Battered by the recession, families are scaling back their holiday plans. Here’s why that’s a good thing.

Three states had record unemployment rates in October, according to data released by the U.S. Labor Department.

If AOL's announcement on Thursday of another 2,500 job cuts is anything to go by, the painful layoffs that have ravaged the media industry over the past year are nowhere near over.

The global economy is heading toward a sustained recovery but given the risks of another downturn it is too soon to withdraw stimulus, International Monetary Fund Deputy Managing Director John Lipsky said on Friday.

It is "not quite time yet" to raise interest rates in the U.S., Charles Plosser, president of the Federal Reserve Bank of Philadelphia, told CNBC Thursday.

Whiel Wall Street profits have rebounded to record levels, the Street is not showing signs yet of a real employment recovery.    

Wall Street firms have started bring new workers on board, but executives claim they can't find top talent despite the thousands of professionals out of work.

US reliance on a growing Chinese economy to continue to spur growth of the American economy could be an ill-fated notion, Bill Gross, Pimco's founder and CEO, told CNBC.

As experts debate the potential speed of the US recovery, one figure looms large but is often overlooked: nearly 1 in 5 Americans is out of work or under-employed.

Additional economic stimulus such as a payroll tax cut would boost hiring, Mike Jackson, the CEO of AutoNation, told CNBC on Thursday.

The Obama administration is promising to change the way it counts the number of jobs saved or created by the economic stimulus program, after the Government Accounting Office revealed measurement flaws in the current system.

Factory activity in the U.S. Mid-Atlantic region grew in November for a fourth straight month, and faster than expected, a survey showed Thursday.

A gauge of the U.S. economy's prospects rose for a seventh straight month in October to a two-year high, a private research group said on Thursday, indicating the recovery was becoming entrenched.

AOL plans to cut one-third of its workforce, or about 2,500 jobs, in an effort to trim some $300 million in annual costs as part of its planned spin-off from Time Warner.

The number of U.S. workers filing new applications for jobless insurance was unchanged last week, but the four-week moving average of claims dropped to its lowest in almost a year.