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Spain’s new government quickly sought to downplay remarks by its finance minister that raised doubts Friday over whether Madrid could deliver its goal of cutting its budget deficit.

Cristobal Montoro said in an interview with The Financial Times Deutschland that the target of 4.4 percent of gross domestic product this year was based on “outdated” growth forecasts by the previous government of 2.3 percent growth in 2012. The new government expects Spain to go into recession this quarter.

Montoro said of the 4.4 percent figure that “it is desirable, and it would be good to manage this,” according to the report. It said he didn’t want to make promises ahead of EU growth forecasts.

Hours later, the Spanish government scrambled to nuance the comments, which appeared to deviate from what has been a strict policy of deficit-cutting No teletrack payday loans.

Deputy Prime Minister Soraya Saenz de Santamaria said the government was determined to meet the 4.4 percent goal and if “more reforms and greater rigor” were needed to achieve it, they would be enacted.

Prime Minister Mariano Rajoy’s government says the 2011 deficit hit at least 8 percent of GDP, rather than 6 as forecast by the last government. Rajoy meets German Chancellor Angela Merkel in Berlin next Thursday.

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A $25 billion settlement between the nation’s major banks and U.S. states over deceptive foreclosure practices during the housing crisis is nearing completion.

Five major banks _ Bank of America, JPMorgan Chase, Wells Fargo, Citibank and Ally Financial (formerly GMAC) _ and U.S. states are “very close,” Housing and Urban Development Secretary Shaun Donovan said Wednesday.

Separately, two officials briefed on internal discussions say a proposed deal could be announced within weeks. Negotiators are finalizing a draft of the agreement, which must be reviewed by state attorneys general. Under the deal, banks would pay states and the federal government, which would fund programs to compensate homeowners.

The two officials asked to remain anonymous because they were not authorized to speak publicly about the deal.

Talks have been dragging on for more than a year between major U.S. banks and state attorneys general over fraudulent foreclosure practices that drove millions of Americans from their homes during the housing crisis.

In October 2010, major banks temporarily suspended foreclosures following revelations of widespread deceptive foreclosure practices by banks. That has backlogged millions of foreclosures that must be cleared before the housing market can fully recover free 3-in-1 credit report.

The settlement would only apply to privately held mortgages, not those held by government-controlled Fannie Mae or Freddie Mac. Fannie and Freddie own about half of all U.S. mortgages, roughly about 31 million U.S. home loans.

Individual states can opt out of the proposed deal. Some have disagreed over what terms to offer the banks.

In September, California announced it would not agree to a settlement over foreclosure abuses that state and federal officials have been working on for more than a year.

New York, Delaware, Nevada and Massachusetts, which sued five major banks earlier in December over deceptive foreclosure practices, have also argued that banks should not be protected from future civil liability.

And both sides have also fought over the amounts of money that should be placed in the reserve account for property owners who were improperly foreclosed upon. Many of the details of the deal, including a $25 billion cost for the banks, have been agreed upon, officials say.

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Skechers, the athletic shoe company, has unveiled the star of its upcoming Super Bowl commercial — and it’s not Kim Kardashian.

It’s a little dog named Mr. Quiggly.

Mr. Quiggly, a French bulldog, has replaced the reality television celebrity Kardashian, who starred in last year’s Super Bowl Skechers ad as a sultry heartbreaker.

Mr. Quiggly will share Skechers’ air time with investor Mark Cuban, who owns the National Basketball Association Champion Dallas Mavericks.

Skechers () said that Cuban will play a "key role" in the commercial, but acknowledged that the "scrappy" dog could be "stealing the spotlight."

Like Kardashian in last year’s ad, Mr. Quiggly will be dressed in athletic gear. He will be wearing two pairs of red Skechers GOrun shoes — not just one — along with a matching sports jersey.

Skechers said that Kardashian’s contract with the company expired at the end of 2011 one hour payday loan.

Kardashian and Mr. Quiggly share a strong connection to the NBA. Mr. Quiggly co-stars with Mavericks-owner, Cuban, while Kardashian was briefly married to NBA player Kris Humphries.

Skechers said that its ad will run in the first half of the game, before the two minute warning.

