Business and Finance

The U.S. mortgage delinquency rate declined in the first quarter to the lowest level since 2008 as an improving job market and low interest rates helped more borrowers pay their bills.

The share of home loans at least 30 days late dropped to 7.4 percent from 7.58 percent in the previous three months, according to a report today from the Mortgage Bankers Association. The rate peaked at 10.1 percent in the first quarter of 2010 and was last lower in the third quarter of 2008, when it was 6.99 percent.

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U.S. service companies expanded at a healthy pace last month and stepped up hiring, though growth slowed a bit from the previous month.

The Institute for Supply Management, a private trade group, said Wednesday that its index of non-manufacturing activity dropped to 56 in March, down from February’s 57.3. Any reading above 50 indicates expansion.

The trade group of purchasing managers surveys roughly 90 percent of U.S. companies in all sectors outside of manufacturing. That includes retail, construction, financial services, health care, and hotels.

A measure of employment rose as more companies said they plan to add workers.

Separately, payroll processor ADP said the economy added 209,000 private-sector jobs in March. The ADP survey does not include government jobs.

Both reports are encouraging signs ahead of the government’s report on March job growth, which will be released Friday. Economists are predicting that employers added 210,000 jobs, which would be the fourth straight month of strong hiring.

More jobs have helped service companies grow. As hiring picks up, Americans are more willing to spend. Consumer spending jumped in February by the most in seven months, the government said last week payday loans no teletrack.

Department stores, electronics chains and other merchants are seeing more business. Retail sales increased in February by the most in four months. Department store sales rose in February by the most since November 2010.

Big job gains at service firms are necessary to reduce the unemployment rate. The service sector includes low-paying positions in retail and restaurants. But it also has higher-paying jobs in professions such as information technology, accounting and financial services.

The job gains have come as growth has picked up. The economy expanded at an annual rate of 3 percent in the final three months of last year.

Still, the hiring gains have not resulted in bigger paychecks for most people. Income grew just 0.2 percent last month, matching January’s weak increase. And when taking inflation into account, income after taxes fell for a second straight month.

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Daniel Macias is the face of Silicon Valley seldom seen by those who don’t live there.

When he was 19, he wasn’t starting what would become one of the world’s most successful tech companies, like Mark Zuckerberg did at that age when he founded Facebook. Macias spent his 19th birthday behind bars, where he’d been sentenced for assault.

Now 20, Macias spent a recent day learning to build houses as part of a construction job training program near Facebook’s headquarters. He hopes to join the carpenters union when he finishes the program.

“If I wasn’t going to school, I would have been in the streets,” Macias said.

Money and jobs abound in Silicon Valley for people with the right high-tech or business skills. For those who don’t, the Great Recession has meant the same challenge as anywhere else in the country.

Facebook moved into its new offices on the former campus of Sun Microsystems along San Francisco Bay not long before announcing plans for an initial public offering. Inside, employees wrestle with the enviable problem of what to do with their money once the IPO makes them overnight millionaires.

A short drive down the road, East Palo Alto saw the number of murders double from four to eight, a significant spike for a city of just 28,000 people. Average income hovers just under $18,000 annually, compared to more than $66,000 for Silicon Valley as a whole. The unemployment rate in December was 17 percent, compared to 8.3 percent region-wide.

Those disparities stem in part from the complicated histories of the small cities that span the Highway 101 corridor threading through the heart of Silicon Valley, and in part from national economic trends that have spared few struggling communities. They also reflect some changes unique to the most recent tech boom, fueled by social media, cloud computing and mobile apps.

As per capita income rises in region, the median income has fallen, suggesting that as some people are getting richer, more are making less. The percentage of students in Silicon Valley public schools receiving free or reduced-price lunches has increased steadily over the past several years, an indication of hard times for more families.

Data on these economic trends are collected every year in the Silicon Valley Index, compiled by local nonprofit analysts. This year’s report highlighted the recovery of the region’s high-tech economy as wildly successful companies like Facebook go on hiring sprees.

But that recovery has not had the same ripple effect on the region as a whole compared to previous tech booms, said Russell Hancock, head of Joint Venture, one of the groups behind the index.

In the past, companies like Hewlett-Packard Co. and Lockheed Martin Corp. brought mid-level jobs to Silicon Valley along with the expected science, engineering and management positions, Hancock said. But globalization has sent the manufacturing jobs overseas online pay day loans. Meanwhile, information technology has made once-plentiful clerical and office positions obsolete.

“The technologies that we invented here have actually eliminated entire classes of jobs,” Hancock said. Without those jobs, the prospects for workers without high-end tech skills have become even more challenging:

“If you took away tech, our region would look like any other region, maybe even worse,” he said.

