Free Republic

The May employment numbers from the Bureau of Labor Statistics offer the third month of disappointing news for labor markets after a perceived mid-winter rally. At an unemployment rate of 8.2 percent, the economy is not much better off now than when the year began. In the months since January, young adults -- who had already endured the worst effects of the recession -- managed to close the gap with their older counterparts, bringing their unemployment rates into closer alignment with the economy overall while maintaining fairly steady labor force participation. But the gains have been slow, and eked out...

Back in December 2010 Zero Hedge was the first to point out what is easily the most troubling characteristic within America's evaporating labor force: its gradual transition to a part-time worker society. We elaborated on this back in February when we noted that the quality assessment of US jobs indicates that this most disturbing trend is accelerating. Finally, yesterday, the BLS' latest jobs report confirmed that our concerns have been valid all along: as of May, part-time jobs just as disclosed by the Bureau of Labor Statistics hit an all time high, over 28 million! These are people who traditionally...

Another month or two of downbeat jobs reports like Friday's, and the 2012 electoral advantage will shift to Mitt Romney. At the moment, the election is still a coin flip.  But even before the latest evidence of slowing job growth, President Obama was no better than a 50-50 pick to win reelection (as noted Democratic pollster Peter Hart put it recently).  And with economic storm clouds building, it’s easy to imagine that Obama could be the underdog before too long. “If the May report is a harbinger of what's coming, Romney’s message that ‘We can do better, but Obama can't’...

BEGIN TRANSCRIPT RUSH: This attack on Bain... I told you this was gonna happen. I told you this is why Obama wanted Romney. Way back during the Republican primaries I said Republicans are gonna nominate Romney. That's what Obama wants because of health care, and because of Wall Street. That's what Occupy Wall Street's about, going after Romney. And Obama has now come out and admitted it, that this campaign is gonna be about Bain Capital. It's backfiring everywhere you look, from Cory Booker to now Fast Eddie Rendell, governor of Pennsylvania All these Democrats are piping in, "Wait a...

The new Crossroads GPS ad "Basketball" could prove to be the most effective ad of the 2012 presidential campaign. The ad is not red meat for right wingers. It does not go after President Obama for his associations with radicals such as Van Jones, Bill Ayers or the Reverend Wright. I doesn't go after Obama's Socialism -- his desire to redistribute all our wealth. It doesn't even go after Obama's extremists efforts to radically transform America. No, the new "Basketball" ad subtly goes after those who were swayed by presidential candidate Obama's eloquent offer of hope for change and the...

When the April figures on unemployment were released May 4, they were more than disappointing. They were deeply disturbing. While the unemployment rate had fallen from 8.2 percent to 8.1 percent, 342,000 workers had stopped looking for work. They had just dropped out of the labor market. Only 63.6 percent of the U.S. working age population is now in the labor force, the lowest level since December 1981. During the Reagan, Bush I and Clinton years, participation in the labor force rose steadily to a record 67 percent. The plunge since has been almost uninterrupted. Here is a major cause...

Britain's business leaders will warn David Cameron that the Government’s attitude to business must change, after they were told to stop complaining. Members of the Prime Minister’s business advisory group will say that the atmosphere surrounding business in the UK is becoming increasingly “toxic”. Mr. Cameron’s face-off with the chief executives of major companies, including Sainsbury’s, Centrica and the Prudential, comes at a time when relations between the private sector and the Government are under strain. Last week’s Queen’s Speech setting out the Coalition’s plans for the year was criticized by many in business, including Sainsbury’s chief executive Justin King,...

Walter Russell Mead writes on the disappearance of jobs for non-Baby Boomers: An analysis of recent jobs figures at Investor.com reveals a disturbing development: the biggest beneficiaries from the economic recovery are Boomers, while everyone else is getting the shaft. Since the Obama administration took office, there has been an epochal shift. Young workers have continued to lose jobs and incomes, while older workers have actually gained ground. In fact, the Obama administration has seen a boom in the prospects of the 55+ crowd; their (I should say ‘our’) employment stands at a 42 year high. Net, there are 3.9...

I have to credit our own Mike Shedlock for writing about how Obama’s been able to drive down the topline unemployment number even though unemployment remains as a big problem today as it has ever been. I’m often reluctant to piggy back on a contributor’s work, but when something is really newsworthy, I think it’s justified. Yesterday Mish pointed out that:In the last year, the civilian population rose by 3,638,000. Yet the labor force only rose by 945,000. Those not in the labor force rose by 2,693,000. In the last month, actual employment fell by 169,000, but the unemployment rate...