NBC is broadcasting the game on Feb. 5 from Indianapolis. According to the network, the average price of a 30-second ad is $3.5 million, a record high.

Other Super Bowl advertisers that have been confirmed for this year include Anheuser-Busch InBev (), Century 21 Real Estate, online domain company Go Daddy, the snack food company Frito-Lay, and automakers Audi and Hyundai. 

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After wild price swings that left investors bewildered and not a cent richer last year, stocks are rising again, and calm has settled over the market like blue skies after a storm.

Or maybe eye of the storm is the better metaphor.

“It’s a little too calm,” says the usually unflappable Jim Paulsen of Wells Fargo Management, a bullish stock strategist not easily spooked. “Maybe we’re setting up for a break.”

Whether that break will bring a rise or fall in stocks, Paulsen is not sure. But he suspects it’ll be big whichever direction.

For eight straight days, the Standard & Poor’s 500 index has moved up or down less than 1 percent, a run that is both remarkable and a tad eerie. The last time stocks moved so little for so long was a 13-day streak starting last April 21 _ just before a bumpy five-month drop to near bear-market lows.

Other curiosities, ominous or otherwise, from the first two weeks of the year:

_ The hapless and helpless are hot. Netflix Inc., the DVD-by-mail and streaming entertainment company that enraged customers by raising rates, is up 36 percent. Bank of America is up 19 percent. Both lost more than half their value in 2011.

_ The first is last. The best-performing of the S&P’s 10 categories last year, utilities, is now the worst. Those stocks rose 15 percent last year but have fallen 3 percent this year. Investors apparently have decided they’re too expensive. The second-best sector last year, consumer staples, is down 1.3 percent.

_ Stocks are up, even if profits aren’t. The S&P has risen 17 percent from its 2011 low on Oct. 3 despite increasing pessimism among analysts about profits. In three months since that low, analysts have cut fourth-quarter profit estimates at companies they follow by 19 percent, the most since the depths of the Great Recession three years ago.

For all of 2012, the analysts now say earnings will rise 10 percent, down from a projected 17 percent five months ago, according to FactSet, a provider of financial data.

_ Where have all the traders gone? The markets have been calm even though few shares are trading hands. Low volume typically exaggerates price moves. Experts say last year’s abnormally low average daily volume on the New York Stock Exchange, 4.3 billion shares traded, was one reason stocks gyrated so much. This year, volume has averaged 3.9 billion.

The good news for investors is that the S&P has risen 2.5 percent in 2012. But Barry Knapp, head of U.S. equity strategy at Barclays Capital, smells trouble.

The usual explanation for stocks rising this time of year is what’s known as the January effect: Investors sell stock at the end of previous year to lock in losses for tax purposes, then buy again in the new year no credit check payday loans.

This year, it’s more like the January defect.

Knapp says investors sold as expected, but then got nervous and didn’t follow through with the crucial second part _ buying. That’s his explanation, anyway for the low volume. He’s worried the small gains this year could prove fleeting.

“Investors don’t have a lot of conviction about the rally,” he says. “Most don’t believe the Europeans have solved their problems or that the slowdown in China won’t get worse.”

Or apparently that the U.S. economy will grow much faster.

The big news so far this year is that unemployment in the U.S. fell to 8.5 percent in December, the lowest in almost three years. That raised hopes that the labor market is finally on the mend.

But then the government reported Thursday that unemployment claims rose to 399,000 in the first week of the year, the highest in six weeks, and now investors are not so sure.

Further dampening spirits was a report that sales at retailers increased just 0.1 percent in December. Earlier, several retail chains, including Target, J.C. Penney Corp. and Kohl’s Department Stores Inc., cut their earnings forecasts. After Tiffany & Co. warned of disappointing holiday sales, investors pushed its stock down 11 percent.

Among S&P 500 companies making so-called pre-announcements about their fourth quarter earnings, FactSet says those cutting forecasts have outnumbered those raising them by three to one.

Which would be bad for stocks _ except in the upside-down world of investing. Linda Duessel, an equity market strategist at Federated Investors, says investors tend to drive down stocks too far on warnings that profits could fall short of expectations, creating bargains.

