There have been a lot of reports about which group of people have been hit hardest by the recession. Men have definitely been hit disproportionately hard by job losses. In fact, men held 71.9% of the jobs lost since the recession began, hurt by mass layoffs in construction and manufacturing, according to the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics.

I've even written about how more households are relying on female breadwinners after husbands were laid off.

But single women -- many of whom are mothers or caregivers -- who get laid off don't have a second income to rely on while they hunt for a new job.

Some unemployed people are so anxious to work that they're volunteering for jury duty and the minimal pay that goes with it, according to a New York Post story.

As someone who recently spent four boring and frustrating days sitting on a jury, the $30 that I'll get wasn't worth the hassle and won't make me volunteer for it, no matter how underemployed I am.

Other than the civic duty involved, it's a waste of time as far as getting paid. My recent jury duty netted me $1.53 per hour.

Besides, if I was a lawyer I wouldn't want a juror who was there for the money and would be likely to extend deliberations a few more days for some extra pay.

For the last year or so, I've been conducting an experiment. Now, don't hold me to the scientific method because it's been a really informal experiment. But the results have been both scary, enlightening and not very surprising. Cutting to the chase, for almost exactly the last 12 months, I've been applying for various jobs via one of the popular online job search sites.

Some background first. I'm self-employed. I write about politics, I produce videos, I make cartoons. But last year when the market tanked and the really serious recession began, I began to seriously worry that my small business work might not endure through the economic slump. So in a panic, I started up a profile at the job search site, uploaded my resume and began to look around.

Fortunately, I've been able to keep busy enough to pay the mortgage and haven't needed to take an actual job somewhere. But just for curiosity's sake, once my studio and writing work appeared to smooth out, I decided to keep sending out applications through the job site for the balance of this year. Just to see what would happen. The experiment.

Here's the result. In a full 12 months, I wasn't called in for a single interview.

No calls. No emails. No interviews. Nothing.

It turns out that the bad economy is great for coin-op laundromats. Because, though houses with laundry rooms will be foreclosed upon, washing machines and dryers will break and be too expensive to fix, and sometimes, we lose our homes entirely, we still need clean clothes.

Long the refuge for college students, the young creative class, jobless, homeless and others not in possession of a few Whirlpools, laundromats are now flourishing. And the middle class is showing up, too, pride and laundry baskets in hand.

By all appearances, this would be a great time to get into the business of laundry; the Wall Street Journal recently profiled one such man, Brian McChristian, laid off in early 2008 and now running the Austin, Texas Community Coin Laundry; and he's one of the lucky ones. His business is doing well, thanks in part to his efforts to keep his parking lot and facility free of anyone not doing laundry.

Another week and another round of the national guessing game: when exactly will the Great Recession's alleged end impact me? Or my children? Or my neighbors? The "too big to fail" banking crowd has gotten lots of help from D.C. But the jobless rate, despite a decline of late in layoffs, continues to go skyward, or, in the words of that most famous working-class stiff Ralph Kramer to his wife, Alice, "to the moon!"

"This will be a very slow recovery," says Jack Kyser, founder of the Kyser Center for Economic Research at the Los Angeles County Economic Development Corporation. In a telephone interview with WalletPop, Kyser said that "small- and medium-sized businesses still can't get loans from banks." It is, says Kyser, "the perfect stalemate" -- unemployment continues to rise, businesses (especially smaller ones) suffer, and banks don't want to risk lending out their money.

The Minnesota Twins, or as they now call themselves, "The 2009 American League Central Division Champion Minnesota Twins," have unveiled new uniforms for 2010, joining the long list of teams looking to get fans to buy whole new wardrobes of team merchandise.

Everyone wants the latest in fashion, but paying $169.99 for a new home jersey that doesn't look much different than the 2009 model seems like a waste of money.

The best news is that the new jersey costs $10 less than the old one, but that may be more a sign of the recession than of the Twins subtly trying to offer a deal on something that is outrageously priced to begin with.

One of the worst things about the recession may turn out to be one of the best things about it: The layoffs are creating a new workforce -- the part-time workforce.

Cobbling together enough part-time jobs to add up to full-time work is becoming the skill set of the new part-time workforce.

A new economy is being formed, or at least expanded upon, as more laid off workers join the ranks of freelancers and contract workers who don't get benefits such as paid vacation and sick days, but get paid for each project they complete.

How well is the government's loan modification working? WalletPop's four-part special report continues with profiles of some of those trying to get help. To read the overview, click here.

Christine Attalla is among the lucky. The suburban Chicago homeowner not only got a temporary loan modification, but she's on track to convert it to a long-term adjustment before Christmas.

She even calls herself lucky, although when she does there's a quiver in her voice. That's because in the process, her credit took a beating.

For a solo entrepreneur -- Attalla, 38 and divorced, runs her own public relations company -- poor credit is a serious problem.

It all began last spring, when Attalla realized the economic downturn was making it increasingly difficult for her to manage her $3,000-a-month payment on her Bolingbrook home. And she was pregnant, so she knew she'd have less earning power later in the year.

Attalla heard from a friend about the modification program, applied in April through her lender, CitiMortgage, and waited.

