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Parsing Thursday's Jobless Claims Report: An Almost Textbook Peak by: Sold At The Top December 17, 2009 Today, the Department of Labor released its latest read of Joblessness showing seasonally adjusted “initial” unemployment claims increased by 7,000 to 480,000 claims from last week’s revised 473,000 claims while “continued” claims increased 5,000 resulting in an “insured” unemployment rate of 3.9%. Today’s results, though still significantly elevated, continues to indicate that the descent to both initial and continued claims is continuing in earnest resulting in an almost textbook peak. At this point, we are either in the "post-crisis" recovery or the "eye...

WALNUT CREEK — Almost a month after an internal probe pushed 50 immigrant workers out of their jobs at a downtown Target store, interviews with former and current store employees portray a mass firing that was selective, planned in advance and confusing to many of those forced out. Sparked by an allegation that illegal immigrants worked on the night shift, the Walnut Creek store last month attracted the attention of the Minneapolis corporate headquarters of the 1,700-store chain. The company sent a team to investigate, according to several people close to the incident. By the end of the second week...

Hey, President Obama, Here's An Easy Way To Get Banks To Lend! Henry BlodgetDec. 16, 2009, 11:17 AM The whole premise of the Wall Street bailout was to keep banks alive so they could keep lending money to us. Remember that? It seemed like a such a nice idea at the time: Banks are now not only not lending money to us, they're not bothering to attend meetings with the President in which he is begging them to lend money to us (because who wants to waste time going to Washington to be lectured by a bureaucrat when you can...

The Federal Reserve Bank of Buffalo branch researches the monthly report. About 200 manufacturing CEOs around the state are surveyed. Indexes measuring new orders and shipping activity showed smaller monthly increases, both moving closer to a value of zero. The report also revealed that manufacturing employment in the state is declining...

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - A new Internal Revenue Service unit set up to catch rich tax cheats hiding their wealth in complex business entities is rapidly taking shape with the hiring of hundreds of employees. The IRS high wealth unit, part of a broader effort to combat international tax evasion, is focusing on "the entire web of business entities controlled by a high wealth individual," IRS Commissioner Doug Shulman told a tax conference this week. Another IRS official told Reuters "hundreds" of people have already been hired to staff the new unit, including some from within the agency. "We have drawn...

The U.S. Department of Labor Official Employment rate in September 2009 is now 90% (Unofficial rate is 75%). And for those Americans who are still employed, they will find it harder to get that sweet deal on a new car because auto dealers won’t be competing with each other now that Brian Deese, special assistant to president Obama for economic policy made the decision (not the Chrysler bankruptcy judge), to close dealerships without regard to profitability. Deese, age 31, in his first government position, shuffles back and forth from the West Wing to the Treasury Department dismantling the US Auto...

Because they're more skilled than the private sector. Latest analysis from USA Today finds that the federal government has been creating a lot high paying jobs for itself. Yet, the excuse is that they're hiring more skilled people than in the past: USA Today: "There's no way to justify this to the American people. It's ridiculous," says Rep. Jason Chaffetz, R-Utah, a first-term lawmaker who is on the House's federal workforce subcommittee. Jessica Klement, government affairs director for the Federal Managers Association, says the federal workforce is highly paid because the government employs skilled people such as scientists, physicians and...

Educate for a Better Economy Sarah Carlsruh, December 11, 2009 “The unemployment rate is 10 percent but businesses are struggling to fill 2.6 million jobs because applicants lack required skills” observed a December 12th Politico article. In an effort to remedy this disconnect, the Business Roundtable recently launched The Springboard Project, an effort by a group of education and business leaders to develop policy recommendations to improve U.S. education and work training. According to their December report, “the United States ranks second-to-last among developed nations in postsecondary completion rates.” William D. Green, chairman of The Springboard Project said that: “Improving...