“We’re betting investors will be surprised,” Duessel says. “We’re bullish.”

So is Paulsen of Wells Fargo, notwithstanding his talk of an eerie calm. He says investors are paying 12.5 times expected per-share earnings for the S&P 500 versus a more typical 14.5 times, meaning they’re relatively cheap.

He thinks the gap will close, and stocks could jump 15 percent, assuming the unemployment rate continues to drop this year and investors become more confident. For an extra kick in your portfolio, he suggests buying stocks in industries closely tied to the economy, like industrials, materials and financials. All three fell last year.

“There’s a huge discount (on stocks) due to all the fear and phobia,” Paulsen says. “Rising confidence could be a big boost.”

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Sales of Lipitor, the top-selling drug in history, have leveled off after a steep plunge following the start of U.S. generic competition.

New figures from data firm IMS Health show that at the end of December, sales of Pfizer Inc.’s Lipitor were at just above a 37 percent market share.

Two new generic versions of the cholesterol-lowering drug came on the market at the beginning of December, and in the first full week of the month they had siphoned off a combined 59 percent of sales. By the last week of December, atorvastatin pills from Ranbaxy Laboratories Ltd. and the authorized generic from Watson Pharmaceuticals Inc. _ manufactured by Pfizer and marketed by Watson _ only picked up another 4 percent between them.

That’s because Pfizer is fighting hard to retain branded Lipitor sales, with big discounts to patients and insurers.

Lipitor lost U.S. patent protection on Nov. 30.

Pfizer, the world’s largest drugmaker, has been offering patients discount cards that give them a $4 copayment _ less than the copay for all but the most popular generics _ if they keep taking Lipitor rather than defecting to a cheaper generic version.

New York-based Pfizer also has been giving insurance plans that agree to only cover brand-name Lipitor for the time being the difference between what they had been paying for the brand and what they would pay for cheaper generics.

Until recently, Pfizer has been heavily advertising the copay program, called “Lipitor For You,” and is still running some ads. Usually drugmakers end all advertising of brands well before the first generic competition arrives.

But with Lipitor generating about $7.9 billion in annual sales in the U.S. and nearly $11 billion worldwide _about 16 percent of Pfizer’s annual revenue _ the company elected to pull out all the stops to hang onto sales for as long as possible.

The unprecedented strategy, closely watched because most other big drugmakers have their own blockbusters facing generic competition in the next couple of years, appears to be paying off. Normally, sales of a brand name drug continue to fall over the weeks and months after the start of generic competition.

“It’s been pretty stable after the first few weeks,” Michael Kleinrock, research director at the IMS Institute for Healthcare Informatics, told The Associated Press. “Normally you see a free fall.”

“It’s still early days,” he added.

Because the arrival of generics brought a chance for health insurers, plan sponsors and patients to save significant money, insurers had prepared long ago to automatically switch all their patients on Lipitor to generics. Pfizer’s strategy upended that.

IMS data show that U.S. patients were filling about 865,000 Lipitor prescriptions a week in November. That plunged by more than 55 percent, to about 397,000 prescriptions, in the first full week of December. But in the last three weeks of December, patients were filling about 350,000 brand-name Lipitor prescriptions a week. The number was down a bit for the week ended Dec. 30 because patient visits to doctors, and prescription sales as well, dropped during that holiday week.

Of the two generic versions, Ranbaxy’s has grabbed greater market share, about 35 percent of atorvastatin prescriptions to Watson’s 27 percent and Pfizer’s 37 percent.

Ranbaxy spokesman Chuck Caprariello said the company is “delighted that we are able to market atorvastatin and we anticipate increased market share over time.”

Ranbaxy, India’s largest maker of generic drugs, did not get permission from the Food and Drug Administration to sell its generic until the night of Nov. 30. That was because long-standing manufacturing issues at some Ranbaxy factories led the FDA to block shipments of many Ranbaxy drugs to the U.S. Ranbaxy, which has been working to resolve those issues, got FDA permission to make its atorvastatin at a New Brunswick, N.J., factory.