She was approved for a three-month trial reduction -- for June, July and August -- which cut her monthly payments in half. If she kept current, she said, she would qualify for a permanent modification that started with a 2% interest rate and tiered up after a decade. So far, so good.

This is the fourth part of a five-part series about how the writer and her husband, Charlie, tackled a major overhaul of their home and the pitfalls they faced along the way. To read the first installment click here.

We continue to eat dust and stumble through piles of stuff. In spite of the inconveniences, I was starting to feel positive about the progress -- that is, until a large semi-truck pulled up to deliver the dome that goes over the tub.

Rick, our contractor, and my husband soon discovered the dome weighed close to 400 pounds. With daggers in their eyes, they asked, "And just how are we suppose to get this thing out?" Fortunately. I remembered reading on the website that the dome was actually quite light -- it was the packing that was so heavy. Grumbling and swearing under their breath, they emerged about 15 minutes later with a fiberglass dome to be temporarily stored in the living room.

Tom's Take: It always makes sense to add the cost of a few visits with your chiropractor to every home improvement budget.

How well is the government's loan modification working? WalletPop's four-part special report continues with profiles of some of those trying to get help. To read the overview, click here.

Kathy Partak went into loan modification armed with the powerful combination of knowledge and motivation. She had worked in the mortgage business, so she knew her rights and the right vocabulary to use. And she had a step-rate loan that was about to step up dramatically.

Add to that an on-the-job shoulder injury that left her unemployed and Partak figured she was a perfect candidate for modifying the loan on her three-bedroom home in Auburn, Calif.

But Chase Manhattan Bank denied her a modification, Partak said, telling her, "Unemployment is not a permanent hardship."

"Hopefully not!" said Partak, 42. "But it's one of the reasons they allow for on their paperwork of qualification."

How well is the government's loan modification working? WalletPop's four-part special report continues with profiles of some of those trying to get help. To read the overview, click here.

Public relations consultant Mark Bonacorso faced the good and bad news of divorce with resolve. The good: he got the 3,500-square-foot adobe in northwest Tucson. The bad: he also got the first and second mortgages and the $2,700-a-month payments.

He wanted to make it work, especially since his home was worth less than he owed.

At first, with business strong at his firm, Media Ink, this seemed feasible. Then, as the recession slowed work, forcing him to lay off his two employees in March, those payments became daunting.

Bonacorso was not looking for Bank of America, his lender, to cut his principal. He called hoping to reduce his monthly payments by combining his first and second mortgages, lowering their interest rates -- now 5.875% on his first; 7.625% on his second -- and extending the loan's term from 30 years to at least 40.

In this "Your Job Will Come" podcast, WalletPop's Aaron Crowe talks with Abraham Twerski about his new book, "Without a Job, Who Am I?" and how to get back your self esteem after being laid off.

Among the tips he gives are to spend some time mourning after a job loss and to not let your job define who you are.

Senate Banking Committee Chairman Chris Dodd unveiled his financial reform package on Tuesday and consumers could win big if the bill becomes law. Dodd proposes a strong Consumer Financial Protection Agency whose sole job will be to protect American consumers from fraud and abuse. He wants to be sure people get the clear information they need on loans and other financial products from credit card companies, mortgage brokers, banks and others.

Dodd introduced the bill along with fellow committee members Jack Reed, Charles Schumer, Robert Menendez, Daniel Akaka, Jon Tester, Mark Warner, Jeff Merkley and Michael Bennet -- all Democrats, so at least it looks as though this may be a partisan effort, but the issue is so important I hope it can become a bipartisan bill.

The biggest problem with the Democratic Party and its prospects in next year's midterms might not be the economy or jobs or health care after all. The problem might be rank stupidity.

A new poll from Research 2000 indicates that Democratic turnout on Election Day was low because, quite simply, Democrats didn't run as Obama Democrats. Creigh Deeds, for example, ran for governor and was completely destroyed on election day by Republican Bob McDonnell -- a disciple of evangelist and leg-press titan Pat Robertson. It's also worth noting that McDonnell once wrote that a woman's place is in the kitchen, and he opposes contraception. This guy beat the Democratic candidate in an increasingly progressive state that went for President Obama in 2008.

How did this happen? No, it wasn't the economy, as we previously thought.

Pastor Joel Osteen's 2004 book "Your Best Life Now" has sold more than 4 million copies -- buoyed in part by one uplifting and irresistible message: Positive thinking and faith will lead to material success and happiness. Now he's back with a new book and a new message for a new era: patience.

Back in 2005, he told BusinessWeek that "God's dream is that we be successful in our careers, and that we be able to send our kids to college. I don't mean that everyone is going to be rich, and I preach a lot on blooming where you're planted. But I don't have the mindset that money is a bad thing. . . I think we should have a mindset that God wants us to prosper in our relationships, our health, and our finances. God's desire is that we excel."

But there's just been just one problem: for all the talk of the prosperity gospel and God's tendency to impart material gain on those who have faith in him, no evidence has emerged that suggests that people who believe in God were less likely to lose their jobs, their homes or their retirement funds to the financial meltdown.