The news about unemployment for people new to the workforce is chilling. With headlines declaring young adults “Generation Jobless” and statistics showing that only half of people aged 18-24 are employed, it’s a challenging environment for young people looking to start their careers—and for their wallets. How are young people coping financially with a world of unpaid internships, part-time service jobs, intermittent freelance gigs, and moving in with Mom and Dad? A smart and funny new blog, the Billfold, is exploring the strategies people are using to cope with a tight job market by drawing heavily on personal stories, offering tips on improving personal finance, and discussing how financial news impacts people’s daily lives.

Woodstock Institute and more than 120 Chicago community investment stakeholders celebrated the successes of local leaders and learned about the causes behind the financial crisis at last week’s 2012 Community Investment Awards and screening of The Flaw. Woodstock Institute president Dory Rand presented Community Investment Awards to Adam Gross of Business and Professional People for the Public Interest (BPI), Cook County Commissioner Bridget Gainer, and Mary Ellen Podmolik of the Chicago Tribune.

The Principal Reduction Alternative (PRA) portion of the Home Affordable Modification Program (HAMP)  experienced slow growth in new participants, new data show. PRA, which is designed to incentivize servicers to write down principal as part of the loan modification process, saw relatively flat levels of 15-17,000 trial modifications for the past seven months. At the same time, PRA permanent modifications grew steadily, suggesting that servicers are converting trial modifications into permanent ones but are not aggressively recruiting new participants to the program.

The Eastgate neighborhood in Park Forest, a village thirty miles south of Chicago, has seen its share of troubles. Relatively isolated from other development by the Sauk Trail Woods Forest Preserve, many of the neighborhood’s 300-odd homes are in poor condition. Crime and blight have been on the rise, causing the Village of Park Forest to invest more and more funds into finding solutions to revitalize the area.