The Labor Department released November unemployment numbers today. The report showed 15.4 million Americans are now unemployed and seeking work. That's down 325,000 from the October reading.

And while President Obama is brainstorming with his finest economic minds to find jobs for them, the fact is few firms have the cash or the confidence to add staff right now. Our Allan Chernoff reports in this American Morning original.

Read more: Job market shows big improvement

The president shifts his focus from Afghanistan to jobs today. He's hosting a forum at the White House, looking for ideas to put 16 million unemployed Americans back to work. And he has his work cut out for him. Our Jim Acosta reports.

CNNMoney: White House job summit seeks solutions

By Stephen Samaniego

Fred Fleming's family has been farming in Lincoln County Washington for over a hundred years. President Grover Cleveland signed the deed to his great grandfather back in 1888. Since then the farm has been passed on from generation to generation. To say farming is in his blood would be an understatement.

Fleming jokes about how he used to be addicted to the traditional farming methods passed on to him by his father. "I'm a recovering conventional farmer. I'm ten years into my program. My name is Fred."

Fleming says this with a coy smile, but for years he worried about the sustainability of conventional farming. Traditionally, a wheat farmer sells his product on the commodities market where prices can be so volatile a farmer can be bankrupt before he knows what happened to him.

Fleming decided it was time for him to start selling wheat on his own terms. Fleming and his long-time friend and fellow farmer Karl Kupers decided to bypass the commodity market and take their product directly to the customer.

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By Stephen Samaniego

They have infiltrated American consumer culture – Walmart, Target, and Costco. They are the mega-chains. Stores that carry anything and everything found in almost every community across the country. Many towns have gone to court to stop stores like Walmart from setting up shop, fearing a loss of local businesses and community charm.

Now in a Brooklyn, New York neighborhood, a new phenomenon is starting to take root. The local chain. They're small businesses linked by a common theme and – unlike their big chain rivals – are located in close proximity to each other. "We're not cloning one thing and putting it somewhere else," says Patrick Watson. "We're trying to target a neighborhood that we know and love incredibly well, and fill the gaps in."

Patrick Watson and his wife Michelle Pravda have lived in Brooklyn's Carroll Gardens neighborhood for fifteen years and are owners of a local chain. Their first business was a wine shop called Smith and Vine. Playing off the wine theme, they opened up a cheese store across the street, called Stinky Brooklyn. They followed it with a combination of the two – opening a wine and cheese bar up the street, called The Jakewalk.

The concept: Identify a customer base and cater to their specific tastes with a personal touch and local flair. After a loyal following begins to build, capitalize on that reputation with another store that further extends your local brand.

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By Stephen Samaniego

Ida Petkus may be in the middle of her sixth month on unemployment, but she says she hasn't looked for a job since the summer. She's already got work – a job she created working for herself. "I thought I'd still be working for someone else and working in a company," says Petkus. "I never thought I would be an employer myself."

After being laid off as a domestic violence advocate this past March, Ida started her own domestic violence agency with a little help from Uncle Sam. It’s called the Self Employment Assistance Program, S.E.A. for short, and it trains people receiving unemployment benefits to start and run their own business.

When Ida heard about the program, it seemed like a no-brainer. She had tried looking for a job but had no luck. Petkus says, "There’s just nothing out there to be an advocate in this economy. So I signed up for it, thinking, "Well, I can brush up on my marketing skills, why not?'"

"Small businesses tend to fail," says Michael Glass who is director of New Jersey’s S.E.A. "Often because they don't have a written business plan, a marketing plan, and they're not financially ready to do it, so what we try to do is ease that process," adds Glass. He has been with the program since it started in the state 13 years ago and has seen close to 8,000 businesses created through S.E.A.

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By Nailah Ellis Timberlake

When Corinne Rivers graduated from college and got a full scholarship to law school, she thought she had it made. "I graduated debt free," she said. "Who could ask for anything else?"

Little did Corinne know that she she'd eventually have to ask for help finding a job.

In 2008, Corinne graduated from Rutgers School of Law, passed the Bar Exam and was sworn in as an attorney in both New Jersey and New York. Corinne immediately began looking for jobs in litigation, but came up empty. "Being unemployed has affected my ego a bit," she said. "No one expects someone with two degrees not to find employment."

Especially someone like Corinne. In law school, she was the was associate editor and research editor for the Rutgers Race Law Review. After graduation, she served for a year as a judicial law clerk for the now retired New Jersey Superior Court Judge Frances L. Antonin. "Career services at the law school referred me to their online site for job listings. They never prepared me to deal with a job search in a tough economic environment," she said.