The Labor Department is hurrying to correct inaccuracies in its monthly employment statistics that could cause the Obama administration big problems early next year. Those corrections, however, will probably also eliminate the inevitable -- and unsubstantiated -- employment gains that come during springtime. We now know that the job gains reported by Washington this past spring were an illusion. Early in 2010 the Labor Department will subtract about 824,000 jobs from its official count in what is called a "benchmark revision" to more accurately reflect the jobs that weren't created this past spring. Yet while the bigger-than-expected job gains that...

President Obama keeps talking about the jobs his administration is "creating" but there are more people unemployed now than before he took office. How can there be more unemployment after so many jobs have been "created"? Let's go back to square one. What does it take to create a job? It takes wealth to pay someone who is hired, not to mention additional wealth to buy the material that person will use. But government creates no wealth. Ignoring that plain and simple fact enables politicians to claim to be able to do all sorts of miraculous things that they cannot...

President Obama can authorize billions to banks, put pressure on mortgage holders to cut deals and open the nation’s wallet wide for clunkers. He can even hold a farcical “Jobs Summit” to put a dent in that 10% unemployment rate. What he can’t do is get out of his own way. Why aren’t businesses hiring? Because they don’t know what’s next. The small shop owners, mid-size company budget planners and corporate strategists — they all look ahead and see nothing but questions and worries. What will the massive new health care bill cost? Will there be cap-and-trade taxes after the...

When Obama’s economic experts (if I may abuse the phrase) said last spring that His stimulus plan was targeted, I saw it for what it was – political payoff to election supporters, people who suckle on Uncle Sam’s sagging nipples (if that mental image did not horrify you to the point of setting your PC on fire, then you may be strong enough to stand the rest of this missive). ... While the U.S. economy dumped 11,000 non-farm jobs, 7,000 of those people became wards of the state (i.e., your non-resident and non-tax deductable dependants). This does not bode well...

  To hear the talk at the White House jobs summit, President Barack Obama has dozens of job-creating ideas to pick from when he sketches out his plan in a speech Tuesday. Hardly. By the summit’s end, Obama spoke encouragingly of only about a half-dozen ideas — a sign that the president’s chances of reversing double-digit unemployment actually rest on a surprisingly narrow set of options that can squeeze through the political process in Washington. But some of them better work, Obama knows, or anxiety about the economy could seriously damage the Democrats’ chances in midterm elections next fall, in...

Stocks Soar On Jobs Report By Melinda Peer 12/04/09 - 09:36 AM EST NEW YORK (TheStreet) -- Stocks broke out of the gate strong on Friday after U.S. job losses eased at a swifter pace than expected in November. The Dow Jones Industrial Average was up by 101.65 points, or nearly 1%, at 10,467.8 at the start of trading on Friday. The S&P 500 added 12.19 points, or 1.1%, to 1112.11 and the Nasdaq gained 30.75 points, or 1.4%, to 2203.89. The U.S. economy lost 11,000 jobs in November, which was much better than the 125,000 job losses anticipated by...

Don’t Rule Out The Double Dip By Ian Mathias 12/03/09 Baltimore, Maryland – Initial claims for unemployment insurance fell to their lowest level in over a year last week. Likely a precursor to their jobs report tomorrow, the Labor Department proudly announced that “just” 457,000 Americans filed for their first week of unemployment benefits. That’s the fifth straight week of decline, the lowest number since September 2008 and the second consecutive report under half a million… a sort of “Dow 10,000” headline grabber. It would appear that the jobs scene has suffered its worst: But what how does this same...

President Obama said at a much-anticipated jobs summit Thursday that chronic unemployment isn't merely academic...

When I linked to a USA Today story the other day about Americans elbowing illegals out of the way for day-labor jobs, under my headline of "And Yet, We Still Haven't Suspended Immigration," one reader replied, "Yah, because protectionism is clearly the answer for our economic woes." This betrayed a widespread misconception about immigration and trade, one that's important to keep in mind as the president unveils the political theater production called his "Jobs Summit." Restricting immigration is fundamentally different from restricting trade in two ways, one theoretical, one practical. First, people are not things — in addition to being...

