych serves about 33 million individuals at 13,000 companies worldwide.

The “boys’ club” mentality could be alive and well on Wall Street, according to a report in Monday’s Wall Street Journal.

Thousands of female workers have left their jobs on Wall Street over the past decade, despite programs to attract and retain them, the newspaper said.

Data from the Bureau of Labor Statistics show 141,000 women, or 2.6 percent, of female workers in the finance industry have left their jobs in that sector over the past 10 years, while at the same time the ranks of men in the industry have swelled by 389,000, or 9.6 percent. Those data run counter to trends in the overall U.S. workforce, where the number of women grew by 4.1 percent over the same time period compared to growth of 0.5 percent for male workers, according to the paper.

The differences between men and women are most obvious at brokerage firms, investment banks and asset-management companies, the Journal said. Most of the women leaving Wall Street are young and have left to have children, but the numbers also suggest women have borne the brunt of the layoffs in the recent recession. And computers are replacing junior, back-office jobs that in the past had largely been filled by women, the report said.

The article also suggests that a recent gender bias suit brought against Goldman Sachs -- which accused Wall Street’s most profitable bank of maintaining an “outdated corporate culture” that denies women of the same pay and promotions as men -- indicates that women still face a challenging work environment in the finance industry.

However, despite the apparent failure of programs to attract and retain female workers, the report also points out that the ranks of more senior female employees on Wall Street have swelled.

The number of women in the business over 55 years old has grown by 366,000, or 56 percent, since 1999, outpacing an increase of 234,000, or 34 percent, in similar-aged men, the Journal said. Still, the number of senior executives like Sallie Krawcheck, who runs global wealth and investment management at Bank of America, remains a statistical anomaly.

You know the old joke: If your neighbor loses a job, it’s a recession. If you lose your job, it’s a depression.

Here’s the new twist: If nearly 10 percent of the country is without work, that’s apparently a recovery.

Or what economists like to call a “jobless recovery.”

The National Bureau of Economic Research said Monday that the recession officially ended in June 2009, 18 months after it began in December 2007.

Although the economy has remained weak since then, any new downturn would mark the beginning of a new recession, not a continuation of the old one, the NBER said.

For millions of Americans, however, the recession likely feels both old and unending, because they don’t have a job.

The unemployment rate was 9.6 percent in August, about the same as it was in June 2009, when the so-called Great Recession ended. That translates into about 14.9 million unemployed people, slightly more than in June 2009.

The numbers are staggering, although it’s worth nothing that both the number of unemployed people and the jobless rate have fallen from a high late last year.

Still, there’s ample evidence of economic pain. About 6.2 million people, or 42 percent of all unemployed Americans, had been unemployed six months or more in August, according to BLS figures.

Another 8.9 million are working part-time because they can't find a full-time job. And 2.4 million people are considered “marginally attached” to the labor force because they want work but have not searched for a job in the past four weeks.

Some of those people have family or other commitments, but nearly half were officially classified as “discouraged”: They stopped looking for a job because they don't think there is one out there for them.

Do you feel like the recession is over? Click here to vote or leave a comment below.

In a tight job market, it pays to make yourself memorable -- as long as you are creating a good memory.

The job search site CareerBuilder recently asked 2,500 employers to list their most memorable resume mistakes.

The examples are mostly hilarious, unless you were the person who actually thought you’d get a job with these tactics.

Missteps included:

• Putting God as a reference (no phone number)
• Sending a 24-page resume
• Including an e-mail address with the words “lovesbeer” in it
• Listing “Master of Time and Universe” under experience

With nearly five jobseekers available for every job opening these days, it does pay to make your resume stand out, and quickly. The CareerBuilder survey found that human resources managers typically review no more than 25 applications for every open position, and by review we mean “glance briefly at.”

The survey found that 38 percent of employers say they spend less than a minute looking at each resume, on average, and 18 percent spend less than 30 seconds.

The Great Recession has left economic scars across the globe, but new research suggests that when it comes to job losses, advanced countries have actually fared worse than developing ones.