Watson spokesman Charlie Mayr said IMS data doesn’t capture all sales, and he believes his company is splitting the generic sales fairly evenly with Ranbaxy. Watson is based in Parsippany, N.J.

Pfizer spokesman MacKay Jimeson wrote in an email response to questions that “Lipitor continues to meet our expectations.

“Enrollment in the Lipitor For You program has been in line with our expectations, as we expect the majority of patients will be automatically switched to a generic,” he wrote. “Our goals are to support patient choice.”

Mayr said his company expected that “Pfizer’s very aggressive strategy would retain about 40 percent of the overall market. The fact that it’s below 40 demonstrates that they haven’t been quite as successful as we had anticipated.”

Sanford Bernstein analyst Dr. Tim Anderson has estimated that for a 90-day supply of Lipitor, even after paying the rebates to insurers and patients, Pfizer still can make a profit of roughly $100, compared with about $225 before generic competition.

That math all changes come this June, when additional generic companies will be allowed to enter the market. The increased competition will send prices for atorvastatin plunging, to as little as 25 percent of the original Lipitor price, about $115 to $160 per month, depending on dosage. It’s unlikely that Pfizer would then be able to offer discounts big enough to still make a profit.

“This will be an all-generic market” at that point, Mayr predicted.

Kleinrock, of IMS, said that having a brand-name company competing with generics, as Pfizer is doing now, should push down prices for all the versions.

“It’s clear that every company’s watching to see if this works,” he said, because up till now brand-name drugmakers have accepted rapid loss of sales of their blockbusters as inevitable.

“This could have repercussions,” he said, if other brand-name companies decide to follow suit.

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Vehicle sales in China rose a scant 2.5 percent in 2011 as higher prices and traffic controls kept buyers out of showrooms, but the market remained the world’s biggest.

The China Association of Automobile Manufacturers reported Thursday that total vehicle sales rose to 18.5 million last year, up from 18 million in 2010, when sales rose 32 percent.

In contrast, U.S. auto sales jumped 10 percent to 12.8 million vehicles in 2011. China overtook the U.S. as the biggest market by number of new vehicles sold in 2009.

The expiration of tax incentives and subsidies, along with restrictions on car purchases in Beijing, slowed sales, which had grown at a double-digit pace every year since 1999 _ apart from in 2008. Sales that year, at the height of the global crisis, rose 6.7 percent.

Car sales in China soared in 2010 after the government cut sales taxes and offered subsidies to spur demand, but growth slowed once the incentives ended.

“This data was what we expected,” said Jia Xinguang, managing director of the China Automobile Dealers Association, attributing the slowdown mainly to the end of preferential policies for car purchases.

In the long run, the auto industry’s development will not be limited by market demand or economic growth, “but by severe traffic congestion, air pollution and energy shortages,” said Jia low interest rate personal loans.

But he and other analysts say they expect growth to continue, given the relatively low level of vehicle ownership among increasingly affluent families.

Another industry group, the China Passenger Car Association, reported earlier this week that passenger car sales, which exclude buses and heavy trucks, rose 2.8 percent last year to 13.7 million vehicles.

Sales of SUVs jumped 25 percent, to 1.5 million, it said, while sales of sedans rose 3.6 percent to 9.6 million units. But the once-roaring boom in sales of vans and minivans collapsed, with minivan sales plunging nearly 11 percent to 2.1 million units.

The malaise has hit domestic automakers hardest, with Japanese and U.S. car makers enjoying a reputation for higher quality and brand value.

General Motors Co. and Ford Motor Co. earlier reported strong December sales in China though full-year growth fell.

Sales of GM-branded vehicles by the company and its Chinese partners rose 8.3 percent in 2011 to a new record of 2.5 million vehicles.

Ford’s sales for the year climbed 7 percent to 519,390 vehicles.

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U.S. Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner and Chinese leaders pledged Wednesday to build economic ties but Beijing gave no sign it would relent in its opposition to American sanctions on Iran.

Geithner also planned to press Beijing on U.S. complaints about its currency controls as well as lobby for support in Washington’s effort to rein in Iranian nuclear ambitions. China, a major buyer of Iranian crude, has rejected unilateral U.S. action as improper and industry analysts say it is unlikely to cooperate with an oil embargo.