The White House crowed on Friday about the unemployment rate dropping a 10th of a percent. At the same time, the number of people out of the labor force reached a record high. The Obama administration can report all the funny numbers it wants, but the American people know in their guts that things are getting much worse. A recovering economy is supposed to create jobs, not shed them. According to government math, 115,000 new jobs were added in April. But over the same period, 522,000 people dropped out of the labor force and were not counted as unemployed. This...

Now that you have written your check and sent the IRS some of your hard earned money to help feed Barack Obama’s regime here’s a suggestion for what to do to fight back. Get behind the effort to pass Republican Representative Lamar Smith’s Legal Workforce Act (LWA) HR 2885. This bill would amend the Immigration and Nationality Act and order the Secretary of Homeland Security (DHS) to develop a system for determining the citizenship and work eligibility status of all alien workers. As envisioned by Representative Smith this system would have DHS establish an employment eligibility verification system (EEVS), patterned...

It's called outsourcing. American firms do it because foreign labor can be cheaper. But now, one company is being accused of bringing those lower-paid workers to the U.S. illegally and that may be costing Americans jobs. -- snip -- Palmer says Infosys, the global high-tech giant, engaged in a systematic practice of visa fraud, a charge the company denies. Palmer said the first thing to catch his attention was an employee that had been in the U.S. from India several times before. "He came up to me and he was literally in tears," Palmer said. "He told me he was...

The recent jobs report from the BLS cast a dark shadow on economic recovery (although the usual cheerleaders are claiming it was a fluke). But the story in the US that was ignored for the most part was teen unemployment which stands at Euro Zone-like 25%. In the Euro Zone, Spain has a horrible 52.8% unemployment rate for the under 25 male population. Greece is close behind at 43.40%. Germany, on the other hand, stands at 8.80% unemployment for the under 25 group. But Germany’s neighbor France has a 21.60% under 25 male unemployment rate. Sacre bleu! The US has...

According to the BLS, employers in the U.S. added fewer jobs than forecast in March. The 120,000 increase in payrolls , the fewest in five months, followed a revised 240,000 gain in February. Expectations were for 205,000. My ex-colleague from Deutsche Bank, Joe LaVorgna, called for +250,000. Unemployment fell to 8.2%. And U6 unemployment fell to 14.5%. Still, 14.5% is still numbing. But the most revealing employment rate, the employment to population ratio, fell to 58.5%. That means that the nonemployment ratio rose to 41.5%. And 164,000 Americans quit looking for work. And teen unemployment rose to 25%! But that...

Let’s play “guess the nonfarm payrolls.” After all, our guess is as good as the conomists’, whose forecasts nicely fit a random distribution of hits and misses month in and month out. My guess? The headline non farm payrolls number would be reported as a drop of 337,000 tomorrow if you believe the withholding tax data for the period covered by the survey. That would be a huge miss versus the consensus estimate of a gain of 201,000 according to Hizzoner the Mayor’s tout sheet. Rupert Hacker Murdoch’s rags are even more bullish, posting an expected gain of 210,000. The...

The catchy Subway sandwich shop jingle involving a variety of foot-long sandwiches available for $5 doesn't apply in San Francisco. [SNIP] Apparently, the city's new minimum wage, raised to $10.24 as of Jan. 1, make $5 footlongs an impossible business model.

I'm in the market for a new job, and I noticed today that the local Big Lots has an ad out for a store manager. I'm curious to know if anyone here works for the company- if so, how is the company to work for? What would be a reasonable salary to expect as a store manager? Is the company full of O-bots in the upper levels? General stuff like that :)

by John HillStand With Arizona The U.S. economy is suffering its worst bout of sustained unemployment since the Great Depression. Millions of Americans are out of work and hurting. They struggle to pay their bills, pay their rent or mortgage, and find work to feed their families. Meanwhile, millions of illegal aliens take jobs that Americans need , undercut wages, steal identities of Americans to sustain their employment fraud, and illegally collect welfare and social services to which they have no right. As American incomes decline, the amount of cash illegals send back to their home countries is at a...

Some employers and college are asking to see applicants' Facebook pages from job applicants and student athletes, according to a report on Tuesday. MSNBC's Red Tape Chronicles blog said job applicants at the Maryland Department of Corrections have been asked to log into their accounts so that interviewers could see their wall posts, friends, photos and anything else they may have behind the social network's privacy wall... ...Facebook spokesperson Frederic Wolens said many such school and employer policies appear to violate the site's terms.