NEW YORK (Reuters) - The U.S. labor market improved in November, with private sector job losses declining for the eighth straight month and employers planning fewer layoffs, separate reports showed on Wednesday. Although employers are still shedding jobs, economists said the figures suggest the United States is on track to start adding jobs next year. A recovery in the labor market is considered key to a revival in U.S. consumer spending, which has typically accounted for roughly 70 percent of the country's economic activity. The Federal Reserve also saw glimmers of hope in the labor market in its latest Beige...

ADP Job Loss Report Is Worse Than Expected Joe WeisenthalDec. 2, 2009, 8:17 AM We've still got previous few green shoots on the jobs front. The private ADP jobs report indicated a loss of 169,000 private sector jobs in November, which was worse than the 150,000 that analysts had estimated. Also not good: October was revised to a worse 195,000. ------ According to today's ADP National Employment Report®, private sector employment decreased by 169,000 in November. The ADP National Employment Report, created by Automatic Data Processing, Inc. (ADP®), in partnership with Macroeconomic Advisers, LLC, is derived from actual payroll data...

November 29, 2009 ECONOMIC VIEW Dangers of an Overheated China By TYLER COWEN PRESIDENT OBAMA’S recent trip to China reflects a symbiotic relationship at the heart of the global economy: China uses American spending power to enlarge its private sector, while America uses Chinese lending power to expand its public sector. Yet this arrangement may unravel in a dangerous way, and if it does, the most likely culprit will be Chinese economic overcapacity. Several hundred million Chinese peasants have moved from the countryside to the cities over the last 30 years, in one of the largest, most rapid migrations in...

Arrests of illegal immigrant workers have dropped precipitously under President Obama, according to figures released Wednesday. Criminal arrests, administrative arrests, indictments and convictions of illegal immigrants at work sites all fell by more than 50 percent from fiscal 2008 to fiscal 2009. The figures show that Mr. Obama has made good on his pledge to shift enforcement away from going after illegal immigrant workers themselves - but at the expense of Americans' jobs, said Rep. Lamar Smith of Texas, the Republican who compiled the numbers from the Department of Homeland Security's U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement agency (ICE). Mr. Smith,...

Depressing indeed. Depressing. From yesterday’s Happy Hour, Cody Willard asks economist Peter Morici to gaze into the crystal ball and predict unemployment a year from now and how long before recovery. Depressing. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OgIdjvn_lmU

NEW YORK – The United States lags far behind other nations in offering paid sick days, paid parental leave and other workplace benefits that proponents consider vital to public health and workers rights, according to research released on Tuesday. The eight-year study found the most economically competitive nations offer forms of paid leave to workers that the United States does not, according to researchers at Harvard University and Canada's McGill University. Of the world's 15 most competitive nations, 14 mandate paid sick leave, 13 guarantee paid maternal leave and 12 provide paid paternal leave by law, they said. Eleven provide...

Like some gothic serial novelist, the Bureau of Labor Statistics delivers another chapter of the same grim tale on the first Friday of every month. In October, the unemployment rate spiked to 10.2 percent, the highest since April 1983. Since December 2007, payroll employment has fallen by 7.3 million jobs. The ratio of unemployed workers to job openings is 6.1 to 1; in December 2007, it was 1.7 to 1. But some recent data points, and an understanding of the behavior of companies at different phases of the business cycle, suggest we'll have job creation sooner rather than later. Before...

America's freight rail industry was well represented in the annual Top 100 Military Friendly Employers for 2010 published by G.I. Jobs magazine. The magazine named four Class I freight railroads among the top 10 most military friendly employers, selecting Union Pacific as number one. CSX Corporation came in second among the top employers of military personnel, while BNSF Railway was fourth, and Norfolk Southern came in at number seven. "The nation's freight railroads maintain a strong commitment to the men and women who serve our country," said Edward R. Hamberger, president and CEO of the Association of American Railroads. "We're...