She's not the only lawyer looking for a job and many experts believe this is as bad as it's ever been for attorneys looking for work. According to the National Law Journal's annual survey of the nation's 250 largest law firms, the number of attorneys in the private sector dropped 4% in 2009 – only the third time the lawyer count has dropped since 1978. "It shows the impact of the recession and how business is down for law firms," says the Journal's associate editor, Leigh Jones.

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By Christine Romans

The president today will sign an extension in unemployment benefits. Nationwide, it will be 14 more weeks for the jobless.

If you recently ran out of benefits, you can reapply for the extension. If you live in a high-unemployment state, with a jobless rate above 8.5%, you are eligible for 20 more weeks of jobless checks.

Many of you have asked if your state qualifies for 14 or 20 more weeks. Here are those high-unemployment states:

AL, AZ, CA, FL, GA, ID, IL, IN, KY, ME, MA, MI, MO, MS, NV, NJ, NY, NC, OH, OR, PA, RI, SC, TN, WA, WV. Also, Washington, D.C.

Excerpted from It’s Your Time: Activate Your Faith, Achieve Your Dreams, and Increase in God’s Favor by Joel Osteen. Copyright © 2009 by Joel Osteen. Excerpted with permission by Free Press, a Division of Simon & Schuster, Inc.

From It's Your Time
By Joel Osteen

Chapter 1

You’re Closer Than You Think!

While on vacation in Colorado, I woke up early for a hike. The three-mile trail ran to the peak of Beaver Creek Mountain. At the
base a sign said it should take about three hours to reach the top.

Looking up to my destination, I was intimidated. The trail was extremely steep. The altitude at the base was 8,000 feet above sea level. The peak stood at more than 11,000 feet.

Just walking up the first set of stairs, I began breathing heavier than normal. I had to remind myself to take it easy. At home in Houston,
I run several miles a few times a week and play a lot of basketball. But the elevation there is only fifty feet above sea level. The thinner
air in the Colorado mountains had me doubting whether I could make it to the top.

I started out with just my cell phone and a bottle of water. Determined, I set a pretty good pace. The first fifteen minutes seemed fairly easy. The next fifteen minutes were increasingly difficult. I felt as though I were carrying an extra load. I had to stop every so often to catch my breath.

About forty-five minutes into my hike, the trail got extremely steep—almost like I was climbing straight up. My pathway snaked skyward through thick stands of aspen and ponderosa pine. The view was both beautiful and daunting. Despite the fact I am in shape from running and playing basketball, my legs were burning
and my chest was pounding.

Read more

By Christine Romans

There is nothing more political, and fuzzy, than the math surrounding the massive $787 billion stimulus package. The administration says 640,000 jobs have been saved or created by the stimulus. That's based on $159 billion in contracts to states for roadwork, bridges, and to keep teachers in the classroom.

Using very simple math, that means taxpayers have spent about $248 thousand per job the White House says were saved or created.

$159,000,000,000 spending ÷ 640,329 jobs saved/created = $248,309 per job

Critics of the stimulus will say it shows taxpayers are getting a raw deal.

But like everything surrounding this stimulus, it is not as simple as that. And a White House economist told ABC such math is quote "calculator abuse."

Why? These are just jobs created to date. These projects will keep creating more jobs, so this cost per job number will only go down over time. The money obviously is not simply down the drain – it's creating economic activity and reflects wages, but also, supplies that are ordered, and materials manufactured, equipment rental, etc.

Still, there is an obsession with quantifying the cost to taxpayers of these jobs.

The White House has its own formula for that.

Government spending $92,136 per job-year
Tax cuts $145,351 per job-year
State fiscal relief $116,603 per job-year
Source: White House

Once the stimulus is fully deployed and working, taxpayers will have spent $92,000 per job.

You can read more of the White House Council of Economic Advisers’ math here.

All the subsequent job and cost counting is as much politics as mathematics. Supporters of the stimulus want to highlight new and saved jobs. They will say the economy is now growing again because of the stimulus spending. Opponents will say it costs too much, there is too much waste, and our grandchildren will pay for it later.

We may never know exactly how many jobs have been created or how long they will last. We will never have a list of three to four million American names who have benefited from the stimulus. But what is certain? I can tell you that $787 billion will be spent over the next two years, and political bickering over its effectiveness has just begun.