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The ongoing land shrine row has badly hit the rice sellers in Ranbir Singh Pura district of Jammu.

A couple of months back, the farmers in the area were upbeat about their rice crop. Even the wholesale dealers were rejoicing, as the producers had already wrapped up 70 per cent of their sowing by July.

The rates of the premium quality Basmati rice had risen from Rs.2000 per quintal last year to Rs.6, 000. spelling an almost three-fold increase in the profits this year.

But the celebrations were marred by the shutdowns and curfews over the transfer of land to a Hindu shrine board.

Wholesale dealers said that the local distributions are almost nil. Even their payments have been badly affected since the banks are closed either due to the shutdown calls or because of the curfew.

“The local distribution is almost nil. The shops are closed and people don”t come out to buy. There is an interest burden also that is accumulating,” said Harmohidner Singh, a Basmati rice dealer.

Many shopkeepers said that the premium quality rice of Ranbir Singh Pura was famous among the tourists and pilgrims also. With a fall in the number of tourists their already suffering business is in shambles.

The region has been witnessing agitation and protests for almost past two months on the issue of allotment of land to the Amarnath Shrine Board for setting up temporary shelters for the devotees taking part in the annual Amarnath Yatra.

American workers’ confidence in the job market is as low as it was during the 2001 recession, according to a survey released Thursday.

When asked whether this is a bad time to find a quality job, 65 percent said it was, matching the level of the 2001 recession, according to the survey by Rutgers University’s John J. Heldrich Center for Workforce Development.

With unemployment at 5.7 percent, the highest level since 2004, and weekly unemployment claims hitting a six-year high earlier this month, workers are worried about everything from their weekly hours to their total pay.

As for retirement, many agree with Ray O’Connell, 56, an editor of engineering and computer science journals in New York City. “Won’t happen,” he said.

The survey found one third of workers said they often don’t have enough money to make ends meet.

About one-third of respondents say the amount they owe on credit cards exceeds their retirement savings; another 3 percent say their credit card debt would cancel out their retirement account, according to the random survey of 1,000 people, 587 of whom are in the labor force.

Only half of respondents said they are working the number of hours they want to work and a third say there has been a change in the number of hours they work in the past three months. Eighteen percent were working more hours, and 14 percent worked fewer.

“This is a startling amount of change in a major area of people’s lives over a very short period,” according to a report on the survey called “The Anxious American Worker.”

Nearly a third of respondents believe they are treated less as a person by their employer and more as “just someone who works” at their job.

Still, 91 percent of workers say they’re “very” or “somewhat satisfied” with their jobs. A majority of American workers hold favorable attitudes toward their health and retirement benefits (62 percent), the number of hours they work (83 percent), and their annual income (74 percent).

However, only 55 percent of hourly workers are satisfied with their health and medical benefits, compared to 75 percent of salaried workers.

The survey also shows a wide disparity in parents’ working hours: women with children at home work an average of 36 hours a week, while men with children at home work 48 hours per week.

Sixty-nine percent of respondents said they saved for retirement beyond their Social Security contributions, while 73 percent contribute to employer-sponsored retirement plans, and 67 percent report contributing to non-employer sponsored retirement plans. These figures are virtually unchanged from when the same questions were asked in 2005, and are down slightly from 2000.

Asked who is responsible for helping laid off workers, only 27 percent said workers were responsible for helping themselves, down from 52 percent in June 2003. Roughly one fifth said the government was responsible and another quarter said employers were responsible. The other options were combinations, such as workers and employers, workers and government, or all three equally were responsible.

The study had a sampling of error of plus or minus 4.2 percent, for workers in the labor force.

Strong exports and consumer spending supported by government stimulus checks pushed the U.S. economy ahead at a solid 3.3 percent annual rate in the second quarter, much stronger than first thought, but growth is expected to flag as those factors fade.

The U.S. Commerce Department on Thursday said consumer spending and net exports were more robust than initially estimated and that inventories fell less sharply. A month ago, it had said U.S. Gross Domestic Product had expanded at a 1.9 percent rate in the quarter.

The revised GDP figure was much stronger than the 2.7 percent gain Wall Street analysts had expected.

The report added to evidence the U.S. economy may skirt the downturn many had forecast as a result of a deep decline in housing markets, tight credit and high energy and food prices.

U.S. stocks were up more than one percent at midday on the economy’s unexpected vigor and the dollar pared losses against the euro, while Treasury debt prices fell.

“It’s clear that the second quarter not only wasn’t a recession quarter, it was actually a very robust quarter,” said Michael Englund, chief economist for Action Economics in Boulder, Colorado.

GDP had grown at a sluggish 0.9 percent rate in the first quarter after a 0.2 percent contraction in the final three months of 2007. The fourth quarter of last year was the weakest since July-September 2001, when the economy was in recession.

The Federal Reserve has held benchmark interest rates at 2 percent since April to bolster the struggling economy. Growth in the second quarter at close to the level of long-term trends could make it easier for the Fed to raise interest rates to combat troublesome inflation.

However, many analysts worry that exports and consumer spending, which have buoyed the economy, are likely to taper off in the second half of the year as government-support spending dries up and weakening global growth and a stronger U.S. dollar crimp demand from abroad.

“This number seems to overstate the underlying strength even though exports are obviously strong,” said James O’Sullivan, an economist at UBS Securities in Stamford, Connecticut.

WELCOME LIFT

Consumer spending, which fuels two-thirds of the U.S. economy, grew at an upwardly revised 1.7 percent rate in the second quarter rather than the 1.5 percent pace first reported.