The secretary and Chinese officials were upbeat about relations in portions of meetings reporters were allowed to watch and gave no sign of their conflicts.

“I believe your visit will go a long way to promote the stability and further growth of our economic relationship,” said Vice President Xi Jinping, in line to be China’s next leader.

Geithner replied that the two sides have a “very strong cooperative relationship” on global economic growth, nuclear nonproliferation and other issues.

“We are looking forward to building on that,” he said.

Washington is targeting Iran’s oil exports in an attempt to halt what Western governments say is its effort to develop nuclear weapons. The sanctions would bar financial institutions from the U.S. market if they do business with Iran’s central bank.

China’s fast-growing economy is the world’s biggest energy consumer and depends on Iran for 11 percent of its oil imports. China bought about 600,000 barrels of Iranian crude per day in November, nearly one-third of Iran’s daily exports of 2.2 million barrels, making Chinese cooperation key to the success of sanctions.

In a meeting Tuesday night with Geithner, Vice Premier Wang Qishan pledged cooperation on global economic issues and called on the United States to loosen export controls on high-tech goods, according to the official Xinhua News Agency cheap business cards. China has long objected to U.S. limits on sales of “dual use” technologies with possible military applications.

Geithner also met with Vice Premier Li Keqiang, another rising political star, and was due to meet Premier Wen Jiabao, the country’s top economic official.

Wen is due to visit major oil producers Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates and Qatar on a trip that starts this weekend.

Chinese officials have given no details of planned talks, but Wen would have a high-level opportunity to sound out possible alternative suppliers in case Beijing agrees to buy less Iranian crude.

Geithner’s visit was overshadowed by tensions over Iran but comes amid U.S. frustration with China’s currency controls and swollen trade surplus that Washington and other governments complain are hampering economic growth.

U.S. officials said Geithner would press Beijing to ease controls that Washington and other governments say keep its yuan undervalued and give its exporters an unfair price advantage _ a volatile issue at a time when the global economy is struggling and governments are under pressure to lower high unemployment.

The Chinese government reported Tuesday that its trade surplus with the United States swelled 24 percent in December over a year earlier to $17.4 billion.

Beijing has allowed the yuan to rise in recent years in tightly controlled trading but some American lawmakers are calling for punitive tariffs on Chinese goods if the communist government doesn’t move faster.

Later Wednesday, Geithner was to fly to Japan, another major buyer of Iranian oil, to lobby for support for sanctions.

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Nearly 250,000 state and local government employees lost their jobs in 2011, with the ax falling particularly hard on public school teachers.

And the bleeding is likely to continue in 2012, experts say.

These numbers stand in stark contrast to the private sector, which gained 1.6 million. The December unemployment rate fell to 8.5% after the economy added 200,000 jobs, the Labor Department reported Friday.

Things were not as rosy in the public sector. Some 181,000 local workers and 63,000 of their state peers were let go last year as the economic downturn continued to wreak havoc on government budgets. Teachers accounted for 113,000 of those losses.

Federal workers, meanwhile, have not fared as badly. They lost only 36,000 jobs last year, with the vast majority of them coming from the U.S. Postal Service, which is on the brink of insolvency.

State and local workers have seen their numbers dwindle throughout the Great Recession. Some 656,000 have been laid off since their employment peak in mid-2008 as governments try to cope with plummeting tax revenues, according to Greg Daco, principal U.S. economist at IHS Global Insight.

"These significant job losses mean fewer teachers in schools, and thus more students per classroom," Daco said. "It also means that state and local governments will face increasing difficulties in providing for still-high demand for public services, especially as federal assistance has all but dried up."

But the fortunes of state and local workers are starting to diverge personal loans for bad credit. State financial pictures are beginning to brighten as the overall economy gradually improves and tax revenues start to rise. After a brutal July, states have slowed their rate of layoffs. In December, it was flat.

Local governments, however, are continuing to downsize. They rely more on property taxes, and home assessments take a while to adjust. So they are still feeling the pain of the housing collapse.

Some 14,000 local workers got pink slips in December, the same number as in November and 5,000 more than in October. About 9,000 of these were educators.