Looking at Unemployment Another Way Still Says 13% by Mid-2010 Andrew Butter November 13, 2009 In response to an article I wrote a month ago plus an update I put out on my Instablog, I got this from Jérôme Fabre: By that logic, perhaps the peak in unemployment might be somewhere around March 2010. Eyeballing that chart, “traditionally”, unemployment seems to go down in a bad recession to reach a point where 56% of the population is employed (i.e. down from about 59%). If that’s right then by the bottom there might be another eight million unemployed, which could bring...

Presidential executive orders are lofty, historical documents, generally signed in White House ceremonies with pomp and circumstance. Seldom do we think of them beginning in a small town on the eastern edge of West Virginia. But it was in Shepherdstown, with a population of 803 at last count, where President Obama's latest executive order, designed to facilitate the hiring of veterans in the federal government, got its start. Since 1944, federal law has required that vets be given certain preferences when federal agencies hire. And this isn't the first time an administration has made noise about being nice to vets....

We have been here since 1952 and have been through literally thousands of hiring processes. We are asked about the biggest and most frequent mistakes that hiring authorities make in the recruiting, interviewing, and hiring process. Here they are: 1. Not having a clear idea of what they are looking for - that everyone understands. Hiring authorities aren’t specific enough about the duties, skills, and competencies they need. They confuse amount of experience with competency: “8 to 10 years of experience” - does that mean that someone with six years of experience can’t do the job? Or what about the...

Rosenberg: Here's Why Unemployment Is Going To 13% Joe WeisenthalNov. 11, 2009, 9:40 AM Earlier this week, Gluskin-Sheff economist David Rosenberg grabbed headlines when he said unemployment could go as high as 13%. Today he spells out his reasoning: There are serious structural issues undermining the U.S. labour market as companies continue to adjust their order books, production schedules and staffing requirements to a semi-permanently impaired credit backdrop. The bottom line is that the level of credit per unit of GDP is going to be much, much lower in the future than has been the case in the last two...

France Shows Us Our Future: Longer Work, Shorter Retirement Joe WeisenthalNov. 9, 2009, 6:34 PM It's not all that surprising that France, with its generous labor and pension laws would find itself slamming into a brick wall, as pension systems begin to run dry. FT: Mr Sarkozy favours extending minimum contribution periods for a full pension, rather than raising the standard pension age beyond 60, the official suggested. The contribution period is already set to rise by one year to 41 years by 2012 but should be increased still further. The aim would be to make reform more politically palatable,...

DALLAS — Seventy million dollars worth of federal, state and city funds are pouring into the Margaret Hunt Hill Bridge, designed by Spanish architect Santiago Calatrava. Supporters hope the span will be a signature for the city. But it may be remembered for something else, because the key jobs in its construction -- tens of thousands of man hours of work — are going to Italians. On the construction site in the Trinity River bottoms, an American inspector told News 8: "If you don't speak Italian, it's going to be tough to communicate." In broken English, a man who appeared...

While a slight improvement over last month's numbers, today's employment update from the Bureau of Labor Statistics presents a dismal picture for American workers. As policy makers search for the best remedies to strengthen our economic performance, they can't afford to overlook new firms and young firms. Unfortunately, in troubled economic times the language of recovery is too often tilted toward large, established companies or to "small businesses," a broad term that traditionally applies to businesses with fewer than 500 employees. The conventional wisdom is that such businesses account for half of the labor force and are therefore the engine...

Folks, it's taking alot of gumption for me to write this post. But I'm swallowing my pride to confess that I am distressingly unemployed and wallowing in frustration and anger. Maybe there are others like me in this forum. I'm actually in that "lost" zone between the 10.2% that's claiming unemployment and the estimated 20%+ that has exhausted benefits or just plain given up finding work. Well I HAVEN'T given up. I apply to dozens of jobs per week off of Craigslist, Monster, CareerBuilder and the like, but nothing's landing. I am represented by half a dozen temp agencies, but...