The contrast between the haves at Facebook and the have-nots in East Palo Alto nearby has stirred some tension. City Councilman Carlos Romero is pushing for the company to do more to address traffic and the resulting air quality issues created by the influx of new workers. He also worries that especially after Facebook’s IPO, newly flush employees will start buying up the city’s relatively affordable real estate close to their offices and send housing prices spiraling higher than low-income residents can afford.

“This is not about making sure that Facebook doesn’t come into the community,” Romero said. “This is about making sure East Palo Alto is not left out.”

Nearly half of Facebook’s employees take some form of alternative transportation, and the company is placing a hard cap on the number of vehicles allowed on and off campus to keep traffic down, said Facebook spokesman Tucker Bounds. Facebook has also been working with local developers on efforts to build housing for employees on vacant land near the campus to lessen the impact on the existing housing market, Bounds said.

Facebook has initiated some outreach into the surrounding community, including support for the program where Macias is learning to be a carpenter, known as JobTrain.

Kail Lubarsky, director of marketing at JobTrain, said no graduates have gotten jobs with Facebook yet, but she said she’s working with the company in hopes of establishing an internship program. JobTrain has culinary arts training that could lead to jobs for students in Facebook’s cafeterias. But the real goal is to place students in entry-level jobs that could let them advance to join the ranks of the in-demand coders, designers and executives who thrive most in Silicon Valley.

At JobTrain, some students said they were gunning for Facebook jobs. But many said they were simply grateful for the chance to start over, to get a foothold in an economy that has challenged many of them, even in a place where on paper the recovery is in full swing.

Macias said he sees parallels between his effort to get ahead and the Facebook employees up the road, whom he sees as average people who worked hard and succeeded.

“They took advantage of opportunities,” he said.

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Alberici Corp. said today it has bought a Topeka, Kan.-based company that specializes in building water treatment facilities using the design-build method.

Terms of Alberici’s deal to buy CAS Construction LLC were not released. Mike Burke, executive vice president of Alberici, said in a statement the acquisition provides Alberici with additional design-build capabilities and the ability to reach new customers and markets.

Alberici and CAS began working together three years ago, when they teamed with engineering firm Burns & McDonnell on the $73 million aquifer recharge system for the city of Wichita, Kan.

Mike Hafling, president of CAS, and other senior managers will remain with the company, which has been renamed CAS Constructors. LLC. Charles A. Stryker founded the company in 1985 and managed the business until his death in 2006.

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The number of Americans signing contracts to buy previously owned homes in December held near a 19-month high, showing the stabilization in the market that began in late 2011 will extend into the new year.

The index of pending home sales decreased 3.5 percent last month after jumping a combined 18 percent in October and November, figures from the National Association of Realtors showed today in Washington. It was the best back-to-back reading since a buyer tax credit boosted demand in early 2010.

Wall Street opened higher Wednesday following reports that the International Monetary Fund could get more cash to help countries struggling to manage their debt.

The Dow Jones industrial average is up 43 points at 12,483 after the first half-hour of trading. That’s an increase of 0.4 percent. Bank of America Corp. and JPMorgan Chase & Co. are the Dow’s leading stocks. BofA rose 2.6 percent, JPMorgan 2 percent.

Goldman Sachs Group Inc. jumped 3.5 percent after the investment bank reported earnings that trumped analysts’ expectations. Profit still sank 58 percent in the last three months of 2011, a result of sinking interest rates and volatile financial markets.

Other financial stocks were sharply lower. State Street Corp. dropped 6.5 percent.

Christine Lagarde, the IMF’s managing director, said Tuesday that the fund was looking at ways to increase the amount it can lend to countries, partly to deal with Europe’s debt crisis.

The S&P 500 index is up 5 points to 1,298. The Nasdaq is up 16 points, or 0.6 percent, to 2,744.

Yahoo Inc. rose 2 no credit check payday loans.5 percent on news that co-founder Jerry Yang is leaving the struggling Internet company. The departure clears the way for newly hired CEO Scott Thompson to take more radical action to shake up the company.

The Federal Reserve said manufacturing rose 0.9 percent in December, the biggest increase since December 2010. Output surged as companies bought more machines and materials.

Among other stocks making large moves Wednesday:

_ Amphenol Corp. soared 10 percent, the largest gain in the S&P 500. The manufacturer of fiber optic cables reported earnings that beat analysts’ expectations.

_ Linear Technology Corp. jumped 8.3 percent. The Milpitas, Calif.-based circuit maker said it expects revenue to rise between 4 and 8 percent in its third quarter following strong order increases in December and January. It also raised its dividend by a penny to 25 cents per share.

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WORKING OUT: After 15 years in Chicago, Sarah Dorsey Tourville is back in her hometown to open the 34th franchise of The Dailey Method, a national network of fitness studios.

