Every Thursday, The Takeaway focuses on work issues.  This week we take a look at ethnic and racial discrimination in the hiring process and what some people are doing to better their chances of getting called back for a job.  Takeaway work contributor Chaz Kyser, author of "Embracing the Real World (The Black Woman's Guide to Life After College)," says the practice of "whitening" resumes, i.e. making black names sound less ethnic, is becoming increasinlgy popular in a super-competitive economy.  Tuere Murray, a working mother of two from Oklahoma, explains why she changed her name from "Akanju" to "Murray" after she had problems scoring interviews, despite a competitive resume.

With unemployment at 10.2 percent, the string of layoffs around the country seems to be getting longer and longer every month. As companies restructure to survive the down economy, however, a flurry of pink slips in one department sometimes signals hiring in another. Takeaway contributor Beth Kobliner and career consultant Pamela Watson talk about when layoffs mean potential opportunities, as companies then hire in areas of potential future growth.

With unemployment above 10 percent, it's harder to find a job now than it has been in decades. So it might seem strange to say you should consider looking for something new ... but that’s the advice of two work experts we speak to today. Takeaway contributor Beth Kobliner and Lauren McDonald, a recruiter at Intuition Co-Op, tell us why staying in a job too long can be a bad plan for the long term.

Some 5.6 million American manufacturing jobs have been lost since 1999, and many of those jobs don't appear to be coming back anytime soon. At least some of the people who worked in manufacturing are trying to learn new job skills: We look at the successes and failures of retraining programs with Takeaway contributor Beth Kobliner. We're also joined by Hal Higdon, president of Ozarks Technical Community College in Springfield, Mo., who says community colleges are too overburdened to be effective; and Robin Ambrosy, laid off in January of 2006 from her job with Sony and now retraining to become an occupational therapist.

"Green jobs" were a much-repeated idea on the campaign trail in last year's presidential election; the administration is visiting two plants that aim to produce these jobs. Today the president goes to Arcadia, Fla., to highlight a plan for "Smart Grid" technology, and the vice president announces the reopening of an old GM plant as a factory for electric cars. Beyond the public events, we look at how much progress the White House has made in its plan to create "green jobs" with Bracken Hendricks, senior fellow at the Center for American Progress, who also served as an advisor to the Obama presidential campaign. We also speak to Susan Hoffman, editor of The Arcadian, along with Andrew Eder, business reporter for The News Journal in Wilmington, Del..

Employees goofing off and wasting time at work is always a concern for bosses. But Takeaway contributor Beth Kobliner says that as the economy tightens, employees are taking on extra responsibilities and that blowing off steam in creative ways can actually help maintain ones overall focus. She tells us why, with David Rock, author of "Your Brain at Work: Strategies for Overcoming Distraction, Regaining Focus and Working Smarter All Day Long." They share some downtime strategies that even your boss would approve of.

In the current economy, both younger and older people are finding it harder to get, or keep, a job. According to BusinessWeek, only 46 percent of people aged 16 to 24 had jobs last month – that is the lowest number since the government began tracking it in 1948. We look at the role of age in the workplace with Beth Kobliner, Takeaway contributor and author of "Get a Financial Life: Personal Finance in Your Twenties and Thirties." We also speak with 25-year-old Harvey Cummings, laid off from his job as a middle school band teacher in June; and 65-year-old Jackie Goldenberg, who was laid off from the financial services industry two years ago, and cites her age as the primary reason she lost her job.

Riots broke out in Detroit this week, when tens of thousands of residents lined up to apply for federal help to pay their rent, mortgages and utilities. We'll hear from the former police commander of the precinct where the mayhem happened, Gary Brown, who is running for the Detroit City Council, and Cheryl Johnson, CEO of the Coalition for Temporary Shelter, who was also on the scene. We'll also hear from Andrew Stettner, a deputy director for the National Employment Law Project, to see how this incident fits into the national economic picture.

Sen. Christopher Dodd (D-Conn.) plans to push for a "super-regulator" that would merge the four agencies currently regulating the banking industry. Dodd wants a smaller role for the Federal Reserve; this plan conflicts with President Obama's plans for regulation. Louise Story, reporter for The New York Times, tells us why.