The report, from the International Monetary Fund and the International Labour Organization, estimates that 210 million people are currently unemployed worldwide, an increase of 30 million since 2007. About three-fourths of those new job losses have occurred in advanced countries, with the United States faring worst.

Want to know how much worse? We’re the bright red piece of this pie chart.

Of course, the United States is among the largest advanced countries in the world, but the numbers still illustrate the extent of the hole we are in.

The U.S. unemployment rate hit 9.6 percent in August, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics, with about 14.9 million people unemployed.

When the stock market is performing poorly, investment advisers often counsel us to think about diversifying our portfolio. Brokers often recommend bonds, commodities and even real estate with the idea of improving performance in a variety of market conditions.

But how about investing in a Broadway show?

In a plan worthy of Max Bialystock, the fictional protagonist of Mel Brooks’ film and Broadway musical “The Producers,” Ken Davenport is giving small investors a chance to back his planned revival of the musical “Godspell,” which is due to hit the Great White Way in mid-2011.

Davenport aims to build a large pool of investors to fund the show, which was first staged in 1971. The idea is to move away from the traditional model of assembling a small group of wealthy producers. It’s also in keeping with the central theme of “Godspell,” which is based on parables from the Gospel of Matthew, he said.

“I travel all the time and I might find myself in a Starbucks somewhere, and someone will ask me what I do and I say I am a Broadway producer. They think that’s really exciting and they want to know how to get involved, so I tell them they can invest $25,000 in my next show and their eyes usually glaze over,” Davenport said. “That’s why I thought of this -- you don’t have to fork over a lot of money to get involved.”

According to Davenport's website, "units" in The Godspell, LLC, are being priced at $100 each, with a minimum investment of 10 units, or $1,000. "Investment in The Godspell LLC involves a high degree of risk, and investors should not purchase units unless they can afford to lose their entire investment," the website warns.

Investors in the show will be called producers, see their names on a poster outside the theater and featured on a website for the show. And if Godspell is a hit, Davenport says, all investors will share in the profit.

Investors are urged to read the entire offering circular.

Davenport wants to convince investors that Broadway can be as good an investment as the stock market. “Five to 10 years ago if you had gone up to someone and asked them if they would like to invest in a show they would tell me they can do better by investing in the stock market. But that’s not the case these days,” said Davenport. “We think Godspell is a good, high-risk investment. I’ve produced nine shows on and off Broadway and seven of them have been profitable. If you had invested in all my shows over the years you would have made a return of 40 percent.”

That’s a payback Max Bialystock would be happy with.

The nation's “retirement gap” is growing wider as Americans struggle to add to their 401(k)s and other long-term savings, according to a study conducted by the Center for Retirement Research at Boston College.

The study, commissioned by Retirement USA, a union-affiliated advocacy group, figures that Americans are $6.6 trillion short of what we need for a comfortable retirement. group affiliated with labor-affiliated group America’s collective nest egg is $6.6 trillion short.

The center used a rather complicated formula to calculate the gap, using federal data on assets, pension benefits and Social Security and estimating 401(k) balances. The group says its estimate is conservative because it assumes people will continue working until age 65 (many retire sooner), will liquidate their assets including their home equity and will deplete their savings before they die.

The bottom line, according to the group: Fix the system, and defend Social Security.

“Concerns about retirement are high on the list for many Americans, but policymakers in Washington D.C. are ignoring the issue,” said Nancy Hwa, communications director for Retirement USA. “Social Security is the only lifeline many Americans have … and that is being threatened. We absolutely have to bolster Social Security."

The study examined American workers aged 32-64 – peak earning and saving years and took into account a variety of retirement income: Social Security, traditional pension plans, 401(k)-style plans, and other forms of saving, and housing.

According to the report, 51 percent of households are "at risk" of not having enough to maintain their living standards in retirement. If you explicitly include health care costs, the index drives up the share of households "at risk" to 61 percent, according to the study.

Retirement USA does not have specific a legislative recommendation, Hwa said, but she hopes the study is a call to action for policymakers.