MUNCIE, Ind.—Jerry D. Bumpus Sr. was a member of the United Auto Workers union for four decades and earned as much as $28 an hour at a General Motors Co. GM -1.84%car-parts plant before accepting a bonus to retire at age 60 five years ago. On a recent Saturday morning, Mr. Bumpus, wearing a black jacket and clutching his résumé, was one of several thousand people lining up to apply for jobs at a new Caterpillar Inc. plant that makes train locomotives here. Those jobs start at as low as $12 an hour plus benefits, and there is no union...

by John HillStand With Arizona He's known as "America's Toughest Sheriff". But we think he should be called "America's Jobs Sheriff". Because every time Sheriff Joe Arpaio conducts a raid, he frees up jobs for legal American workers. Thursday was no exception, as the Maricopa County Sheriff’s Office served search warrants at a Phoenix-based vitamin company and arrested 31 illegal aliens working there. Based on a tip, deputies conducted a 5-month investigation of 21st Century Healthcare in Tempe. Deputies were looking for 34 employees at the vitamin warehouse presumed to have used stolen identification to gain employment with the company....

In today's job market, you've got to do whatever it takes to get your foot in the door even if it means taking advantage of friends and family connections. Friends are the most common way to find new job referrals. Without connections to pass along your resume, "your chances of landing a job are supposedly nonexistent," Anthony Balderrama at CareerBuilder.com tells CNN. if they got their job through nepotism. It turns out friends and family connections really is the most common way to get a job. Here are the results: Business Insider

The economy has added more jobs than expected in each of the past three months, pushing down the unemployment rate to 8.3 percent and marking the best six-month streak of jobs numbers since 2008. But President Obama’s former economic adviser said today that this seemingly rosy economic picture probably won’t last. “I think the main thing that [President Obama] ought to worry anybody is that the growth rate is probably not as sustainable as at high a rate as it’s been, so the pace of expansion, which for six months has been pretty impressive, it may just slow down a...

Nonfarm payroll employment rose by 227,000 in February, and the unemployment rate was unchanged at 8.3 percent, the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics reported today. Employment rose in professional and businesses services, health care and social assistance, leisure and hospitality, manufacturing, and mining.

Job Growth In New York City Is Blowing Everyone's Mind Joe Weisenthal March 9, 2012According to WSJ, the NYC economy added more jobs in January than in any month in 23 years. Some 31,200 jobs were added in the month, according to a seasonally adjusted analysis of new state Labor Department figures. "It is an understatement to say that these gains exceeded all expectations," said Barbara Byrne Denham, chief economist with the real-estate services firm Eastern Consolidated, who conducted the analysis. Here's the press release from the Department of Labor. --------- In January 2012, New York State's private sector job...

A story appeared in The New York Times last week claiming that the downsizing of government is having a disproportionate impact on the economic fortunes of blacks because they are overly represented in government jobs. The Times then editorialized that this disproportionate impact was reason to pause and reconsider further government downsizing. Yet the Times' story, repeating a theme that others have echoed, ignores actual government data on public sector employment, which shows something quite different. In fact, it is whites who are somewhat more overrepresented in government relative to their position in the broader population, and it is whites...

PROFESSOR: Self-Segregation Is What's Keeping African Americans Out Of Silicon Valley Vivian Giang March 5, 2012And it's all because of self-segregation, says Maya Beasley, author of Opting Out: Losing The Potential Of American's Young Black Elite and an assistant professor of sociology and African-American studies at the University of Connecticut. Beasley, who is bi-racial, noticed the trend as a graduate student at Stanford University in Palo Alto, the heart of Silicon Valley. Beasley told Joseph Walker at the Wall Street Journal's FINS that she witnessed a "fair amount of Asians and South Asians and a lot of white people, but...

Alabama politicians ran on the issue of reforming illegal immigration in the state, mostly in response to an outcry from citizens hurt or unemployed by the problem of Illegal Immigration.  They kept their promise.  Last session, the Alabama Legislature led by Senator Scott Beason (R-Gardendale) sponsored and passed House Bill 56 that essentially upheld the federal law already on the books.  Governor Bentley signed the bill.  The beast was loosed… National social welfare advocates descended on Alabama like vultures on road kill and the stage was set for an ugly battle.  Self identified “religious groups” (whose faux religion is social...

Obama says the economy is getting better. The MSM is telling us the economy is getting better: "The economy seems to be rumbling back to life" "Can we exhale, is this the comeback everyone's been waiting for" "What you're hearing is the sound of a comeback" "It is getting exciting, psychologically, that's gonna be important" "I think people forgot to know what it's like to feel good about the economy" So it's gotta be true right? While the media and the administration portray the most recent jobs number — 8.3% unemployment — as good economic news, more sober minds...