On the one-year anniversary of the Lehman Brothers bankruptcy, President Obama visited New York City to make a case for expanding federal regulation of Wall Street. To parse the President's speech and the impediments to regulatory reform as the economy's nosedive slows, we speak with Arthur Levitt, a senior advisor at the Carlyle Group and former chairman of the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission. We also speak with Peter Morici, an economist and business professor at the University of Maryland.

As President Obama spoke on Wall Street about the urgent need for tighter financial regulation, a federal judge issued a scathing ruling about how poorly regulators have been doing their job. The judge rejected a $33 million settlement between the SEC and Bank of America, saying the SEC's accusations of inadequate disclosure by the bank over bonuses paid at Merrill Lynch must now go to trial. We talk to Louise Story, Wall Street and finance reporter for our partner, the New York Times.

President Obama will give a speech on Wall Street today: the one-year anniversary of the collapse of Lehman Brothers. We talk to New York Times finance reporter Louise Story to look at what the president might say and how he will be received by Wall Street employees.

The BBC documentary "Aftershock" takes a close up look at how Americans are getting on one year after the economic collapse. To record “Aftershock,” our partners at the BBC World Service asked Steve Evans, the host of BBC show “Business Daily” to go to Nevada and chronicle the lives of those impacted. Steve Evans joins us to talk about the documentary.

Watch a promo video of "Aftershock":

Unemployment numbers last week showed the U.S. jobless rate at 9.7 percent: the highest since 1983. This number may be misleadingly low, however; the official unemployment rate counts only those who are actively looking for work, not those who have given up on the job search. When positive economic signs tempt those folks back into the job market, the official unemployment rate could actually go up. Louise Story is a Wall Street and finance reporter for our partners The New York Times -- she joins us to tell us more.

A year ago today, the U.S. Department of the Treasury bailed out mortgage giants Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac. By the end of the week, financial behemoth Lehman Brothers had filed for bankruptcy and a global economic crisis had taken hold. We start a week of coverage that looks at the repercussions of the financial meltdown and where we're at, a year after it began.

We are joined by a roundtable of leading business journalists including Gillian Tett, capital markets editor for The Financial Times and author of “Fools Gold: How the Bold Dream of a Small Tribe at J.P. Morgan Was Corrupted by Wall Street Greed and Unleashed a Catastrophe;” Jon Hilsenrath, chief economics correspondent for The Wall Street journal; and New York Times business columnist Joe Nocera.

Listen to all the segments in this series.

The first of the major bank bailouts happened one year ago today. We listen to what the financial crisis sounded like as it happened — immediately before and immediately after.

The August unemployment rate is out. The new rate is 9.7 percent. That's up from 9.4 percent last month, and is a little higher than what economists predicted. Most economists are saying the recession is waning, but try saying that to the more than half a million laid-off workers applying for benefits. New numbers out Thursday showed a slight improvement in jobless claims from the week before, but it’s still far higher than the 350,000 claims that economists say is a sign of a healthy labor market.

We’re looking at the economic picture of ordinary people. We’ll crunch the big numbers with Catherine Rampell, editor of the New York Times Economix blog. But we’ll also speak to three people struggling to find a job or hold onto the one they already have: Cliff Hagedon, owner of Fort Gratiot Express trucking; Francine Morin, an unemployed health care program coordinator; and Liz Gold, who manages a social networking site called MomsLikeMe.com for mothers in Tampa, Florida.

And we’re asking people to tell us their own economic picture: Are you, or people close to you, finding it easier or harder to get a job? Getting more interviews, job offers? Tell us your story and we’ll get it on the show.

In the latest indicator that the U.S. airline industry is still struggling, American Airlines has announced plans to eliminate 921 flight attendant positions, representing six percent of the company's in-flight service staff. Like many U.S. carriers, American Airlines has reduced its flight capacity this summer, cutting seven percent of flights in June. For a closer look at the state of the nation's airlines, we speak with reporter Charisse Jones, who covers the airline industry for USA Today.

Our partners at The New York Times reported that profits collected from eight of the biggest bailed-out banks have fully repaid their debts to the U.S. government. Even though the $4 billion paid back still only represents a small percentage of the $700 billion the government doled out to help stabilize wobbly banks, it could point to brighter financial days on the horizon. We talk to New York Times reporter Louise Story about the significance of these quick paybacks and their impact on the economy.

The National Association of Realtors will release their numbers on pending home sales later this morning; those numbers are predicted to be up for the sixth consecutive month. Louise Story, The New York Times reporter, explains the report.