Krugman: It's Time For The WPA Joe WeisenthalNov. 6, 2009, 12:08 PM We wondered if Paul Krugman would use this morning's 10.2% unemployment reading as an excuse to call for another stimulus. Indeed: You can make a pretty good case that just employing a lot of people directly would be a lot more cost-effective; the WPA and CCC cost surprisingly little given the number of people put to work. Think of it as the stimulus equivalent of getting the middlemen out of the student loan program. So why aren’t we doing this? Politics, of course: government is the problem, not...

Yow. The BLS employment report is out and it's not good. [snip] Our government, by choosing to protect the oligarchs and banksters instead of allowing the market to force the bad debt out into the open where it defaults has chosen to saddle our nation's citizens with unconscionable and unsustainable debt loads, both at a government and personal level. This was a critical error and, as I expected and predicted, it is now being reflected directly into the employment situation.

Jobless Claims Down, Productivity Soars! Joe WeisenthalNov. 5, 2009, 8:33 AM At first blush, we like this morning's economic numbers. New jobless claims of 512,000 was lower than the 530,000 last week, and the 525,000 analysts had anticipated.[snip]

Global Markets In Review: Reversal In Financial Markets Prieur du Plessis November 01, 2009 Rewind the movie to before the stock market lows of March 9: Stocks down, corporate bonds down, commodities and gold down, emerging-market currencies down, safe havens in fashion, including the U.S. dollar and government bonds. In short, risky assets closed sharply lower over the past few days as concerns mounted over the outlook for central bank policy and the sustainability of the global economic recovery, with investors only warming momentarily to the U.S. emerging from recession as shown by the Q3 GDP report (announced on the...

I have been job-hunting for some time now and applying for jobs online. I applied for one job in particular which is an office job and received the following email in response to my application and resume: "I have reviewed your resume and I am very interested in hiring you. Before I can setup an appointment, I would need your recent credit score. Your credit score is required because the position you applied for includes handling company cash and using a company credit card. Don't worry, if your score is low for a legitimate reason, you will have an opportunity...

I, for one, will not go down without a fight, nor will I go quietly. Last January, I lost my middle-management position in an importer which sold goods to television networks. I had to apply for state aid by going to the New York State Department of Labor to collect unemployment insurance. My weekly benefits were approved, but I frowned at the fact that they would be less than one third of my regular salary. I began my job search two days after being let go. Fast forward to March. After submitting close to fifty résumés and not receiving even...

Santa Rosa resident Nancy Roberts lived in England for five years in the 1970s and got her master's degree there. She wrote this note in the wake of a recent Chronicle article and SFGate blog posting about the underemployment rate -- a measurement that adds people forced to work part-time and discouraged job-seekers to the unemployed. California's unemployment rate is 12.2 percent. Its underemployment rate is 21.9 percent. -- Tom Abate Thank you for raising this question, which has been much on my mind. Here's the situation for some of my American friends. (Their names have been changed.) -- Todd:...

Jobless Recovery Not Going To Happen By Chris GaffneyOctober 23, 2009 10/23/09 St. Louis, Missouri – The dollar started the day off with a move up after a positive report on US leading indicators; but it gave back most of the gains as the trading day wore on. At the end of the day, only one currency moved more than 1% versus the greenback, with the pound sterling (GBP) dropping almost 1.5%. As just mentioned, the leading indicators for the US rose in September for a sixth straight month, giving confidence to those calling for continued expansion in 2010. The...

I’m unemployed and since June I have been filing weekly for my benefits. In mid July I began teaching 2 courses at a technical college. My pay was $2000 and the 2 classes which met from 6pm to 10pm and the quarter finished on Sept. 30th. When making my unemployment claim I’m asked on the web form how many days I work each week and I reported 2 even though I’m only teaching 4 hours each day for a total of 8 hours per week (the class meets 2 times each week for 12 weeks for a total of 22...