Meanwhile, exports grew at a 13.2 percent annual rate instead of the 9.2 percent pace initially estimated. In all, a narrowing trade gap contributed more than 3 percentage points to GDP growth.

Housing, however, continued to be a sore spot. Residential construction fell at an annual 15.7 percent pace, slightly more than the 15.6 percent decline reported earlier.

Meanwhile, inventories dipped at an annualized $49.4 billion in the quarter, rather than the $62.2 billion drop first reported, a possible sign that businesses are less pessimistic than believed.

In a separate report, the Labor Department said the number of U.S. workers filing new claims for jobless benefits fell by 10,000 last week, although it remained at elevated levels indicating a weak labor market.

Continued claims — people remaining on the benefits rolls after drawing an initial week of aid — hit the highest level since November 2003, although that figure may have been lifted by a program extending the duration of unemployment benefits.

The economy’s sluggishness has hit the job market hard. Employers have shed a total of almost half a million jobs this year, and unemployment hit a four-year high of 5.7 percent last month.

U.S. factories saw a surprisingly hefty increase in their orders for big-ticket products in July, reflecting continued strength in export sales and a boost to business investment from the government’s tax stimulus package.

Economists, however, remain worried that spreading economic weakness overseas and a rebound in the value of the dollar could spell an end to the export boom later this year.

The Commerce Department said Wednesday that orders for durable goods rose 1.3 percent last month, far above the slight 0.1 percent increase Wall Street had been expecting.

The July increase matched a 1.3 percent rise in June, which was revised up from an earlier reading of 0.8 percent. The matching gains were the strongest since orders for durable goods, items expected to last at least three years, jumped by 4.1 percent in December.

Wall Street investors were encouraged by the better-than-expected gain in durable goods orders. The Dow Jones industrial average rose 89.64 points to close at 11,502.51.

A huge rebound in orders for commercial aircraft, which had fallen sharply in June, led last month’s strength. But even outside the volatile aircraft category, there was widespread growth, indicating that American companies are continuing to benefit from a boom in exports due mainly to the decline in the value of the dollar earlier this year.

“These upbeat capital goods numbers amid a downtrodden U.S. consumer sector indicates how helpful a weak dollar is in the current cycle,” said Daniel J. Meckstroth, chief economist for the Manufacturers Alliance/MAPI, an industry trade group.

But some economists expressed concerns over how much longer the export boom can last, given spreading economic weakness in Europe, Japan and other major overseas markets. They noted that the dollar, which had been on a long slide, has come off its recent lows, which could translate into less of a price advantage for U.S. exporters.

“The recent downturn in growth abroad and stabilization of the dollar could put pressure on capital goods spending in the months ahead,” said Zach Pandl, an economist at Lehman Brothers.

Other analysts were impressed with the staying-power demonstrated in the new orders figures for June and July, and some said it showed the boost manufacturers are getting from increased demand by businesses hiking their investment spending to take advantage of $51 billion in business tax breaks included in the $168 billion economic stimulus package passed by Congress in February.

The government will release its revised estimate for economic growth in the April-June quarter on Thursday, and economists said they were revising upward their estimates for both second quarter and third quarter gross domestic product growth based on the better-than-expected orders numbers. GDP measures the value of all goods and services produced within the U.S. and is the broadest barometer of the country’s economic health.

David Wyss, chief economist at Standard & Poor’s in New York, said he believed the current estimate of 1.9 percent GDP growth for the second quarter will be boosted to between 2.5 percent and 3 percent, while growth in the current quarter will be around 1.7 percent.

“Exports are holding up a lot better than we thought they would with the weakness in Europe and Japan, and we are seeing the impact of the stimulus package on business investment decisions,” he said.

Demand for commercial aircraft shot up 28 percent in July. Economists cautioned against reading too much into that one-month surge since it followed a 21.3 percent decline in June in what is a very volatile category. While there is concern that airplane makers will be hurt by soaring jet fuel prices that has forced airlines to cancel or delay contracts for new planes, other analysts said such weakness could be offset by increased orders by many booming Asian countries.

Chicago-based Boeing Co. wrapped up the huge Farnborough, England, international air show last month with orders for 197 planes, including a headline grabbing deal with Air China for 45 planes. European rival Airbus did even better, signing orders for 247 planes.

Boeing is currently negotiating a new contract with the International Association of Machinists. The union is warning the company that a greatly improved offer is needed if it wants to avoid a strike when the current contract expires on Sept. 3.

Elsewhere, orders for motor vehicles also rose by 1.2 percent in July. While it was the second straight monthly increase, it mainly reflected a rebound following curtailed activity related to the strike at auto parts supplier American Axle rather than a sign of any sustained rebound in the beleaguered sector.

Detroit’s automakers have watched demand slump this year because of the anemic economy and soaring gasoline prices which hurt sales of previously hot models such as light trucks and sport utility vehicles. Auto sales fell in July to the slowest pace in 16 years with General Motors Corp. reporting a drop of 26 percent compared to July 2007, while Ford Motor Co. experienced a 15 percent decline.

Overall, orders for transportation equipment were up 3.1 percent last month after a 1.9 percent drop in June. Outside of transportation, orders posted a 0.7 percent increase, far better than the 0.3 percent decline analysts had expected.

Strength outside of transportation reflected strong gains in such categories as primary metals, including steel, and machinery, both areas which have been helped by overseas demand.

Non-defense capital goods excluding aircraft, a category seen as a good proxy for business investment, jumped by 2.6 percent last month, the best showing since April. Analysts attributed part of this gain to decisions by companies to take advantage of provisions in the economic stimulus bill that rewards tax benefits to companies who purchase equipment this year.