Gallup polled small-business owners (value under $20M) about their expansion plans in early January, which for some strange reason didn’t get reported until today. Among those who do not plan to hire — 85% of the entire sample — almost half of all such businesses cited expected costs from health care coverage and government regulation: U.S. small-business owners who aren’t hiring — 85% of those surveyed — are most likely to say the reasons they are not doing so include not needing additional employees; worries about weak business conditions, including revenues; cash flow; and the overall U.S. economy. Additionally, nearly...

by John Hill Stand With Arizona Kris Kobach, architect of Arizona's landmark S.B. 1070 and Kansas Secretary of State, brought needed common sense to the CPAC Conference discussion on immigration. Following remarks by Alex Nowrasteh, a policy analyst at the Competitive Enterprise Institute, in which he denounced E-Verify and claimed - to boos from the audience - that "free market conservatives" should allow employers to hire illegal aliens (see synopsis here), it was Kobach's turn to restore sanity. First Mr. Kobach laid out the concept of "attrition through enforcement" with a simple analogy. He then laid out how Arizona and...

Congress should investigate cooked employment booksThe White House hyped the news Friday that January payrolls had risen by 243,000. The hitch is the Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS) also dropped 1.2 million from the calculated workforce. Somehow this net loss of a million workers in a single month was transformed into an improvement in the unemployment rate. As the old saying goes, figures can lie, and liars can figure. “Job growth was widespread,” the BLS reported, but most Americans sense that something isn’t quite right with the numbers. The most important change was the deep decline in the workforce. While...

WASHINGTON - For most people, the 8.3 percent unemployment rate is the most visible sign of the economy's health. The rate's every movement is closely watched, especially in an election year. But when the rate declines, it's not always because many more people were hired. The unemployment rate can rise or fall even when no jobs are created or lost. Last month, the rate fell because jobs were added. One reason for the rate's decline is that fewer people are looking for work. Here's why: The unemployment rate counts only people who don't have a job and are looking for...

Here's The Truth About The Massive, Million Plus Spike In People Not In The Labor Force Joe Weisenthal Feburary 3, 2012 There's a ton of hype today about the 1 million+ spike in people not in the labor force, and whether it undermines the good jobs data. The chart is actually alarming at first blush. Yow! Is someone cooking the books? Was there a gigantic exodus of people out of the workforce? Hate to burst your conspiracy theories, but no. As SilverOz at The Bonddad Blog points out, the BLS' own announcement points out that starting this year, brand new...

According to Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS), nonfarm payrolls in the U.S. surged by 243,000 for January 2012, higher than the expected 140,000 by economists. Civilian unemployment likewise declined to 8.3%. the lowest rate since February 2009. On the other hand, median duration of unemployment actually rose to 21.1 weeks. The civilian non-institutional population rose by 1,685,000 (that should eventually help the housing market recover), while the number of employed rose 847,000. The number of people NOT in the labor force rose by 1,177,000. This indicates that the civilian employment to population ratio dropped dramatically in January. Let me say...

Will investors, consumers and politicians be singing "Take this jobs report and shove it!" come Friday morning? The government will report two key numbers Friday: the number of jobs that were added in January and the unemployment rate. Both figures have been moving in the right direction lately and the hope is that this trend will continue. However, the labor market may have lost a little bit of steam in January. According to a survey of economists by CNNMoney, the current median forecast is that just 135,000 jobs were added last month and that the unemployment rate likely rose to...

Today We Saw This Chart Literally Make People's Jaws Drop Joe WeisenthalJanuary 30,2012 We were just in the studios of GBTV (Glenn Beck's online network) around a group of folks who were watching Glenn's show, when he put up this chart from ZeroHedge of youth unemployment in Europe. Jaws literally dropped around the room. The extent of how bad it is is not well known.ZeroHedge By the way, the salience of this issue was underscored today, when even Rupert Murdoch began tweeting about it.

Is anyone not getting a lot of jobs show up in their search? The past few days this has happened for me on Monster.com.

The Weekly Economic Indicators: Still All Looking GoodNew Deal democrat, The Bonddad BlogJanuary 29,2012First, as to the monthly reports, home sales continued poor, but consumer confidence jumped back further, completely regaining its pre-debt debacle levels. In the rear view mirror department, 4Q 2011 GDP was +2.8% although some internal components were weaker. Those few sources who thought a new recession might begin by the end of 2011 were almost certainly wrong. Turning now to the high frequency weekly indicators: Weekly employment-related data was mixed. The BLS reported that Initial jobless claims rose by 25,000 to 377,000, which is still an...