Remember it was a bill that was too important not to pass immediately without reading!The following is from Congressman Dave Camp (R-MI), the Ranking Member on the House Ways and Means Committee: 7 Months After Stimulus 49 of 50 States Have Lost Jobs America Now Over 6 Million Jobs Shy of Administration's Projections Wednesday, October 21, 2009 The table below compares the White House's February 2009 projection of the number of jobs that would be created by the 2009 stimulus law (through the end of 2010) with the actual change in state payroll employment through September 2009 (the latest figures...

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - The Obama administration said on Monday its economic stimulus had saved or created 250,000 education jobs, as it sought to push back against Republicans who contend the package was wasteful and had not worked. Faced with pressure to act to help spur job growth with the U.S. unemployment rate at 9.8 percent, President Barack Obama is considering new steps to help the economy, on top of the $787 billion stimulus package passed earlier this year. But those discussions are in the preliminary stages and Obama may be constrained in what he can do, given the record $1.4...

Markets and the economy look less cataclysmic than they did earlier this year. And so they should, following a torrent of monetary easing. But that doesn't mean happy days are here again. If you want a second opinion, don't look at the Dow Jones Industrial Average. Look at three other markets: bonds, gold and the dollar. All of them are flashing amber, or red. Take the bond market: Yields on U.S. Treasurys have collapsed to historic lows. The 30-year bond is yielding just over 4.2%, well below long-term averages. This is usually a strong signal of tougher times ahead. It's...

President Barack Obama has nominated a lesbian activist lawyer to serve as a member of the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission. In a recent White House announcement, President Obama nominated Chai Feldblum, a professor of law (gay studies) at Georgetown University who formerly worked for the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) and the pro-homosexual Human Rights Campaign Fund, to serve as one of five Commissioners on the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission. In the mid-1980s, Ms. Feldblum clerked for Supreme Court Justice Harry A. Blackmum, the liberal Supreme Court justice who authored the Roe v. Wade decision legalizing abortion. “She has also...

The Greatest Depression Is Coming by: Mac Slavo October 17, 2009 Mac SlavoGood times will not be returning any time soon. We continue to lose jobs month over month. And, while the statistics being released are showing a slow down, this is basically a fabrication. There are thousands of people falling off of unemployment compensation each week — none of them are reflected in the official numbers. Shadowstats.com estimates unemployment is above 20%. Take it for what you will, but these numbers are rapidly approaching the unemployment rate during the last well known depression. Credit is contracting. The last decade...

As companies begin unveiling their workplace benefits for next year, many employees are learning they will have to dig even deeper into their pockets for health coverage. Such price increases have become a fact of life during open-enrollment season, when workers sign up for their health plans. But the jump is expected to be steeper in 2010 than this year, as employers struggle with the impact of the recession and continually rising insurance costs. Employees will pay $4,023 on average in premiums and out-of-pocket charges next year, up 10% from 2009, according to a projection from Hewitt Associates, a benefits-consulting...

At 10% Unemployment America Still Doesn't Have Enough Workers Joe WeisenthalOct. 12, 2009, 1:10 PM Here's a little paradox for you. Even with unemployment officially sitting around 10%, studies continue to suggest that America is deficient when it comes to having a skilled workforce. A new survey by the Business Roundtable finds that many businesses say they can't get as skilled-enough workforce for what they need. Remember, we're in the middle of period where there's a record number of jobseekers for every listing. But of course, it's really not much a paradox at all. After years and years of a...

The September U.S. Employment Rate Is 90% Economics / Employment Oct 10, 2009 - 04:17 AM By: Robert_Singer The U.S. Department of Labor Official Employment rate in September 2009 is now 90% (Unofficial rate is 75%). And for those Americans who are still employed, they will find it harder to get that sweet deal on a new car because auto dealers won’t be competing with each other now that Brian Deese, special assistant to president Obama for economic policy made the decision (not the Chrysler bankruptcy judge), to close dealerships without regard to profitability. Deese, age 31, in his first...