And the trend isn’t likely to stop in 2012, as municipalities and some states continue to struggle. City finance officers are projecting more spending cuts — largely coming from personnel reductions — this year, according to a National League of Cities survey.

Residents are bearing the brunt of these reductions. Schools, for instance, are laying off nurses and speech pathologists, turning instead to temp workers to cut costs. Now, as a sign of a continuing budget squeeze, some are providing speech services remotely, said Tig Gilliam, chief executive of Adecco, a staffing agency. Children work with pathologists over a computer.

Gilliam is seeing more and more municipalities in fiscal trouble. And that will hurt consumer spending and the economy in general.

"We’re going to have a government drag on jobs throughout the year," he said. 

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The stock market offered a reminder Friday that even if the U.S. job market is improving, there’s plenty to worry about elsewhere in the world.

The unemployment rate fell in December to 8.5 percent, the lowest level in nearly three years. Yet stock indexes teetered between small gains and losses all day as traders fretted about Europe’s ongoing financial drama.

Italy’s borrowing costs spiked to dangerously high levels and the euro fell to a 16-month low against the dollar. U.S. bank stocks fell on concerns that the debt crisis will spread through the financial industry.

The Dow Jones industrial average ended down nearly 56 points and the S&P had a tiny loss, its first of the year. Both gained more than 1 percent over the first week of 2012.

Most European markets closed lower after new data showed economic sentiment and retail sales falling across the region. Unemployment is stuck at 10.3 percent in the 17 nations that use the euro.

Europe’s debt woes and China’s slowing economy are overshadowing signs of strength in the U.S. economy, said Doug Cote, chief market strategist at ING Investment Management.

“The global risks continue to exert their weight,” Cote said. Ultimately, improving U.S. stronger consumer demand, manufacturing activity and corporate profits will drive U.S. stocks higher, Cote said.

The Dow Jones industrial average fell 55.78 points, or 0.5 percent, to 12,359.92. Alcoa Inc. was the Dow’s biggest loser, slipping 2.1 percent. A Citi analyst forecast that the aluminum maker lost money in the fourth quarter of 2011 for the first time since the recession. Alcoa, which reports earnings Monday, said late Thursday it would close an aluminum smelter in Tennessee and other operations to cut costs.

The latest sign that the labor market is strengthening failed to spur buying by investors. The unemployment rate fell last month to 8.5 percent, while U.S. employers added a net 200,000 jobs, the Labor Department said.

The economy has generated 100,000 or more jobs each month for the past six, the longest such streak since April 2006. The number of people applying for unemployment benefits last week fell, pushing the four-week average of new claims down to its lowest level since June 2008 fast cash advance loan.

In other trading, the Standard & Poor’s 500 index fell 3.25 points, or 0.3 percent, to 1,277.81. The Nasdaq composite index rose 4.36, or 0.2 percent, to 2,674.22.

It was the second day in a row of indecisive trading on the stock market. The Dow and the S&P closed nearly unchanged Thursday. The indexes still had strong gains in this first, shortened trading week of the year. The Dow is up 1.2 percent this week, the S&P 1.6 percent. Trading was closed Monday, when the New Year’s Day holiday was observed.

The euro fell as low as $1.2696 Friday, its lowest point since Sept. 10, 2010. The yield on the 10-year Treasury note fell to 1.97 percent from 2 percent late Thursday as investors put money into low-risk investments. Bond yields fall when demand for them increases.

Italy is now paying 7.09 percent to borrow for 10 years, reflecting investors’ fears that the nation might default. Ireland and Portugal were forced to take bailouts when their ten-year borrowing rates rose above 7 percent.

Unlike those nations, Italy is too big for the rest of Europe to bail out. Leaders of France and Italy met in Paris on Friday to discuss the spiraling debt crisis that threatens to engulf both nations and push much of the region into recession.

In corporate news:

_ Family Dollar Stores Inc. plunged 7.5 percent, the most in the S&P 500, after reporting revenue that was less than Wall Street expected.

_ Dendreon Corp. jumped 16.3 percent after the drug developer said sales of its prostate-cancer therapy Provenge kept growing in the fourth quarter. Sales of the drug jumped 25 percent over the previous quarter.