When Barack Obama joined Silicon Valley’s top luminaries for dinner in California last February, each guest was asked to come with a question for the president. But as Steven P. Jobs of Apple spoke, President Obama interrupted with an inquiry of his own: what would it take to make iPhones in the United States? Mr. Jobs’s reply was unambiguous. “Those jobs aren’t coming back,” he said, according to another dinner guest.

Company discriminated against blacks and whites in favor of Hispanics. The Labor Department's Office of Federal Contract Compliance Programs has announced that government contractor JacintoPort International has agreed to settle allegations of hiring discrimination on the basis of race involving ...

* Fake it until you make it. ** By: Larry Walker, Jr. *The following passage is from my last post, “Labor Force Contraction with Obama - And other hidden truths” :“Most of the electorate understands that as the size of the labor force shrinks the unemployment rate declines. But is anyone really paying attention? Since this massive decline in the civilian labor force is a verifiable fact, it's not surprising that the Obama Administration and much of the propagandist media have chosen to ignore it.”Okay, I confess that I was begging the question. I am fully aware that most...

Data extracted on: January 15, 2012 (11:22:34 AM) Labor Force Statistics from the Current Population Survey Series Id: LNS11000000 Seasonally Adjusted Series title: (Seas) Civilian Labor Force Level Labor force status: Civilian labor force Type of data: Number in thousands Age: 16 years and over

WASHINGTON — The number of Americans filing initial claims for regular state unemployment benefits rose by 24,000 to a seasonally-adjusted 399,000, the Labor Department said Thursday. Economists surveyed by Dow Jones Newswires expected claims to rise by 8,000 to 380,000 in the week ended Jan. 7. Claims from the prior week were revised up to 375,000 from 372,000. The average of new claims over the past four weeks increased by 7,750 to 381,750.

WASHINGTON -- Tensions between the rich and poor are increasing and at their most intense level in nearly a quarter-century, a new survey shows. Americans now see more social conflict over wealth inequality than over the hot-button topics of immigration, race relations and age. The survey released Wednesday by the Pew Research Center highlights U.S. perceptions of the economic divide, an issue that has moved to the forefront in the 2012 presidential campaign amid stubbornly high unemployment, increasing poverty and protests by the Occupy movement.

The National Football League’s Players’ Association (NFLPA) warnedIndianalegislators not to pass a “right-to-work” law in their state. The proposed legislation would bar making union membership a requirement for holding a job. Despite statistical data indicating that economic growth rates and per capita income growth is faster in states that have right-to-work laws, the NFLPA assailed such laws as “the wrong priority for Indiana. These laws undermine the incentive to place teamwork ahead of personal success. They reward selfishness rather than the solidarity and sacrifice that has helped make the NFL the glue that holds our civilization together.” While acknowledging that...

The Equal Employment Opportunity Commission (EEOC) is warning employers that requiring new hires to have a high school diploma violates federal law. “The deplorable performance and almost total lack of standards exhibited by the nation’s public schools cast a pall of considerable doubt over the equity and utility of using high school graduation as a criteria for employing a person,” declared Daniel Blunt, spokesman for the EEOC. “Supposing a person has a diploma, what does this signify?” Blunt asked. “Standardized tests reveal that a remarkably large percentage of high school graduates are distressingly stupid. Even if graduates are less stupid...

Hearing the mainstream media breathlessly report that the unemployment rate declined to 8.5% makes it sound like all is well and the economy is mending. Unfortunately, there’s more to the story.  The official unemployment rate, called “U-3” by the Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS), doesn’t include discouraged workers who gave up looking for work, nor does it include people working part time who want full time jobs. “U-6” is the real unemployment number, and it stands at a whopping 15.2% in Dec 2011. (See BLS Labor Underutilization for details)The Rest of the Story In the past two months, BLS reported a total...

- And other hidden truths- By: Larry Walker, Jr. -On January 7, 2012, Barack Obama boasted, “We’re moving in the right direction. We have made real progress.” Then he went on to exaggerate that, “Altogether more private sector jobs were created in 2011 than any year since 2005.” Naturally, such jovial assertions propelled many left-wing moonbats back to work today, if you can call blogging false claims such as that ‘Obama created more jobs in one year than Bush did in eight’, and other malarkey work. It’s funny that these same cherry-pickers never attempt to match wits when it comes...

Nonfarm payroll employment rose by 200,000 in December, and the unemployment rate, at 8.5 percent, continued to trend down, the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics reported today. Job gains occurred in transportation and warehousing, retail trade, manufacturing, health care, and mining.