Tourville’s studio, in the Village at Schneithorst at 1560 South Lindbergh Boulevard, will officially open tomorrow but is the location for a private cocktail reception tonight.

Tourville, who is former KTRS (AM 550) honcho Tim Dorsey’s eldest daughter, has been the head of ESPN’s ad sales for the Midwest the past 10 years.

She’ll be giving up that job at the end of the year to permanently relocate in St payday loans for self employed. Louis with her two children, Lilly, 4, and Ben, 2 ½. Her ex-husband is also moving here to be close to their children, Tourville said.

Tourville is offering special discounts and packages - such as six weeks of free classes for $100 — over the weekend to celebrate the opening of the studio. She added that proceeds from the opening events will go to St. Louis Children’s Hospital.

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Europe failed to get the leaders of the world’s wealthiest economies to help out with its debt troubles, but everyone left a G-20 summit Friday relieved that at least they forced the Greek prime minister not to hold the world hostage with a bailout vote.

It took a public berating of Greek Prime Minister George Papandreou, and Greece’s politics are in upheaval as a result, but the shaky bailout plan appears back on track for now.

Investors had been hoping the Group of 20 nations would lend the struggling eurozone a helping hand _ but the G-20 leaders said Europe needs to help itself first. They said the International Monetary Fund could be beefed up to help more, but not for at least three more months.

The debt crisis that rocked the 17-nation currency union for the past two years has reached a new high and now threatens to push the world economy into a second recession.

Despite the political firepower at the summit _ which included the leaders of Europe, China, Russia, Brazil, India and the United States, among others _ meeting was overshadowed by political turmoil in Greece and worries about Italy, which accepted IMF supervision of its reform efforts.

The IMF move was an highly unusual intervention into the affairs of one of the world’s leading economies.

Europe’s own rescue efforts, cobbled together at several crisis meetings last week, left open many important questions, making cash-rich countries like China, Russia or Brazil reluctant to commit more than just words.

“It’s important that the IMF sees its resources reinforced,” Jose Manuel Barroso, the president of the European Commission, told reporters. However, any decisions on how to reinforce the IMF were left until February.

The lack of detail disappointed markets, with stocks, bonds and the euro falling. Italy’s borrowing rates, in particular, hit worrying new highs.

With their own finances already stretched from bailing out Greece, Ireland and Portugal _ and traditional allies like the United States wrestling with their own problems _ eurozone countries were looking to the IMF to use its financial reserves and rescue experience to help prevent the debt crisis from spreading to its larger economies, such as Italy and Spain.

The most likely way the eurozone could still get additional financing is through a special account under the auspices of the IMF, into which individual countries could make payments. Those investments in turn could then be used to boost the currency union’s own bailout fund, the euro440 billion ($606 billion) European Financial Stability Facility.

But German Chancellor Angela Merkel and IMF chief Christine Lagarde both said that at the two-day meeting not a single country made a firm commitment that it would participate payday loans with no fax.

The broader increase of the IMF’s resources, which also remained vague, is designed to help countries around the world, not just the eurozone.

Barroso said several countries had indicated they would provide bilateral loans to the IMF _ which would give it more funds without collecting money from reluctant members like the U.S.

The G-20 final statement also said the IMF should somehow issue more special drawing rights, or SDRs, the fund’s own reserve currency that can be exchanged for cash with central banks around the world. SDRs can just be created and do not require new commitments from IMF member states.

Finance ministers will now have to work out the details of these measures. French President Nicolas Sarkozy said the G-20 would next deal with the topic in February.

The lack of progress on the debt crisis troubled some countries that would be hard hit by another recession in the eurozone.

“Every day that the eurozone crisis continues, every day it isn’t resolved, is a day that has a chilling effect on the rest of the world economy,” said British Prime Minister David Cameron. “We are ready to do our part to help stabilize the world economy. … But you can’t ask the IMF or other countries to substitute for the action that needs to be taken within the eurozone itself.”

The G-20 announcements show how dramatically the powers have shifted within the IMF.

Until two years ago, the IMF _ dominated by the traditional powers in Europe and the U.S. _ mostly applied its painful financial adjustment programs to poor and emerging economies in Asia, Latin America and Africa.

Now, it’s growing powers like China, Brazil and South Africa that have to decide whether helping Europe is a worthy investment.

In an effort to do just that, Italy, the eurozone’s third largest economy with a debt load of 120 percent of gross domestic product, asked the IMF for help monitoring promised budgetary and structural reforms on a quarterly basis.

The country’s borrowing rates have risen sharply this week _ and jumped further on Friday _ on fears that Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi does not have the political strength to implement the reforms.

Lagarde said the IMF hopes to start checking whether Italian measures promised to the eurozone are actually implemented by the end of November, to target “a lack of credibility.”

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