_ Global Payments Inc. fell 3.4 percent after the processor of credit, debit and gift card payments reported earnings that fell short of analysts’ expectations. Janney Capital Markets analyst Thomas McCrohan said prospects for a sustained increased in profit margins “remain fleeting.”

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For many people whose job prospects faded most during the recession, 2011 brought a small dose of relief.

When unemployment was surging, the youngest U.S. workers, the oldest, those without college degrees and men as a whole all suffered disproportionately. Last year, those groups _ whose unemployment rates still exceed the national average _ had better success than others in finding jobs, according to Labor Department data released Friday.

Many found low-paying jobs in technology firms and as health care technicians, machinists, autoworkers, hotel and store clerks and waiters.

A big exception was African Americans, who were especially hard hit by the recession. Their unemployment rate didn’t budge in 2011.

All told, about 13.1 million Americans remain unemployed. About 2.5 million have quit looking for work altogether.

The proportion of American adults who have jobs has risen slightly over the past year, to 58.5 percent. But that’s down from 59.4 percent in June 2009, when the recession officially ended, and from 63.4 percent five years ago.

EDUCATION:

Unemployment among workers with less than a high school diploma fell from 15.1 percent to 13.8 percent. By comparison, unemployment for those with a bachelor’s degree declined by a smaller margin, from 4.8 percent to 4.1 percent.

“The less-educated tend to suffer more in downturns and recover more rapidly when employment picks up,” said Lawrence Katz, a Harvard labor and economics professor.

Katz cautioned that the less-educated will face difficulty in coming years as many industries demand harder-to-find technical skills from job applicants.

SEX:

The unemployment rate for men fell more than twice as fast as for women in 2011. Hiring was strong among male-dominated industries like manufacturing. And more men entered some fields long dominated by women, including health care and retail.

The unemployment rate for men sank from 10 percent to 8.7 percent. But women remain better off. Their rate fell from 8.6 percent to 8.3 percent.

“You’re seeing a shift,” Katz said. “A lot of men are dropping out of the workforce, but those that are staying are seeking more schooling, more technical certifications, and are entering fields they wouldn’t normally go into.”

AGE:

In 2011, employment prospects were best for workers ages 20 to 24 and those 65 and up. Some young men are being hired for entry-level positions at lower pay than in years past payday loans. And some retirees returned to the workforce last year after their retirement portfolios took a beating over the past four years.

Unemployment is dropping faster for those ages 35 to 64. But part of the reason is that a disproportionate share of people in this age group have given up looking for jobs. Once people stop looking for work, they’re no longer counted as unemployed.

Young adults and retirees fared slightly better than the middle-aged in 2011. Some gained lower-paying jobs in retail, manufacturing and technology firms.

The percentage of workers ages 20 to 24 and those over 65 who are employed rose at a faster pace than other age groups in 2011, according to the Labor Department data.

RACE:

Unemployment fell most among Hispanics. Their rate declined from 12.9 percent to 11 percent. In part, that’s because a larger-than-average share of Hispanics have stopped looking for work.

Immigration has also slowed. That means there are fewer foreign-born job-seekers in the United States.

Since the recession ended more than two years ago, the employment gap between blacks and whites has widened. The rate for African-Americans was unchanged last year at 15.8 percent. By comparison, white unemployment fell from 8.5 percent to 7.5 percent.

Unemployment among whites 25 and over with a bachelor’s degree is just 3.9 percent. For similarly educated African-Americans, the rate is more than double: 8 percent. In previous years, that gap had been roughly 1 percentage point.

One reason for the much wider disparity is that college-educated African-Americans are disproportionately represented in state and local government jobs, said Algernon Austin, director of the Economic Policy Institute’s Program on Race, Ethnicity and the Economy.

As those governments have increasingly slashed their payrolls to close budget gaps, many black workers have lost jobs.

“The gap is becoming more noticeable after recessions end, and African-American workers are facing increasingly long odds at finding a job,” Austin said.

Among the four identified racial groups, Asians have the lowest unemployment rate. It fell from 7.2 percent to 6.8 percent last year.

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